Rawls's Difference Principle as Compensation for Social Immobility

Outside academia, John Rawls's theory of justice—justice as fairness—has had little impact. This article is part of a broader project to rectify this. I offer a distinctive, second‐best, argument for Rawls's difference principle. The difference principle requires that inequalities in income and wealth are justified only if they benefit society's least‐advantaged citizens. My paper argues that, slightly‐modified, the difference principle is an excellent principle of redress in light of the UK's continued failure to give all citizens fair career chances. I show how we might realize the difference principle at the level of policy through tax rate reductions or negative tax rates. I conclude that if you don't want to accept the second‐best argument for the difference principle you must get serious about giving all citizens fair career chances. As I suggest, this task is extremely difficult.     

The Blameworthiness of Health and Safety Rule Violations*

Man‐made disasters usually lead to the tightening of safety regulations, because rule breaking is seen as a major cause of them. This reaction is based on the assumptions that the safety rules are good and that the rule‐breakers are wrong. The reasons the personnel of a coke factory gave for breaking rules raise doubt about the tenability of these assumptions. It is unlikely that this result would have been achieved on the basis of a disaster evaluation, or high‐reliability theory. In both approaches, knowledge of the consequences of human conduct hinders an unprejudiced judgement about where the blame for rule breaking lies.