Critical Notice: Macrojustice As A Research Programme

In this book, the French economist and philosopher Serge-Christophe Kolm discusses the problem of what he calls “macrojustice†, which “concerns the most general rules of society and their application to the distribution of the benefits from the main resources†(MJ 1). He reminds his readers that the first and most important challenge for any policy analysis is the spelling out of its ethical foundations. On that basis, he argues in favour of what is nothing less than a paradigm shift in the theory of optimal income taxation, rejecting the whole traditional approach in public economics as being welfarist and too strongly focused on the problem of labour market distortions. As an alternative, he proposes an approach based on the ideal of equal freedom, and works out a specific tax proposal: equal-labour income equalization (or ELIE). He claims that ELIE is a general and operational solution for the organization of the distribution branch of taxation and public expenditure policy that does not create labour market distortions.