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  • SayerWelfare_Moral_Economy

    Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Ethics and Social Welfare on 15/09/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17496535.2017.1377273

    Accepted author manuscript, 475 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Welfare and moral economy

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>1/01/2018
<mark>Journal</mark>Ethics and Social Welfare
Issue number1
Volume12
Number of pages14
Pages (from-to)20-33
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date15/09/17
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

The paper offers a wide-angle view of ethics and welfare through the lens of ‘moral economy’. It examines economic activities in relation to a view of welfare as well-being, and to ethics in terms of economic justice. Rather than draw upon abstract ideal theories such as Rawlsian or Capabilities approaches, it calls for an evaluation of actually existing sources of harm and benefit in neoliberal capitalism. It argues that we need to look behind economic outcomes in terms of how much money different people have, examine their economic relations to others, and evaluate the justifications of these relations and their associated rights and practices. It distinguishes three sources of income – earned income, transfers, and unearned income, and argues that the last of these has no functional or ethical justification but has major implications for welfare. It then comments on the policy implications of the argument, including brief comments on asset-based welfare and universal basic income policies, and concludes.

Bibliographic note

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Ethics and Social Welfare on 15/09/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17496535.2017.1377273