Academic literature on the topic 'Non welfarism'

Utilitarianism seems to be going out of fashion, amidst increasing concerns for issues of freedom, equality, and justice. At least, anti-utilitarian and non-utilitarian moral philosophers have been very active. This paper is a very modest attempt to defend utilitarianism in particular and welfarism (i.e., general utilitarianism or utilitarianism without the sum-ranking aspect) in general. Section I provides an axiomatic defence of welfarism and utilitarianism. Section II discusses the divergences between individual preferences and individual welfares and argues in favour of welfare utilitarianism. Section III criticizes some non-utilitarian principles, including knowledge as intrinsically good, rights-based ethics, and Rawls's second principle. Section IV argues that most objections to welfarism are probably based on the confusion of non-ultimate considerations with basic values. This is discussed with reference to some recent philosophical writings which abound with such confusion. Section V argues that the acceptance of utilitarianism may be facilitated by the distinction between ideal morality and self-interest which also resolves the dilemma of average versus total utility maximization in optimal population theory.

This paper attempts a reflection on the nature and relevance of Azikiwe’s Political philosophy of Neo-Welfarism. Neo-welfarism as a political ideology was advanced by Azikiwe as his contribution to the search for ideology in the aftermath of colonialism. With Neo-Welfarism, Azikiwe sought to advance a philosophy for colonial emancipation and the decolonization of Africa. At the background of this ideology is his dissatisfaction with the dominant ideologies of the era being capitalism, socialism and welfarism. This dissatisfaction triggered an attempt to formulate a via media that takes into cognizance, the 'good' aspects of these ideologies through the method of eclectic pragmatism for the greatest good of the greatest number. This paper found out that one of the main objectives of Neo-welfarism is to build a system that works to the advantage of many rather than one that speculates and works to the disadvantages of many. This paper also found out that Neo-welfarism as a political ideology is not without flaws; this is because the workability of such a via media has been called to question among other issues that are at the kernel of this ideology. The conclusion that is however reached in this paper is in two folds: one, the articulation of neo-welfarism at the time when there was an apparent search for ideology for the decolonization of Africa is both timely and laudable. Two, the non-implementation of neo-welfarism after several decades of its advancement notwithstanding, it is yet relevant in the sustained need to deepen democracy and search for an operational ideology for African's development even today.

Empirical findings on the implementation of neoliberal social policies in the global south has presented them as mostly political economy failures. In several studies, their messy interactions with politics and a myriad of implementation bottlenecks were highlighted. Social protection and social programmes, as an example of social policies have unfortunately become politicised used as instruments by political leaders striving to win political capital in environments of unbridled, and complex bureaucratic procedures. This article analyses challenges of social development or ‘developmental welfarism’ in the Nigerian context through interrogation of the territorial governance of Nigerian social protection. The issues addressed by this article relates to the orientation of Nigerian social policy dynamics and the exploration of these challenges, were described as the ‘burdens of developmental welfarism’ which relates to the broader issues of the so-called Nigerian ‘developmental’ state. The analysis of Nigerian social policy dynamics through a political economy lens, highlighted the ramifications of the complex interactions of different stakeholders (international, local and non-state actors) as well as processes and mechanisms that shaped the territorial governance of Nigerian social policy programmes. The article unpacked the issues and challenges of Nigerian social protection and offered some policy recommendations for ‘unburdening’ Nigerian social policy.

Economists use a welfarist approach to policy evaluation, but doing so can lead to recommendations that violate seemingly wise non-welfarist principles. I explore one example: the proper tax policy response to envy. Using a novel survey, I find that a majority of US respondents are skeptical of envy-based redistribution, even if they are told that its direct effect is to increase welfare. This skepticism is consistent with a long history of judgments by economists, including leading welfarists. Such conflicts between direct welfarist analysis and prevailing normative principles challenge economists to consider modifying our dominant method of policy evaluation.

The collapse of Communism and the retreat from, in theory as well as practice, even moderate forms of collectivism have left even the non-Marxist forms of socialism in disarray. While it is true that forms of collectivism have remarketed themselves under meretricious, insubstantial doctrinal headings such as the “Third Way,” an unstable amalgam of capitalism, communitarianism, and welfarism, there has been little original work on how an economy and society might organize itself so as to have neither the superficially objectionable features of modern capitalism nor the economically untenable and morally odious properties of full-blooded socialism. The former might include vast inequality in resource ownership, the unequal political power such inequality might generate, the increasing alienation produced by the soulless possessive individualism that is allegedly engulfing the world, and a myriad of other complaints that are regularly leveled at capitalism.

