Short book by my favorite philosopher, what's not to like? ( )

It is the moral importance of respect, and hence of impartiality, rather than of any supposedly prior or preemptive moral importance of equality, that constrains us to treat people the same when we know nothing that provides us with a special reason for treating them differently.

Rationality entails respect, which entails fair treatment. Frankfurt is careful not to imply that the fact that equality is not inherently moral precludes the idea that equality is often preferable. He shifts the moral imperative from egalitarianism to impartiality and respect. I'm not exactly sure if this message would resonate in today's political climate, but it may help to clarify the conversation. ( )

Interesting thesis, and possibly a subtle distinction that some might dismiss as important. Frankfurt's main point is that equality itself is not a moral imperative, but rather respect and impartiality. In a practical sense this might be a useful distinction, since it is easier to legislate certain kinds of equality, such as racial equality, for example. Unfortunately. Legislating equality does not insure the basic respect that all humans are morally entitled. Recognising this distinction might make it clearer what societal goals should be to redress the root of many inequities. ( )

In a world plagued by ISIS and facing the supposedly existential threat of climate change, President Obama has still called income inequality "the defining challenge of our time". In this short, tightly argued book, Frankfurt argues that it isn't.

Why is income inequality so dreadful? There are roughly two schools of thought on this. The first can be called 'consequentialist'. Examples include [b:The Spirit Level|6304389|The Spirit Level Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better|Richard G. Wilkinson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1408314294s/6304389.jpg|6489020] by [a:Wilkinson|118689|Richard G. Wilkinson|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1392805337p2/118689.jpg] and [a:Pickett|8061854|Kate Pickett|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], or [a:Joseph Stiglitz|14186744|Joseph Stiglitz|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s [b:The Price of Inequality|16685439|The Price of Inequality How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future|Joseph E. Stiglitz|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1365989032s/16685439.jpg|19319742]. These books argue that income inequality leads to all sorts of bad outcomes in society; more violence, poverty, or general unhappiness, for example. But the causality, the mechanism by which inequality is supposed to generate these bad outcomes, is always a little vague, and much of it is based on spurious correlations; Wilkinson and Pickett's book was mercilessly eviscerated by [a:Christopher Snowdon|2973348|Christopher Snowdon|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] in [b:The Spirit Level Delusion|8796844|The Spirit Level Delusion Fact-Checking the Left's New Theory of Everything|Christopher Snowdon|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348546904s/8796844.jpg|13670886].

The other school argues more philosophically. According to these thinkers, income inequality is bad in itself, not because of its supposed consequences. It is this school that Frankfurt has in his sights, making [a:Abba Lerner|8324641|Abba Lerner|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] Ground Zero.

Lerner was an economist and his theory was grounded in economics. It was based on two premises; first, that all people had the same marginal utility of wealth, i.e., each person enjoyed their 509th unit of wealth as much as another person. The second, was that the marginal utility of wealth for each person declined (and at the same rate, as per premise one). It followed from this that the overall utility of all people in society could be maximised by an equal distribution of wealth.

But, as Frankfurt argues convincingly, neither premise is true. At the heart of Frankfurt's argument is the fact that wealth, pounds and dollars themselves, do not yield utility except to numismatists. What yields utility is the goods and services that wealth can be used to buy. Regarding the first premise, utilities are only ordinal, not cardinal. While preferences may be ranked for each person, they cannot be quantified and compared. For the second premise, if the addition of another unit of income allows you to buy something for £500 which yields you more utility than what you would have spent the £499 on, then marginal utilities of wealth do not necessarily decline.

Frankfurt's conclusion is that what matters is not inequality, whether one person has more than another, but sufficiency, whether those people have enough. This would seem to be true. If I have £X, and £X is sufficient for me to live my life, why should my situation be adversely affected if someone else has £X 1? There is only a problem if £X is not sufficient for me to live my life.

Inequality is a popular topic at present. As Frankfurt argues, it shouldn't be. This short book is both timely and effective. ( )

The newsworthy topic must have led the publisher to go for a cash grab by re-publishing two old 1987 and 1997 (revised or just reprinted?) essays of Harry Frankfurt. The title is incorrect, the author only speaks about economic inequality and unfortunately not very knowledgeably. As a long time professor at Princeton that used to educate the Southern plantation owners before they returned to whipping their slaves and which serves today as a tax shield for its hedge fund (Princeton pays its hedge fund managers more in fees and salaries than it spends on education), Frankfurt would have been in a prime location to notice inequality.

Unfortunately, he uses the few pages of these essays to knock down straw men (and probably thinks that his reasonings are original). If Frankfurt had done any research, he would have noticed that economists have known for more than a century that a simple utility calculus and comparison does not work.

Frankfurt then discovers that one should optimize towards sufficiency - without, again, noticing that Communists of old have long fought for "to each according to his wants". Ignorance is strength and vapid professorial thoughts are profound, especially if neatly bound by Princeton University Press!

By the way, almost nobody is championing for complete equality. Most just want a level playing field (e.g. no legacy admissions) and public decisions based on one person, one vote. Perhaps his Princeton colleagues Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page can enlighten Frankfurt how inequality destroys American democracy. Avoid. ( )