Fergus O'Rourke wrote:

Even if all could agree that fairness was crucial, and then on what
fairness actually requires (see a discussion on that by an Irish economist
he http://short.ie/jol) , it seems beyond argument that an economic
recovery plan that was designed to be effective would not necessarily also
be fair. ( I have been considering this here http://short.ie/fair in an
Irish context, but it is relevant in every country).

By "effective", I mean in terms of restoring full, or nearly full
employment.

For myself, my instinct is to prefer a plan that works as quickly as
possible, but most people I have consulted (informally) appear to be
willing to wait much longer as long as it's fair.

This surprised me, and I decided to poll more formally he
http://short.ie/fairp

Participate if you want; the result will be of general interest, I think.

On the other hand, if you think that the whole idea is misconceived or
worse, please feel free to share your opinion here.

You contrast fairness with effectiveness, which you define
as minimizing unemployment.
It is not at all clear what you mean by "fair" in this case,
since unemployment is presumably unfair to the unemployed person.

I didn't find the article you cited by Jim O'Leary particularly lucid;
having implied he was going to define fairness at the beginning
he seemed to have abandoned the idea by the end,
and decided that "transfer", by which I assume he means tax,
is intrinsically bad.



--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland