Luck Egalitarianism, Individual Responsibility and Health

Luck Egalitarianism and Political Solidarity

Luck egalitarianism — the theory that makes individual responsibility central to distributive justice, so that bad luck underwrites a more compelling case for redistribution than do the bad choices of the disadvantaged — has recently come under a sustained attack from critics who are deeply committed to the broader struggle for equality. These egalitarian critics object, first, that luck egalit...

Tough luck and tough choices: applying luck egalitarianism to oral health.

Luck egalitarianism is often taken to task for its alleged harsh implications. For example, it may seem to imply a policy of nonassistance toward uninsured reckless drivers who suffer injuries. Luck egalitarians respond to such objections partly by pointing to a number of factors pertaining to the cases being debated, which suggests that their stance is less inattentive to the plight of the vic...

Egalitarianism, option luck and insurance markets

It is argued here that individuals should never be held responsible for being lucky or unlucky, so that the notion of option luck is prima facie unacceptable. But applying the Conditional Equality and Egalitarian Equivalence criteria to problems of allocation under risk provides a rationale for policies which are sometimes similar to policies based on the notion of option luck. Dworkin’s concep...

Appeals to individual responsibility for health--reconsidering the luck egalitarian perspective.

Responsibility sensitive egalitarianism and optimal linear income taxation

We compute optimal linear taxes on labor income with quasilinear preferences between income and labor. Agents differ in their productivity and in their taste for leisure. A responsibility sensitive egalitarian wants to compensate for the former differences but not for the latter. This intuition is captured by a social planner that wants to equalize opportunities for subjective utility along the...