On Fairness

18 Feb 2011 08:54 AM

Think Tank Policy Exchange has published a major new research note on fairness by Andrew Lilico.

Many current policy debates revolve around "fairness" - from whether it is fair to leave government debts for our children to pay, to whether it is fair for private equity managers to pay lower rates of tax than their cleaners, to whether it is fair for a child's life chances to be largely set by the time she reaches school.

However, Lilico argues that debates are often much too vague about what "fairness" actually means.

To introduce some clarity, Lilico proposes a simple idea: that being "fair" is a form of being "proportionate", with particular application to equality and desert. He argues that it should be seen as a "technical" concept - in other words, as something that might, in principle, be measured.

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