Redistribution, Wealth and Freedom

Testo disponibile solo in lingua inglese.
Redistribution has become the central economic and political issue of representative democracies. On this one problem most other problems – from taxation to public deficits and the legitimacy or otherwise of political institutions – depend heavily. In this essay, the author argues that, from the point of view of democratic legitimacy and economic efficiency, present forms of distribution cannot be justified. Theirs is, effectively, a corporatist logic. For liberalism, the forms and purposes of redistribution ought to be entirely removed from the logic of the acquisition of electoral consensus.