TNAG-0531-FCO40-626-Application-of-International-Labour-Convention-to-Hong-Kong-1975 — Page 139

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through no fault

of their own, have succeeded in moving up out of poverty. In a society like this, a popular feeling is that no one has to be poor unless one wants to.

Thus, even poverty falls neatly under the category of the freedom of choice. When these "nice" explanations fail, personal deficiencies like indolence and incompetence are invoked for which the poor alone are held responsible. 1

Perhaps, the right approach to the question of income support for the foor would still be through the avenue of compensatory justice. It should be proved that the poor are serving a useful function for society at large without just compensation or that the poor, by being poor, are causing some of the non-poor to enjoy a margin of income over and above the level that these non-poor can legitimately claim as just rewards for their qualifications and performances within the rules of the market. The function of the poor for society at large stems from the fact that society is stratified and that social stability is actually an inter- strata peace which requires some groups whom everyone can look down upon. 2 Income support up to a certain level of income is a payment for the role of

the poor for being looked down upon by everyone. From the realisation that they could have been as foor as those they look down upon, the non-poor derive a profound but unspecifiable satisfaction about how they have "made it". This psychic income of the non-poor is an unearned income, and like any other unearned income (for example, pure rent), has no legitimacy in a market system.

A part of the income of the non-poor is something that they would not have earned if opportunities for gains had not been diverted to them from the poor. To view the same thing from the other side, the poor are giving up a margin of income which would have been theirs if economic opportunities had been equal throughout the economy. This margin is called "co-efficient of discrimination".3 The preferential distribution of opportunities to the dominant, discriminating group. or the deprivation of the subordinate, discriminated group in terms of opportunities, is particularly acute when the two groups are racially or ethnically differentiated. However, the ingenuity of human society in setting some people apart fcr discrimination is apparently unlimited. If the skin colour is not available as a differentiating factor, bodily size, language, religion ΟΙ "culture" serves the purpose equally well. Myths and legends are also available.♦ Discrimination is evidently a subset of a more general social process which produces stereotypes among different groups. Discrimination naturally is counter to the liberal creed and the principles of free markets. It is an unfair cost of life imposed on the discriminated groups in order to produce a certain socio-economic differential in favour of the discriminators. This differential amounts to an explcitation without compensation.

One technical question arises at this point. Is the social security system the best institution by which compensatory justice for the poor can be implemented? In this case, compensatory justice may

include services in kind in addition to monetary outlay through public assistance. Some of these services like education and training may properly fall under the jurisdiction of other departments or machineries of the government. Even after the concept of compensatory justice is stretched as much as it can logically sustain, there may still remain a margin of poverty which cannot be remedied by compensation alone. For this part of poverty, different approaches are obviously called for. Nevertheless, it would be useful, first to ascertain the scope of applicability cf compensatory justice and then to take on the problems of remaining poverty on the basis of some other principles. In the world of human frailties where love and compassion are in scarce supply, attempts to calculate damages and to appeal for compensations may be more effective for attaining a higher degree of economic equality among people. Economists can

1 For a full discussion of issues involved here, see Joan Huber and William H. Form, Income and Ideology (New York: The Free Press, 1973).

2 For an experiment in the theory of poverty along this line, see Koji Taira, "Consumer Preferences, Poverty Norms and Extent of Poverty", Quarterly Review Cf Economics and Business, Vol. 9, No. 2 (July 1969), pp. 31-44.

3 Gary S. Becker, The Economics of Discrimination

Chicago Press, 1957).

relevant

• Japanese experience is particularly devos and Hiroshi Wagatsuma, Japan's Invisible Race University of California Press, 1966).

(Chicago: University of

in this respect. See George (Berkeley and Los Angeles;

E-1195-2F:5