Desert

The idea that just economic institutions should give people what they deserve can be appealed to as a way of justifying unequal rewards or as a way of limiting them. Claims about desert that could play these roles would be pure desert claims: that treating people in a certain way is justified simply by certain facts about what they are like or have done (where the qualifier “simply” excludes claims of need, and ideas of entitlement or legitimate expectations that presuppose particular institutions). Some pure desert claims are valid, such as claims about the appropriateness of moral praise, blame, and other evaluative attitudes. But economic rewards cannot be justified in this way. Claims to special reward based on moral merit, effort, ability, and marginal productivity, insofar as they are valid, are not desert claims in the relevant sense.