What's wrong with equality of well-being?

What exactly is the problem with welfare egalitarianism? I ask because my claim that married people should be taxed more than singletons because they are happier has been called silly and sinister.
I don't see this. First, this claim is the same as the claim that single people should be taxed less, to compensate for their greater unhappiness. Though logically identical, I suspect this latter view would attract less opprobrium.
What's more, many people do pay heed to welfare egalitarianism. If you have a friend or child who is unhappier than your other friends or children, you'll pay them more attention - you'll try to raise their well-being to that of your other children or friends.
Indeed, one popular (and partly plausible) defence of income inequality appeals to welfare egalitarianism - the claim that the rich work harder or have saved more than the poor, and so have suffered more disutility.
This intuitive appeal of welfare egalitarianism rests upon a sensible principle - that what matters about people, to a large extent, is their well-being. Why else do we greet them with the question: "how are you?"
Put it this way. Most people in the world own fewer economics books than I do. But no-one cares about this inequality, because a lack of economics books is not associated with low well-being. But we do care that millions live on a dollar a day, because this is associated with low well-being. If it could be showed that such people were in fact very happy, demands to help them would weaken.
Most inequalities - of resources or opportunities or whatever - trouble people (insofar as they do) largely because they imply inequalities of well-being. In this sense, the appeal of other forms of egalitarianism derives from the strength of welfare egalitarianism.
All this said, there are big problems with the concept. Pushed to an extreme, it denies any role for individual responsibility - though whether this matters depends largely upon whether freewill exists, which is an open question. Also, in its simplest form, welfare egalitarianism would give too much to people with affluenza and too little to happy slaves.
However, it's not obvious that these problems make welfare egalitarianism silly or sinister. I suspect it's no less unattractive, in principle, than equality of resources or opportunity.
Instead, the biggest problem with welfare egalitarianism is the same as bedevils any substantive equality - the question of whether state-imposed patterned distributions are attractive at all. 
More: here are two arguments (pdfs) for equality from Thomas Christiano and Carols Rosenkrantz. Many more papers on equality are here.

Comments

[dearieme]

"the question of whether state-imposed patterned distributions are attractive at all": indeed. A state that is powerful enough to achieve its desired "patterned distributions" is probably too strong for the good of the populace.

[Richard]

Chris, the cases you point to could just as well be motivated by prioritism as egalitarianism. See:
http://pixnaps.blogspot.com/2005/04/utility-equality-and-priority.html

(I'm inclined to think the leveling-down objection establishes the repugnance of equality as a fundamental ideal. But at least a rough equality of resources may have instrumental value, towards maximizing general welfare.)

[davetheslave]

What about all the emphasis you have previously put on incentives? The mechanisms of welfare egalitarianism would clearly act as a disincentive to the "beneficial" course of action.

With regards to the specific case of marriage, you state in your previous post that "If marriage makes people happier, the only incentive people need is the knowledge that it does so". I don't believe this to be true. Short-term financial considerations often trump long-term happiness ones: look at working hours for example.

[Mike Baldwin]

If the state is to meddle at all, which it shouldn't the only consideration should be to encourage the life choice that improves the quality of the next generation and that is marriage.

[Katie]

Except, perhaps, people don't equate well-being with well-being. I was thinking of this while reading a new yorker piece about people with long commutes thinking they are adequately compensated by the bigger house they can afford for living further away. They trade things which are worth more to them (fun, socialising, sleeping) in exchange for things that, ultimately, are worth less. So maybe it's a culture thing too.

[Peter Risdon]

As the "sinister" critic of your earlier piece, I'll reply more substantively on my own blog. But in memory of Kurt Vonnegut Jr, whose death was announced today, I'll point out that I'm not the first person to think there are problems with welfare egalitarianism. here's a Vonnegut short story called Harrison Bergeron, from 1961. It's strangely relevant...

http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html

[Steve]

Does it help any to know that free will does not exist and that it is only an illusion?

[Mark Wadsworth]

Journalist to Lemmy "What do you do when you're miserable?"

Lemmy (rock's second greatest thinker after Keith Richards) "Nothing - I enjoy being miserable".

[Peter Risdon]

For what it's worth:

http://freebornjohn.blogspot.com/2007/04/road-to-hell.html

[Kevin Carson]

I tend to be an absolutist on the idea that we own our labor products. So I'm concerned with wealth disparity not so much on welfare grounds, as on the grounds that large concentrations of wealth were acquired in the first place in ways that violate reciprocal justice. It would be better to attack inequality from the front end, by eliminating the forms of privilege that make it possible to acquire wealth by means other than personal effort. Instead of breaking the link between income and moral entitlement, let's make it stronger.

[GNZ]

Money issues tend to cause more harm to married couples I think. So on a marginal basis you probably cause mroe harm by causing families to be marginaly poorer than if you cause singles to be marginally poorer.

Anyway maybe welfare egalitarianism is a little close to home for egalitarians. Ie that you can say "I could live on half the money I do now and be ok" - is easy enough to say. but to say "I could be half as 'OK' as I am now and that would be alright" requires a bit mroe moral fortitude.