COWLES FOUNDATION FOR RESEARCH IN
ECONOMICS Box 208281
COWLES FOUNDATION DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 1326 What We Owe Our Children, They Their Children, ... John E. Roemer and Roberto Veneziani September 2001 Egalitarian theorists, since Rawls, have in the main advocated equalizing some objective measure of individual well-being, such as primary goods, functioning, or resources, rather than subjective welfare. This discussion, however, has assumed, implicitly, a static environment. By analyzing a society that survives for many generations, we demonstrate that equality of opportunity for some objective condition is incompatible with human development over time. We argue that this incompatibility can be resolved by equalizing opportunities for welfare. Thus, ‘subjectivism’ seems necessary if we are to hope for a society which can both equalize opportunities and support the development of human capacity over time. JEL Classifications: C61, D63, D9, H21 Keywords: Justice, development, dynamic programming, optimal taxation |
