Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Rawls vs Nozick: A Tie

In a previous post, I suggested that this presidential election was in part about competing views concerning "redistributive justice." Here are some relevant polling results on the matter:
In a conversation with "Joe the plumber" about his tax plan, Obama said "when you spread the wealth around it's good for everybody."

Americans are evenly divided on the idea: 45 percent think it is a good idea and 46 percent a bad idea to use some of the money government collects in taxes to "spread the wealth" to others who are less well off. Most Democrats think spreading the wealth is a good idea (66 percent) and most Republicans think it is a bad idea (72 percent).