Questa tesi ha per oggetto la teoria della tassazione ottima del reddito e analizza l’effetto di differenti obiettivi redistributivi sul sistema fiscale. In particolare, si identifica la struttura di un sistema fiscale volto a conseguire la riduzione della diseguaglianza e della polarizzazione dei redditi. A tal fine, in linea con Kanbur et. al (2006) e Saez e Stantcheva (2016) si adotta un approccio “non-welfarista” (n.w.) e si esaminano sistemi di tassazione“a scaglioni” (piecewise). Come noto, la distinzione principale tra approccio welfarista e n.w. è data dall'argomento della funzione di benessere sociale adottata. In particolare, l’approccio n.w. è caratterizzato dallo spostamento dell’interesse dall'utilità al reddito. Esso risulta il più adatto quando si assumono obiettivi di riduzione della diseguaglianza, povertà e polarizzazione. Il sistema di tassazione ottimale scaturisce da un esercizio di massimizzazione vincolata di una funzione di benessere sociale basata sui redditi netti degli individui, ordinati in ordine crescente e pesati secondo la posizione occupata nella relativa distribuzione. La specifica forma della funzione di pesi adottata identifica l’obiettivo n.w. Si considerano due diverse funzioni di pesi che permettono di esprimere gli obiettivi redistributivi in termini di variazioni di un indice di diseguaglianza (Gini) o di un indice di polarizzazione. Il sistema fiscale considerato, oltre ad essere il più diffuso, è lo strumento più idoneo a identificare gli effetti dovuti alla variazione degli obiettivi redistributivi. I risultati ottenuti evidenziano la relazione tra lo specifico obiettivo redistributivo e la struttura del sistema fiscale ottimale. Quando la tassazione è finalizzata a raccogliere un certo livello di gettito, senza ridistribuire le risorse raccolte, il risultato cambia se l’obiettivo è ridurre la diseguaglianza oppure la polarizzazione. Con offerta di lavoro fissa, il sistema fiscale finalizzato alla riduzione della diseguaglianza richiede di tassare con l’aliquota massima consentita tutti i redditi al di sopra di una certa soglia, mentre per tutti quelli al di sotto di tale soglia la tassazione è zero. La soglia è fissata in modo da raccogliere il gettito richiesto. Per ridurre la polarizzazione, invece, la soluzione ottima prevede tre scaglioni reddituali con aliquote marginali nulle nel primo e nell'ultimo scaglione, e la massima consentita in quello centrale, che include il reddito mediano. Con offerta di lavoro variabile ed elasticità costante su tutta la distribuzione, i risultati sono qualitativamente in linea con quelli ottenuti con offerta fissa; pertanto il sistema fiscale per ridurre la diseguaglianza è “convesso” con aliquote marginali crescenti, mentre quello per ridurre la polarizzazione è “non-convesso” con aliquota marginale ridotta per l’ultimo scaglione. Il ricorso a trasferimenti “lump-sum” rende il sistema fiscale ottimale indipendente dal livello di gettito richiesto; il segno del trasferimento è dato dalla differenza tra il gettito raccolto e quello richiesto. Il sistema fiscale per ridurre la diseguaglianza è convesso, tranne i casi in cui l’elasticità dell’offerta di lavoro è alta oppure quando il livello iniziale di diseguaglianza non è molto elevato. Per ridurre la polarizzazione il sistema ottimale è sempre non-convesso. In entrambi i casi le aliquote marginali si riducono all'aumentare dell’elasticità, assunta costante su tutta la distribuzione. L’utilizzo di sussidi o tasse “lump-sum” dipende dalla combinazione tra il livello iniziale di dispersione e il valore dell’elasticità. La tassazione a somma fissa risulta preferibile per ridurre la polarizzazione. Infine, con elasticità non costante e senza ridistribuzione, i risultati sono in linea con quelli ottenuti con elasticità costante. Tuttavia, rispetto a quest’ultimo caso le aliquote marginali risultano inferiori per i redditi che occupano i percentili più bassi associati a elasticità più elevate.
This dissertation focuses on optimal income taxation theory and analyses the effect of different redistributive objectives on the shape of the optimal tax system. In particular, we investigate how the optimal tax system should be designed in order to achieve inequality and polarization reduction objectives. To this end, in line with the works by Kanbur et al. (2006) and Saez and Stantcheva (2016) we adopt a “non-welfarist” (n.w.) approach and focus on piecewise linear tax systems. By choosing the n.w. approach we recognize that redistributive objectives are crucial per se to the determination of the optimal tax schedule, and not necessarily because of the shape of the agents’ utility function. The main difference between welfarism and n.w. is that in the latter the argument of the social welfare function is different from individuals’ utility. Therefore, we focus on income as the most appropriate variable to investigate when the government’s objective is the reduction of inequality, poverty or polarization. We formalize the n.w. objective by assuming that the government maximizes a rank-dependent social evaluation function defined over individuals’ net income, subject to a budget constraint. Then, the evaluation of the income distribution can be summarized by the mean income of the distribution and a linear index of dispersion dependent on the choice of the weighting function. Specifically, we consider two weighting functions which allow to formalize redistributive objectives expressed in terms of changes in the Gini index of income in case of inequality considerations. Then, by suitable modifications of the positional weights it is possible, within the same model, to move towards evaluations concerned with the income polarization. We consider piecewise linear tax systems that represent the most adopted scheme and the easiest way to identify changes in the tax schedule when the government objectives move from inequality to polarization reduction. The results we obtain highlight the relationship between the redistributive objective and the theoretical optimal shape of the tax system. In particular, when redistribution is not allowed and the focus is only on the socially desirable mechanism collecting a given level of per-capita revenue, the optimal tax schemes substantially differ depending on whether the government is inequality or polarization sensitive. With fixed labour supply the optimal tax system reducing inequality requires a no tax area until a given threshold and the maximal admissible taxation above that threshold, which is set in order to satisfy the revenue requirement. As to polarization reduction, the optimal tax system requires to tax with the maximal admissible tax rate all incomes within the central bracket, including also the median income. Tax rates in the two external brackets are set equal to zero. When we introduce constant labour supply elasticity the results are qualitatively confirmed. The optimal tax systems reducing inequality and polarization are respectively convex and non-convex. By introducing the possibility to use lump-sum transfers (tax and subsidy) the design of the optimal tax system is independent of the revenue requirement and the sign of the lump-sum transfer depends on the difference between the collected amount and the required revenue. The optimal tax system reducing inequality (polarization) is convex (non-convex), with marginal tax rates decreasing in the level of the constant labour supply elasticity. The lump-sum transfer is positive or negative depending on the combination of the level of gross income dispersion and the value of labour supply elasticity. Then, the lump-sum taxation is more likely to be used to reduce polarization. Finally, when redistribution is not allowed and assuming non-constant labour supply elasticity the results are qualitatively in line with the case of constant elasticity. However, marginal tax rates are lower for income percentiles exhibiting higher elasticity.

