Equality, ugliness and preferences

Jim's called it right. The anti-egalitarian attack on Brad De Long is just silly.  There are two further points they are missing:
1. Justice is not a matter of preferences. Imagine a ruthless dictatorship which had brainwashed its subjects. No-one would then envy the Great Leader his wealth and power. But we would all agree that this society was unjust. Absence of envy, then, is no evidence of justice. Nor is envy evidence of injustice. I envy Martin Simpson's talent for playing the guitar. But there's no injustice at all here.
2. What troubles many of us egalitarians is the origin of inequalities, not merely their existence. And this is where Jane Galt's analogy with beauty collapses. No-one worries about inequalities of beauty (though in the UK we do offer free plastic surgery to the extremely ugly) because they arose from a fair process - nature. And nature rarely deals anyone a full house. Sure, Tim might be shorter and less pulchritudinous than me. But he more than compensates for it in extra charm. No problem.
However, we can't be sure that inequalities of wealth are so just. Some of them have arisen from historic thefts, rent-seeking, exploitation of monopolies, capturing the state and suchlike. When Greg Mankiw says:

I see [the rich] as some combination of more talented, hard-working, and lucky than average

I just marvel at how so intelligent a man can be so naive.

Comments

[Laurent GUERBY]

Any study of interest on wealth/incone of the sons/daughters of rich people and the share of such "born" rich amongst the current rich?

[Jim]

Another reason not to envy the beautiful is that many of them are deeply insecure because they fear their partners just love them for their looks. Not a problem I'll ever have.

[tom s.]

Spot on. I'm just glad I'm a delta, not one of those alphas. They have to work so hard.

[John Thacker]

No-one worries about inequalities of beauty (though in the UK we do offer free plastic surgery to the extremely ugly) because they arose from a fair process - nature.

A fair process, eh? Beauty does tend to be inherited, you know. Is inheriting wealth an equally "fair process?" (Sure, not everyone is as beautiful as their parents, but kids are also not necessarily as wealthy as their parents.)

[John Thacker]

"And nature rarely deals anyone a full house."

And yet, beauty, health, and wealth are all correlated, and all inherited. And the taller and more beautiful have obvious advantages in life, and are wealthier and more succesful because of it, as repeated studies show. Are we punishing the sons for the sins of the fathers here? Or do you actually prefer those who have inherited their wealth to those who have made their own, inherently distrusting how wealth is accumulated? (As an aside, lists of the wealthiest, such as the Forbes 400, are dominated more by people who worked their way up and less by old money and inheritance than ever. Good thing or bad, in your mind?)

[dearieme]

The reason that you're so much richer than almost everyone in the third world is that you inherited citizenship of a country in the first world. Do you plan to renounce it?

[luis_enrique]

How naive is Mankiw? You can pack a lot in to that word "lucky"

[Ellers Ellison "Ellsberg" McWilson]

I see [the rich] as some combination of more talented, hard-working, and lucky than average

Knowing several rich people who were poor, and vice vera, I would say with some confidence that this is entirely accurate. Our capitalist system simply does not reward purposeless nepotism.

Of course wealth confers some advantage; it didn't, it wouldn't be wealth and people wouldn't want it. And above a certain level, wealth is usually self-sustaining across generations. But you're talking about some .1% of the population there, and even a fair number of them manage to destroy that wealth.