Should distributive justice be conceived in terms of welfare, resources, or something else? If the latter, what and why?

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Should distributive justice be conceived in terms of welfare, resources, or something else? If the latter, what and why?


Amartya Sen in Equality of What? states that moral philosophy has offered numerous answers to the question of ‘equality of what?’. Frankfurt in Equality as a Moral Ideal argues that economic equality is not of a high moral importance as it is often argued to be, the point is that everyone has ‘enough’ rather than everyone having ‘the same.’ Then he continues, however, adding even though it is not a ‘morally compelling social ideal’ nevertheless equality is desirable. Dworkin defines equality as a ‘envy-free’ distribution of resources where the Pareto optimality principle suggests that no individual is willing to change his endowment. Meanwhile Anderson argues that current egalitarian thought focuses on compensating people for ‘brute’ luck for the sake of equality too much that it leaves out egalitarianism’s political aims. ...