Just Deserts

“This puzzle recalls the hoary question of why there is no socialism in America. Why is the United States distinctive among Western nations in the weakness of its labor movement, absence of universal health care and other public goods, and reluctance to redistribute income where the elderly are not concerned?”

“Generations of answers have ranged from the American mindset (say, individualism) to exercises of brute political power (e.g., strike-breakers, campaign money) to the formal structure of government (such as single-member districts).”

“Some recent research presents a cultural explanation—specifically, Americans’ tendency to see issues of inequality in terms of deservingness. Even economist Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, insists on the “key role” of “belief systems.””

“Notions of who deserves what shape the American welfare state.”

“The economic demographer Robert Moffitt has shown that, despite common misperceptions, total U.S. welfare support—social security, food stamps, disability insurance, and so on—has not declined since the days of the Great Society. Even bracketing health expenditures, per capita government spending on means-tested programs rose pretty steadily over the last forty-plus years.”

“What has changed, Moffitt argues, is who gets help. Spending has shifted away from the jobless, single, childless, and very poor toward the elderly, disabled, working, married, parents, and those who are not poor.”

“Moffitt’s explanation is that the American emphasis on helping only those deemed morally deserving—the second group—has been accentuated, the 1996 welfare reform being a prime example.”

“Americans’ insistence that aid reach only the clearly deserving goes back centuries. It fits into a broader cultural perspective that also seems particularly American: viewing the world as fair.”

“Individuals vary in the extent to which they believe that one generally gets what one deserves. Psychologists have measured this “just world” viewpoint with questionnaires that ask respondents whether they agree, for example, that “men who keep in shape have little chance of suffering a heart attack.” (It’s sort of folk theodicy.) When events challenge that view—say, hearing about a young person’s death—just-world believers tend to assume that the victim brought on his or her suffering. Unfortunate people, by this logic, are probably undeserving people.”

“Americans seem likelier than other Westerners to believe in a just world.”

“Americans do express some resentment of the rich, sympathy for the poor, and support for redistributing from the former to the latter. But this philosophical position is mitigated by ideas about deservingness. In a 2012 survey, a great majority of Americans agreed that our “poor people have become too dependent on government assistance programs.” While only 27 percent claimed simply to “admire the rich,” 88 percent claimed to “admire people who get rich by working hard.” Given the just-world perspective, Americans would tend to believe that the rich are rich because they worked hard and so deserve the riches and the admiration.”

“All this research testifies to the particular, historical resistance of Americans to spending money on the have-nots, whom they commonly assume are undeserving of such help.”

“One side will argue the injustice of contemporary inequality, and the other will argue the justice of getting what one deserves. All sides right of Bernie Sanders surely will not be arguing for equal outcomes, but only for equal opportunities.”