A Life WorthwhileThe dignity that comes with a job is more important than the salary.
Magnus Henrekson
17 Jun 2022
On the question of economic justice, political debate tends to swing between two poles. The Left wants to reduce economic differences based on the notion of distributive justice, while the Right emphasizes social mobility based on equality of opportunity. A plumber today might not be just an ordinary employee, but actually, with the right career moves, the boss of a plumbing company. Does the plumber, however—or for that matter the builder, elderly care worker, or shelf-stacker—need to move into a higher social class for their job to be seen as worthwhile? Theirs is work that needs to be done and that is valuable to us all.
We should move our focus from today’s one-sided emphasis on redistributive justice versus social mobility. Instead, we should talk about contributive justice—that is, the individual’s right to contribute to the common good based on their skills and abilities. For this to happen, our perception of what constitutes a contribution must change. Any salaried job that adheres to national workplace norms should be regarded as valuable and worthwhile.
To grasp the reasoning behind this statement, a shift is required. Let me illustrate what I mean by taking a closer look at the challenges facing my own native country Sweden.
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Education and statusOf course, continued prosperity demands high-quality tertiary education. But this is not what our education looks like today. Bloated university admissions, for which a large proportion of the courses are of low quality, are hardly the solution. In addition, most jobs do not require extensive education or training. The 20 most common occupations among women cover almost half of all female employees; in less than one-in-five of these jobs is higher education required. For the equivalent occupations among men, only one-in-four requires tertiary study.
Nor is it obvious that things will be different in the future. Tasks that must be performed on site, such as social care, healthcare, and maintaining the physical environment, are difficult to automate and cannot be moved to low-cost countries. The integration of IT into more and more jobs and a general knowledge of IT—which virtually all Swedish young people have already—means that many future jobs will not require extensive education. Often you will be able to learn these jobs quickly, so long as you have the right character traits, such as self-discipline, social skills, motivation, a good work ethic, perseverance, reliability, and emotional stability.
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It is common for politicians on the Left to point to differences in outcomes and label them as “unfair”—something that needs to be fixed. This has an undesirable side-effect: an emphasis on economic outcomes as the basis for equality actually undermines the notion that everyone has equal value. Politicians on the Right, on the other hand, emphasize the importance of mobility between the classes—even if you start out further down the status hierarchy, you should be able to raise your status through hard work and self-improvement. Sweden’s Moderates, for example, talk about creating a society where people are “on the move.”
While the public debate goes on, reality creeps in in the form of growing social exclusion. Most jobs do not require credentials in the form of demanding university diplomas, but there is still a shortage of labor.
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This finding brings us to the concept of contributive justice, introduced by the American philosopher Michael J. Sandel in his book The Tyranny of Merit. This entails all people having the opportunity to contribute to society through productive work, which in turn confers social recognition and respect by producing what other people need and value.
Ronald Reagan understood the value of contributive justice. In his inaugural speech in January 1981, he highlighted everyday “heroes”:
Our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we are sick—professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truck drivers. They are, in short, “We the people,” this breed called Americans.
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Source:
https://quillette.com/2022/06/17/a-life-worthwhile/
