Justice, meritocracy and the problem of economic entitlements in America’s contemporary societies

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between justice, the question of who is entitled to economic rights, and the role played by the new economic order that followed the Second World War in America in shaping the structure of public institutions. It highlights that the abstract philosophical discussion around fairness and the design of political institutions emerges at the end of the 20th century as a result of the collapse of the positivist conception regarding who was entitled to enjoy economic privileges linked to citizenship, a conception that contemplated the political endowment of economic privileges on a professional class that was to conform an elite with the task to dynamize each local economy. The disappearance of this consensus has given way to today’s anarchic, and deeply unfair, “gig” economy, an economy that at times resembles very much the scenario the world saw before the war.