Professor Wilkinson aims to defend equality against the objection that, due to its failure to provide incentives, it must conflict with either freedom or efficiency, or both. He explains the problem of incentives, the relationship between freedom, efficiency, and equality, and the difficulties of describing an ideal egalitarian economy, before concluding with his own radical solution, a scheme of social duty in a market system.

This book defends equality against the objection that, due to its failure to provide incentives, it must conflict with either freedom or efficiency, or both. It explains the problem of incentives, the relationship between freedom, efficiency, and equality, and the difficulties of describing an ideal egalitarian economy, before concluding with its own radical solution, a scheme of social duty in a market system. Freedom, Efficiency and Equality combines techniques from across several disciplines in an accessible fashion in its discussion of a central topic in political theory and normative economies.

Capitalism offers greater prosperity and opportunity for everyone, while socialism, unnecessary interventionism, and other choices inevitably fail. But capitalism is quickly falling out of favor with the middle class in the Western world. Fortunately, it can be fixed. The next decades will present numerous challenges: exponentially accelerating technology and use of robots, an aging population, repressive taxation, and the sustainability of education and health care costs—to name just a few. Freedom or Equality addresses those challenges while presenting a fresh examination of Social Capitalism—a moderate option between extreme solutions of all sorts that can deliver superior growth and prosperity worldwide.

In this volume, Nobel Laureate James Meade discusses a set of radical changes in economic institutions and policies designed to show an efficient, socially acceptable third alternative between Keynesian inflation and monetarist unemployment, and between the inefficiencies of socialist centralism and the ravages of unrestrained capitalist competition. According to Meade, these changes should aim at allowing freedom of individual choice (liberty), producing a high standard of living (efficiency) and avoiding excessive divergences between riches and poverty (equality). But there are inevitably clashes between these objectives. For example, free competition may promote liberty and efficiency but will offer high rewards to the owners of scarce resources and low rewards to those who command little earning power, resulting in the denial of equality. The author suggests a set of reforms which could mitigate the effects of such clashes. Such a review of institutions is highly relevant in the present age of social uncertainties. For example, on what lines should the post-communist economies of Eastern Europe be rebuilt? Can we avoid the stark choice between the inflation of Keynesianism and the unemployment of monetarism? Can the ravages of free capitalist competition be avoided without the inefficiencies of centralized economic planning? Including an extensively revised version of Meade's well- known tract, Agothopia: The Economics of Partnership, Liberty, Equality, and Efficiency will be of interest to both economists and political scientists.

This book analyses the egalitarian foundations of equality law from a classical liberal perspective by asking two central questions: does justice ideally demand equality? Are differences in abilities among people in some sense unfair? The book examines these questions in the context of racial diversity. Racial justice as a component of social justice is often considered to be so emotionally and morally compelling that its implications for economic freedom are rarely subjected to critical scrutiny. In defending the classical ideal of formal equality in contexts of racial diversity this book questions the ethical status of egalitarian social and moral ideals. Economic Freedom and Social Justice argues that egalitarian ideals, like all subjective value judgements, must be subjected to critical intellectual inquiry rather than treated axiomatically. Drawing upon the legal framework in the UK and other common law jurisdictions, this book shows some of the ways in which egalitarian ideals, in addition to resting on false premises, are costly, harmful, and ultimately inimical to justice and liberty. The book argues that legal entitlements and policy guidelines constructed upon notions of racial equity are wrongly constituted as the main prism through which liberal market democracies govern private relationships, including the employment relationship. Written in a clear and forthright style, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in law, economics, philosophy and political economy.

