Where There’s Muck

want to invest no less than do our rich even if through public rather than private channels. This means inescapable further power concentration and lower efficiency, but not less investment. Actually, then, the relevant inequality—that which can be equalized at least theoretically—is not of incomes, but of personal consumption expenditures. Had Jencks compared these he would have found that no reduction of the consumption of the top 20 per cent of the population could materially increase the consumption of the remaining 80 per cent. Equalization might decrease feelings of envy and guilt. But there is some doubt on that too: Envy seems greater within income groups than among them, and guilt feelings, though displaced onto income differences, do not originate with them. Income equalization actually would lead people to envy most the things they can do least about—e.g., beauty, intelligence, or youth—rather than income. Not much of an improvement, I’d say.

Rejecting the accepted myths, Jencks finds a major cause of income inequality in luck. “Chance governs all,” Milton says, and poets even before Ecclesiastes suspected that “the race is not to the swift . . .” The poets are all too right. But scientists like Jencks must try to explain the unequal income of people who have been blessed by equal, basic “luck”: people lucky enough to be alive and who have not suffered disabling accidents, defects, or diseases, people whom luck did not visibly and grossly disfavor (cripples) or favor (lottery winners). With respect to these people, Jencks’s unanalyzed “luck” may mean that there is no causal relationship between input and outcome (so that input is irrelevant); or stand for an unknowable causal relationship, e.g., God’s grace. But unless either of these possibilities is shown to be a probability, his “luck” is but a residual category: that which has not been satisfactorily explained. Most likely “luck” here refers in part to a set of abilities, as yet unknown, or unmeasured, which may cause some to earn more income than others. (Jencks half-recognizes as much but, in his argument, wholly forgets it.) These abilities—imagination? drive? initiative? talent? persistence? decisiveness? boldness? prudence? discretion?—may be scarce; their optimal combination scarcer still. Comparatively high earnings may be needed to draw (and keep) people with these characteristics into the jobs in which they are most useful. Highly unequal incomes also may be needed to allocate jobholders to tasks and to ration their time: If the most talented (or successful) manager, movie actor, mechanic, or editor does not get much more for his services than the least skilled, talented, or successful, who would buy the services of the latter? And how do we allocate or ration the talented or successful?

JB

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John Braine

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want to invest no less than do our rich even if through public rather than private channels. This means inescapable further power concentration and lower efficiency, but not less investment. Actually, then, the relevant inequality—that which can be equalized at least theoretically—is not of incomes, but of personal consumption expenditures. Had Jencks compared these he would have found that no reduction of the consumption of the top 20 per cent of the population could materially increase the consumption of the remaining 80 per cent. Equalization might decrease feelings of envy and guilt. But there is some doubt on that too: Envy seems greater within income groups than among them, and guilt feelings, though displaced onto income differences, do not originate with them. Income equalization actually would lead people to envy most the things they can do least about—e.g., beauty, intelligence, or youth—rather than income. Not much of an improvement, I’d say.

Rejecting the accepted myths, Jencks finds a major cause of income inequality in luck. “Chance governs all,” Milton says, and poets even before Ecclesiastes suspected that “the race is not to the swift . . .” The poets are all too right. But scientists like Jencks must try to explain the unequal income of people who have been blessed by equal, basic “luck”: people lucky enough to be alive and who have not suffered disabling accidents, defects, or diseases, people whom luck did not visibly and grossly disfavor (cripples) or favor (lottery winners). With respect to these people, Jencks’s unanalyzed “luck” may mean that there is no causal relationship between input and outcome (so that input is irrelevant); or stand for an unknowable causal relationship, e.g., God’s grace. But unless either of these possibilities is shown to be a probability, his “luck” is but a residual category: that which has not been satisfactorily explained. Most likely “luck” here refers in part to a set of abilities, as yet unknown, or unmeasured, which may cause some to earn more income than others. (Jencks half-recognizes as much but, in his argument, wholly forgets it.) These abilities—imagination? drive? initiative? talent? persistence? decisiveness? boldness? prudence? discretion?—may be scarce; their optimal combination scarcer still. Comparatively high earnings may be needed to draw (and keep) people with these characteristics into the jobs in which they are most useful. Highly unequal incomes also may be needed to allocate jobholders to tasks and to ration their time: If the most talented (or successful) manager, movie actor, mechanic, or editor does not get much more for his services than the least skilled, talented, or successful, who would buy the services of the latter? And how do we allocate or ration the talented or successful?