Daniel Shapiro

Can Old-Age Social Insurance Be Justified?

While in America most people think of “welfare” as means-tested programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, in reality in the United States and other affluent democracies the heart of the welfare state is social insurance programs, such as health insurance, old-age or retirement pensions, and unemployment insurance. They are insurance programs in the sense that they protect against common risks of a loss of income if and/or when certain events come to pass (illness, old-age or retirement, unemployment); they are “social” because unlike market insurance they are not run on a sound actuarial basis, the premiums are not voluntarily incurred but compulsory, and there is very limited choice or flexibility concerning the type of policy one can purchase. Why have social insurance rather than market insurance? In this essay, I take up this question with regard to old-age or retirement pensions, which at present absorb around 9 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and 25 percent of government spending of the affluent industrial countries comprising the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). My aim is to show that old-age or retirement social insurance (henceforth “SI”) is worse in virtually every relevant normative respect than its alternative, some form of market or private pensions. By relevant normative respect, I mean those values or principles which are used by contemporary political philosophers in their discussions and justifications of welfare-state policies, and which are applicable to assessments of different systems of old-age or retirement pensions. (Although they are applicable , almost no contemporary political philosophers have in fact applied them—an amazing state of affairs which I hope to remedy here.)

EGALITARIANISM AND WELFARE-STATE REDISTRIBUTION

A central idea of contemporary philosophical egalitarianisms theory of justice is that involuntary inequalities or disadvantages—those that arise through no choice or fault of ones own—should be minimized or rectified in some way. Egalitarians believe that the preferred institutional vehicle for fulfilling these obligations of justice is some form of a welfare state. Of course, contemporary egalitarians disagree about the best way to interpret or understand their theory of justice and institutions: Which inequalities are chosen and which are unchosen? What form of a welfare state will best serve justice? However, no contemporary egalitarian denies that egalitarian justice requires a welfare state that will redistribute income and wealth to aid the involuntarily disadvantaged.

Does Ronald Dworkin Take Rights Seriously

One of the aims of Ronald Dworkins recent book, Taking Rights Seriously, is to provide a theory of natural rights. His theory is novel and interesting in two respects. First, Dworkin argues that the commonly held belief that liberty and equality are fundamentally opposed to one another is false.1 Rights to various liberties are themselves derived from a form of a right to equality what Dworkin calls the right to equal concern and respect. Second, Dworkin thinks that the notion of a general right to liberty, which can be opposed to egalitarian claims, is incoherent.

On N. Scott Arnold’s “Why Profits Are Deserved”*

How could profits be deserved? And what does Arnold’s argument tell us about the justice of market capitalism? Arnold is concerned with profits of entrepreneurs, not capitalists. Entrepreneurship essentially involves organizing production: “deciding what to produce, when to produce it, and how much to produce at what price” ð388Þ. Entrepreneurial profit occurs by discovering ways to rearrange the structure of production more efficiently; successful entrepreneurship is most visible in great innovators who envision new products and services and bring together the needed factors of production. Capitalist profit, on the other hand, is a return on investment of capital goods. While entrepreneurs can be capitalists, they need not be. Their functional roles are different. Even if a market system lacked capitalists, entrepreneurs would exist since uncovering opportunities for reorganizing production in more efficient ways is profitable given that markets change continuously. This suggests that entrepreneurship is central to markets and its role ineliminable, not that entrepreneurial profits are deserved. Arnold offers an institutional theory of desert: rewards and punishments are deserved when the institutional rules governing them best serve the essential goal of the institution ð390–91Þ. The market’s essential goal is to meet consumer needs and wants, and entrepreneurs make profits to the extent that their innovations and their discovery of inefficient production processes are rewarded by consumers. Arnold argues that if institutional

Book ReviewsJohn R. Rowan,Conflicts of Rights: Moral Theory and Social Policy Implications.Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1999. Pp. 225.

Undressing Durban emerged from its editors’ efforts to move conference participants at the 2006 International Sociology Association meetings in Durban beyond the standard and superficial introduction many visitors are provided to the city: tourism, on the one hand, and fear, on the other. This volume, which began as a handout at the conference, organizes into 16 sections 54 short essays on life in Durban, written by faculty and students in the social sciences at the University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN). In an excellent introduction, Pattman and Khan make the case for such a compendium, both as a more accurate introduction to Durban and as a response to the climate of fear that encompassed the ISA meetings after some participants were mugged. A series of personal narratives of life in Durban introduce the first sections of the book. These narratives describe how their authors struggle to fit themselves into the racial regimes that, sixteen years after the end of formal Apartheid laws, still characterize identity and interaction in Durban: from foreign students forced into Apartheid’s still encompassing, four-category racial hierarchy—“Black African,” “Colored,” “Indian,” “White”—to a series of remarkably similar stories of trying to make interracial relationships in Durban work. The personal narratives provide deep insight into the complexity of race, and less directly gender, dynamics in Durban. Perhaps because the authors are describing their own sometimes raw experiences, there is a level of critical self-analysis missing. For instance, Serrenta Naidoo, who is Indian, suggests that she is “indifferent to people who do not say what is on their minds but gossip in indirect ways behind people’s backs” (p. 104), regarding her relationship with a white Afrikaans-speaking man. Anger, not indifference, leaps out of the text, and is shared in other essays in the section, where authors relate their frustration with strangers’ stares and the scorn of “white liberals” who use these relationships as proof that South Africa has “transcended racism” (p. 113). The volume hits its stride with rich accounts of informal settlement and downtown street and shelter life, based on authors’ ethnography and observation. This methodology and the data that come from it are at the core of the University’s research. Authors include pictures of informal settlements, and share residents’ descriptions of water queues, the ever-present risk of fires, and the struggle to hold onto the land in the face of legal challenges. Indeed, one essay by Evan Mantzaris and Elias Cebekhulu describes residents’

62.00 (cloth).

(1) The book tells much of the training and career of a forensic pathologist. Anyone thinking of such work for themselves or for a friend or relative will find this a most interesting exposition of how hard and unpredictable such a life is. The book is in no way discouraging, but it gives an honest and open view of the sort of problems that will be encountered. It tells of the elation of making positive, often unexpected, findings. It tells of the burden of failures and mistakes. Above all, it gives an honest account of the amount of work required by this discipline. (2) The book gives useful revision details of very many conditions that anyone working in the field of investigation of deaths needs to know. It is in no way a textbook, but Richard Shepherd’s love of teaching spills out throughout the text in a thoroughly illuminating way. I have been induced to look up very many subjects that I should know. It is effortlessly empowering. (3) The book gives the best account of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I am very interested in this difficult condition, having been affected by it since the Falkland Islands War, which I got caught up in. I have read many erudite papers on the subject, both as an Army medical officer and from my own interest. I have read nothing of the quality of descriptions of flashbacks that are in this book, or of the difficulties of living with PTSD. (4) Many people, including fellow doctors, consider forensic pathologists to be the ‘tough guys’ of medicine. They deal with horrendous tragedies and appear to emerge un-traumatised to give confident opinions in court. This book gives us an honest insight into the almost unimaginable stresses of the work. Richard relates his involvement in a series of world famous forensic cases, taking a huge responsibility for getting things right. Each of the cases was fascinating to read about, but what really shone through them all was his compassion and care for the dead and their families. (5) Richard gives a simple but very moving account of how his first marriage eventually failed and was replaced by a second and very successful marriage. His deep reflections on the matter are useful reading for anyone struggling with marriage problems. I wish I had had this book available for very many of my patients in these troubles when I was in general practice.