ABSTRACT
This chapter refers to the alternative to egalitarianism—namely, that what is morally important with respect to money is for everyone to have enough—as "the doctrine of sufficiency". Economic equality is not, as such, of particular moral importance. With respect to the distribution of economic assets, what is important from the point of view of morality is not that everyone should have the same but that each should have enough. The fact that economic equality is not in its own right a morally compelling social ideal is in no way, of course, a reason for regarding it as undesirable. Thomas Nagel maintains that what underlies the appeal of equality is an "ideal of acceptability to each individual". It might be argued that pursuing equality as an important social ideal would not be so alienating as pursuing it as a personal goal.
