Do the Rich Deserve to be Rich? — Basic Income Ethics

There are some relatively wealthy people who’ve received good wages, or who owned and ran a successful business, who seem to think that because they’ve done well in a market economy — because the market has rewarded them handsomely for their work — that must mean that they clearly deserve the income and wealth that they now enjoy.

In some cases, perhaps they do. But in some cases, perhaps they don’t, because that’s NOT how market economies function.

Now don’t get me wrong. Few, if any, markets are perfect, but market forces have been very important to the development of today’s advanced, wealthy societies, which in most cases meet our needs and provide us with a decent supply of luxuries.

But markets don’t assess people for how much they deserve and reward them accordingly. And to believe that they do would be a total misunderstanding of how the market system operates.

When markets set prices and wages, they simply set them so as to try to avoid shortages and surpluses. Buyers compete with one another to secure supplies and sellers compete with one another to secure sales. Buyers try to get the best deal they can and sellers try to maximise their profits. And these forces are what power the price mechanism.