When Does Inequality Matter? (Cato Unbound Book 32006)

The title of a new collection of essays by a set left-leaning luminaries says "Inequality Matters." Yes, but which inequalities matter? When do they matter? Why? Is it true that the "growing economic divide in America" has, as the subtitle of Inequality Matters puts it, "poisonous consequences?" If we worry about the wrong inequalities, might the policy medicine sicken the body politic worse than the alleged poison?

In a powerful new work of classical liberal political theory, philosopher David Schmidtz maps out the Elements of Justice: desert, reciprocity, equality, and need. In the lead essay of this month's Cato Unbound, Schmidtz draws on his original, lucid, and provocative chapters on equality, identifying the point of equality in the liberal traditional in order to help us recognize the kinds of inequalities we have reason to encourage and the kinds we have reason to deplore. Commentary this month will be provided by another world-class lineup thinkers including: Peter Singer of Princeton and the University of Melbourne, and perhaps the world's most famous living Anglophone moral philosopher; Tom G. Palmer, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, political theorist, and globetrotting activist for liberty (he will be blogging, as much as is possible, from Azerbaijan); and Jacob Hacker, wunderkind professor of political science at Yale, and a leading specialist in the policy of inequality.