{"id":19229,"date":"2017-11-15T15:43:38","date_gmt":"2017-11-15T20:43:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=19229"},"modified":"2017-11-15T15:43:38","modified_gmt":"2017-11-15T20:43:38","slug":"a-college-class-on-equality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=19229","title":{"rendered":"a college class on equality"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an outline of a class discussion that seemed to work pretty well this morning. The reading is T.M. Scanlon’s “When Does Equality Matter<\/a>?” Scanlon offers five reasons that a given difference among people may be unjust, and I add a sixth:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The difference reflects suffering by the less advantaged–suffering that could be remedied.<\/li>\n
  2. It is humiliating, conveying disrespect.<\/li>\n
  3. It allows, or reflects, “dominance”: one person’s being able to control the other without giving reasons or being accountable.<\/li>\n
  4. It shows that people lack equal opportunity.<\/li>\n
  5. An institution is violating an implicit or explicit promise to treat its members alike.<\/li>\n
  6. The difference reflects a past injustice that must be remedied.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    For each of the following differences among people, debate: 1) Is it<\/em> an injustice? 2) If so, for which of the six reasons listed above, or for other reasons? 3) What<\/em> is unequal? (For instance, a measured outcome, a good, a right?) Who or what is responsible for remedying the injustice?<\/p>\n

      \n
    • Men in the US live 37 years longer than men in Malawi (from Scanlon).<\/li>\n
    • White men in the healthiest US counties live 15 years longer longer than African American men in the least healthy counties (from Scanlon).<\/li>\n
    • American CEOs are paid 341 times more than average workers (Scanlon example; updated stats).<\/li>\n
    • Kids from households in the 99th income percentile have a 94% chance of completing college. Kids in the lowest percentile have a 22% chance (Raj Chetty).<\/li>\n
    • Amish kids are much less likely to go to college (from Scanlon).<\/li>\n
    • Tufts faculty are 2.7% African American; 12.1% of the US population are Black.<\/li>\n
    • Ninety percent of Tufts students come from the USA. Four percent of the world population is American.<\/li>\n
    • A (hypothetical) teacher treats one of his students better than others.<\/li>\n
    • A (hypothetical) teacher treats all of his students better than people not<\/em> in his class.<\/li>\n
    • In a doctor’s office, everyone calls the physician \u201cdoctor\u201d; the nurses are called by their first names.<\/li>\n
    • Among young Americans, roughly 75% of those with BAs vote, versus 25% of those without high school diplomas (CIRCLE).<\/li>\n
    • One in four Americans say they have no one<\/em> with whom they can discuss \u201cimportant matters\u201d (GSS). They are lonelier than the other 75% of Americans.<\/li>\n
    • There aren’t enough good jobs for all the people. Today 62.7% of Americans are in the labor force (BLS); that could fall with automation and AI.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      This is an outline of a class discussion that seemed to work pretty well this morning. The reading is T.M. Scanlon’s “When Does Equality Matter?” Scanlon offers five reasons that a given difference among people may be unjust, and I add a sixth: The difference reflects suffering by the less advantaged–suffering that could be remedied. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19229"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19262,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19229\/revisions\/19262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}