ABSTRACT
Classic sufficientarians like Harry Frankfurt dismiss inequality ‘as such’ as morally insignificant. I ask whether the plausibility and practical import of this claim is in any way undercut by evidence of the durable effects of high inequality on some aspects of individual and societal well-being. Studies demonstrating that large socioeconomic inequalities are persistently correlated with low social mobility and social trust, greater health disparities, and racial and gender hierarchies put pressure on classic sufficientarians’ claim that inequality’s supposed harms are largely reducible to poverty or too-low welfare. They also suggest that inequality’s harms do not only affect those below the threshold of sufficiency. I show that the classic sufficiency view of inequality disregards the close connections between poverty and inequality, as well as the ways in which large relative inequalities reflect and reinforce morally concerning harms like status hierarchies, racial segregation, and low levels of social trust. Revised sufficiency views, such as those of Satz, Anderson, Axelsen & Nielsen, and Shields, are more readily able to grant the significance of relative inequalities and comparative assessments of welfare. but are hampered by their adherence to classic sufficientarianism’s negative thesis denying the relevance of inequality.
