Wow. Please read this. It's brilliantly said: The Veil of Opulence

[cali]

By BENJAMIN HALE

The Stone

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.
Tags:

fairness, John Rawls, Philosophy, Politics, society

<snip>

Rawls charged his readers to design a society from the ground up, from an original position, and he imposed the ignorance constraint so that readers would abandon any foreknowledge of their particular social status — their wealth, their health, their natural talents, their opportunities or any other goodies that the cosmos may have thrown their way. In doing so, he hoped to identify principles of justice that would best help individuals maximize their potential, fulfill their objectives (whatever they may happen to be) and live a good life. He called this presumption the “veil of ignorance.”

The idea behind the veil of ignorance is relatively simple: to force us to think outside of our parochial personal concerns in order that we consider others. What Rawls saw clearly is that it is not easy for us to put ourselves in the position of others. We tend to think about others always from our own personal vantage; we tend to equate another person’s predicament with our own. Imagining what it must be like to be poor, for instance, we import presumptions about available resources, talents and opportunities — encouraging, say, the homeless to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and to just get a job, any job, as if getting a job is as simple as filling out an application. Meanwhile, we give little thought to how challenging this can be for those who suffer from chronic illnesses or disabling conditions. What Rawls also saw clearly was that other classic principles of justice, like the golden rule or mutual benevolence, are subject to distortion precisely because we tend to do this.

Nowadays, the veil of ignorance is challenged by a powerful but ancient contender: the veil of opulence. While no serious political philosopher actually defends such a device — the term is my own — the veil of opulence runs thick in our political discourse. Where the veil of ignorance offers a test for fairness from an impersonal, universal point of view — “What system would I want if I had no idea who I was going to be, or what talents and resources I was going to have?” — the veil of opulence offers a test for fairness from the first-person, partial point of view: “What system would I want if I were so-and-so?” These two doctrines of fairness — the universal view and the first-person view — are both compelling in their own way, but only one of them offers moral clarity impartial enough to guide our policy decisions.

Those who don the veil of opulence may imagine themselves to be fantastically wealthy movie stars or extremely successful business entrepreneurs. They vote and set policies according to this fantasy. “If I were such and such a wealthy person,” they ask, “how would I feel about giving X percentage of my income, or Y real dollars per year, to pay for services that I will never see nor use?” We see this repeatedly in our tax policy discussions, and we have just seen the latest instance of it in the Tax Policy Center’s comparison of President Obama’s tax plan versus Mitt Romney’s tax plan. “He’s asking you to pay more so that people like him can pay less,” Obama said last week, “so that people like me pay less.” Last Monday he drove the point even harder, saying that Romney’s plan is like “Robin Hood in reverse.” And certainly, Romney’s selection on Saturday of Paul Ryan as his running mate will keep this issue in the forefront of our political discourse.

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http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/the-veil-of-opulence/

[WinkyDink]

1. True, but no need for philosophical language! Simply put: It's the "Social Contract" view vs. "I've

Got Mine" view.

With the addendum to the latter: "And Therefore I Am Superior to Others."

[cali]

2. Except he's talking about people who don't have

adopting the pov of those who do.

[AndyTiedye]

4. The Tee Vee Allows them to Pretend That They are "Rich and Famous"

Almost everything they put on the Tee Vee is designed to make people do that.

[1StrongBlackMan]

3. Ohhhh ...

John Rawls' Theory of Justice! If you have not read it ... STOP! GET IT! READ IT! It, in my view, is the basis of liberal thought.

While I could quibble with the OP description of Rawls' Veil of Ignorance, he does enough to get the point across.

Simply put: Rawls' construct of a just policy is any policy that you would (honestly) be okay with if there was a possibility of YOU being subject to the worst policy outcome.

For example, take the death penalty. We know that innocent people are put to death. The justice question would be, "would you be okay with being the death penalty, if there was the possibility of being the innocent one being put to death.

Consider that versus, say, letting the tax cuts for only the wealthy expire: "Would you be okay with being a millionaire and having your taxes raised, if there was a possibility of your being middle or working class and having your taxes raised?"