Adam Smith envisions an economic order which is primarily just, and that happens to be efficient. His proposal mainly attends to the fact that the rules that govern relations between people are fair, that they respect the freedom and equality of people, and a secondary effect of their institutionalization is that, in addition to being fair, they also turn out to be the most efficient. Indeed, for Smith, just and efficient rules are at the base of the prosperity of a commercial society. A commercial society is the most fertile environment to promote freedom and equality, which are the base of human and economic flourishing. A commercial society creates prosperity, increasing life expectancy, and decreases hardship. It favors friendly interactions and exchange of sentiments, thus allowing the virtue of humanity to develop. It exposes people to strangers, enlarging their perspectives and thus decreasing their self-centric biases. Furthermore, commercial societies are based on economic exchanges, which intrinsically recognize equal dignity among individuals. On the other hand, pre-commercial societies tend to generate potentially de-humanizing "servile dependency" and poverty that threaten human and economic growth. The hardship of pre-commercial societies is such to make suffering and death common, hardening people and thus inhibiting the expression of sentiments, and limiting mutual sympathy. Smith also warns of the dangers to which a commercial society is exposed, dangers which can impede the realization of justice and freedom, and consequently of efficiency. He condemns policies that retard economic growth because they fail to promote equality by benefiting some at the expense of others. They are unjust and also inefficient.

Should the state recognise gender? Can a liberal state discourage traditional family structures? Is women's sport compatible with equality of opportunity? Should feminists defend women's freedom to choose cosmetic surgery? Is genital cutting always wrong, or is it only wrong for girls? Freedom and Equality investigates the contours of feminist liberalism: a philosophical approach that is appealing but elusive. Its hallmark is a liberalism that prioritises equality and individual autonomy, while offering a rigorous critique of using individuals' choices as the measure of justice. Liberalism without feminism prioritises individual choice, a strategy that has played a crucial role in the liberal defence of freedom against authoritarianism and conformity. However, as feminism shows, relying on individual choice is insufficient to render an outcome just, because people often choose things that harm or disadvantage themselves. From beauty norms to the gendered division of labour, from marriage to religion, women and men choose to arrange their lives in ways that perpetuate inequality. Often, these choices are made in response to social norms, including unjust, unequal, or harmful norms. It follows that relying on individual choice as a measure of justice actually leaves unjust social structures intact. Any defender of autonomy and equality must be prepared to criticise individuals' choices while prioritising individual choosers. The essays in this collection cover a wide range of issues fundamental to liberalism, to feminism, and to their intersection. They explore the foundational philosophical concepts of choice, equality of opportunity, ideology, and the state, and they engage directly with key political controversies, including women's sport, the state recognition of gender, the regulation of cosmetic and cultural surgeries, and state action to secure equality in the family. Clare Chambers argues that feminist liberalism is both possible and necessary. It is possible because the two doctrines of feminism and liberalism are compatible, their fundamental values of freedom and equality aligned. But feminism is necessary because liberalism has shown that it is simply not up to the task of securing gender equality and women's liberation alone.

The book argues that by relying on moral incentives it is possible, in principle, to separate the organizational advantages of the market from its distributional disadvantages. In theory, we can imagine a politico-economic system that distributes income equally (or on some other principle) but has all the efficiency characteristics of a capitalist market system. This shows that the market can provide an institutional mechanism for realizing ideals of distributive justice. The book provides a theoretical model of the system, identifying its requirements. It then offers arguments from empirical social science about why the model should work under appropriate conditions.

A right to equality and non-discrimination is widely seen as fundamental in democratic legal systems. But failure to identify the human interest that equality aims to uphold reinforces the argument of those who attack it as morally empty or unsubstantiated and weakens its status as a fundamental human right. This book argues that an understanding of the human interest which equality aims to uphold is feasible within the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the European Court of Justice (ECJ). In comparing the evolution of the prohibition of discrimination in the case-law of both Courts, Charilaos Nikolaidis demonstrates that conceptual convergence within the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the EU on the issue of equality is not as far as it might appear initially. While the two bodies of equality law are extremely divergent as to the requirements they impose, their interpretation by the international judiciary might be properly analysed under a common light to emphasise the substantive dimension of equality in European Human Rights law. The book will be of great use and interest to scholars and students of human rights, discrimination law, and European politics.

This book gives a systematic and extensive comparative analysis of public beliefs about social justice. It discuses the explations behind cross-national variations and chang over time, as well as existing welfare practices influence on the public