An important question that a theory of morality must answer concerns morality’s focus: what about people matters? What do we take into consideration when we consider a person from the moral point of view? This paper discusses two answers to this question, and proposes a third. The first, and perhaps most obvious, answer is welfarist: what matters about people, from the moral point of view, is their well-being, the quality of their lives. But a welfarist account of the focus of interpersonal morality has faced a number of challenges, to which a preferentist account has been thought to adequately respond. However, this paper argues that neither a welfarist nor a preferentist account of the focus of morality is adequate. It proposes an alternative, according to which the focus of morality can and should reflect the special normative circumstances that people inhabit given their normatively significant roles, associations, or commitments.

This chapter examines what is to be valued in economic evaluation of health care interventions. It starts by reviewing economic theory on resource allocation through the market mechanism and applying this to the health care sector. It then presents the alternative of resource allocation by government intervention and the implications this has for the use of economic evaluation and the measure of benefit. This is followed by a consideration of the welfarist foundation for a measure of health such as the QALY, and finally some non-welfarist arguments for this. The aim of this chapter is to examine what is important for the purpose of economic evaluation and, specifically, the place of the QALY measure.

This chapter looks at a theoretical framework for diversions from the assumption that all units of health gain have equal social value, and examins different ways in which welfarists and non-welfarists may call for cost per weighted QALY analyses, for efficiency-based reasons, and equity-motivated reasons. A distinction is drawn between the value of health to individuals (which is a matter of preference) and the value of health of different people to society (which is a matter of normative judgement). Another distinction is drawn between weighting QALYs across different people because of who they are and weighting QALYs across different people because of the level of their baseline health. The chapter also presents a brief look at the challenges associated with empirical research in the topic, their findings, and the practicalities of cost per weighted QALYs.

This article steps back from the traditional route of discussing the philosophical issues of welfare economics. The problem with that general approach is that the account and problems inherent in seeing welfare in terms of choice-based utility (whether ordinal or cardinal) or experiential utility are discussed prior to discussing other ways of examining human welfare. Problems with welfarism and utilitarianism, then, lead to the discussion of other approaches as though they avoid such problems when, in reality, their proponents rarely even stand them up to the issues. Any welfare economics or political philosophy that does not tell how to address public policy issues is not worth the name, and that means there must be a way of comparing the welfare of different people in some manner in order to make judgments about where to spend public money. All approaches suffer from interpersonal comparability problems.

This chapter analyzes the contribution of the capability approach to the literature on distributive justice. The capability approach in itself does not provide a full theory of distributive justice, but rather argues that the metric of distributive justice should be functionings and/or capabilities. The chapter critically analyzes various issues that need addressing when we adopt this metric, such as the questions of which capabilities should be selected, and how they should be aggregated in order to make interpersonal comparisons of advantage. Comparisons with other metrics of justice are also discussed, such as Rawls’s social primary goods and welfarist metrics. The chapter concludes by arguing that we should think of the capability approach to justice as a family of theories, and describes which theoretical modules are needed for a full capabilitarian theory of justice.

After summarizing Fassin’s arguments, McLennan urges attention to five related questions. The first addresses the intersection between philosophy and the social sciences, specifically how, if at all, utilitarian, Kantian, and other ideal theories of punishment might usefully inform the study of past and present penal practices. Second, McLennan asks what in American history explains the particular brutality of state punishment in the U.S.—what she calls “delegated sadism”—notwithstanding many common features between French and American penal institutions. Building on this theme, she invites Fassin to reflect more on the nonlinearity of the history of penal policy in the U.S. and the ways in which penal welfarism and the slave plantation provided competing models for punishment in both North and South. Responding to Fassin’s call for the study of “penal theology,” McLennan suggests that nineteenth- and twentieth-century Christian theologies have not only fostered certain penal practices but generated radical critiques of incarceration and its effects. Finally, turning to mass incarceration’s more recent history, McLennan calls our attention to the gendered character of penal policy, especially in light of the fact that incarceration rates for women have risen much faster than for men.

Abstract This book demonstrates that economic exchange and legal contract rest on a moral relationship by which each party recognises the autonomy of the other. Through this relationship of mutual recognition, the parties each pursue their legitimate self-interest by the persuasion of the other. Consciousness of this essential relationship is in stark contrast to the alienated belief in solipsistic self-interest that is central to the classical law of contract. Given such belief, it seems justified to take a purely instrumental attitude towards the other party to a contract. But such an attitude is not morally defensible, nor does it enhance economic welfare; and it is for these reasons that the classical law is legally incoherent. The fundamental shortcomings of the classical law arise because it cannot comprehend the way that the doctrines of the positive law do, in fact, give effect to the relationship of mutual recognition. The welfarist criticism of the classical law has, however, failed to develop a workable concept of self-interest, and so is at odds with what must be retained from the classical law, and, behind this, what is welfare enhancing about the market economy. The relationship of mutual recognition can and must be derived from an immanent critique of the classical law that restates self-interest in a morally, economically, and legally attractive manner. The law of contract which emerges is the law of liberal socialism and the social market.

Nozick's well-known Experience Machine argument can be considered a typically successful argument: as far as I know, it has not been discussed much and has been widely seen as conclusive, or at least convincing enough to refute the mental-state versions of utilitarianism. I believe that if his argument were conclusive, its destructive effect would be even stronger. It would not only refute mental-state utilitarianism, but all theories (whether utilitarian or not) considering a certain subjective mental state (happiness, pleasure, desire, satisfaction) as the only valuable state. I shall call these theories "mental state welfarist theories." I do not know whether utilitarianism or, in general, mental-state welfarism is plausible, but I doubt that Nozick's argument is strong enough to prove that it is not.

This chapter suggests that ethical socialism was a response to the crisis of faith. It shows how various welfare liberals and ethical socialists adopted immanentism in an attempt to reconcile religion and science. They located God in evolutionary processes here on earth. They suggested that each person contains a divine spark and so is related to all others in fellowship. Many of them experimented with new ways of living in an attempt to realize the divine in themselves and in their relations with others and nature. Ethical socialism and liberal welfarism did not provide a new home for old religious emotions so much as emerge as part of a new set of religious beliefs.