In philosophy, economics, and political science, the common good (also commonwealth, common weal or general welfare) is a term of art, referring to either what is shared and beneficial for all or most members of a given community, or alternatively, what is achieved by citizenship, collective action, and active participation in the realm of politics and public service.
 The concept of the common good differs significantly among philosophical doctrines.
 Early conceptions of the common good were set out by Ancient Greek philosophers, including Aristotle and Plato.
 One understanding of the common good rooted in Aristotle's philosophy remains in common usage today, referring to what one contemporary scholar calls the "good proper to, and attainable only by, the community, yet individually shared by its members."
 The concept of common good developed through the work of political theorists, moral philosophers, and public economists, including Thomas Aquinas, Niccolò Machiavelli, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, James Madison, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, John Rawls, and many other thinkers.
 In contemporary economic theory, "a" common good is any good which is rivalrous yet non-excludable, while "the" common good, by contrast, arises in the subfield of welfare economics and refers to the outcome of a social welfare function.
 Such a social welfare function, in turn, would be rooted in a moral theory of the good (such as utilitarianism).
 Social choice theory aims to understand processes by which the common good may or may not be realized in societies through the study of collective decision rules.
 And public choice theory applies microeconomic methodology to the study of political science in order to explain how private interests affect political activities and outcomes.
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is a partly autobiographical book written by John Perkins published in 2004.
 It provides Perkins' account of his career with engineering consulting firm Chas.
 T. Main in Boston.
 According to Perkins, his role at Main was to convince leaders of underdeveloped countries to accept substantial development loans for large construction and engineering projects that would primarily help the richest families and local elites, rather than the poor, while making sure that these projects were contracted to U.S. companies.
 Later these loans would give the U.S. political influence and access to natural resources for U.S. companies.
 He refers to this as an "economic hit man."
 Although he states that throughout his career he has always worked for private companies, and suggests a system of corporatocracy and greed, rather than a single conspiracy, he claims the involvement of the National Security Agency (NSA), with whom he had interviewed for a job before joining Main.
 According to the author, this interview effectively constituted an independent screening which led to his subsequent hiring as an economic hit man by Einar Greve, a vice president of the firm (and alleged NSA liaison).
John Bordley Rawls ( ; February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American moral and political philosopher in the liberal tradition.
 He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard University and the Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Oxford.
 Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1999, the latter presented by President Bill Clinton, in recognition of how Rawls's work "helped a whole generation of learned Americans revive their faith in democracy itself."
A Theory of Justice is a work of political philosophy and ethics by John Rawls, in which the author attempts to solve the problem of distributive justice (the socially just distribution of goods in a society) by utilising a variant of the familiar device of the social contract.
 The resultant theory is known as "Justice as Fairness", from which Rawls derives his two principles of justice.
 Together, they dictate that society should be structured so that the greatest possible amount of liberty is given to its members, limited only by the notion that the liberty of any one member shall not infringe upon that of any other member.
 Secondly, inequalities either social or economic are only to be allowed if the worst off will be better off than they might be under an equal distribution.
 Finally, if there is such a beneficial inequality, this inequality should not make it harder for those without resources to occupy positions of power, for instance public office.
Michael J. Sandel ( ; born March 5, 1953) is an American political philosopher and a political philosophy professor at Harvard University.
 His course “Justice” is the first Harvard course to be made freely available online and on television.
 It has been viewed by tens of millions of people around the world, including in China, where Sandel was named the “most influential foreign figure of the year.”
 (China Newsweek).
 He is also known for his critique of John Rawls' "A Theory of Justice" in his first book, "Liberalism and the Limits of Justice" (1982).
 He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002.
A Theory of Justice: The Musical is a 2013 musical by Eylon Aslan-Levy, Ramin Sabi, Tommy Peto and Toby Huelin.
 Billed as "an all-singing, all-dancing romp through 2,500 years of political philosophy", the musical tells a fictionalised account of the writing of American political philosopher John Rawls's classic philosophical treatise, "A Theory of Justice" (1971).
 It premièred in Oxford's Keble O'Reilly Theatre in January 2013 and was revived for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2013.
The Methods of Ethics is a book on ethics first published in 1874 by the English philosopher Henry Sidgwick.
 The "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy" indicates that "The Methods of Ethics" "in many ways marked the culmination of the classical utilitarian tradition."
 Noted moral and political philosopher John Rawls, writing in the Forward to the Hackett reprint of the 7th edition,
The "veil of ignorance" is a method of determining the morality of political issues proposed in 1971 by American philosopher John Rawls in his "original position" political philosophy.
 It is based upon the following thought experiment: people making political decisions imagine that they know nothing about the particular talents, abilities, tastes, social class, and positions they will have within a social order.
 When such parties are selecting the principles for distribution of rights, positions, and resources in the society in which they will live, this "veil of ignorance" prevents them from knowing who will receive a given distribution of rights, positions, and resources in that society.
 For example, for a proposed society in which 50% of the population is kept in slavery, it follows that on entering the new society there is a 50% likelihood that the participant would be a slave.
 The idea is that parties subject to the veil of ignorance will make choices based upon moral considerations, since they will not be able to make choices based on their own self- or class-interest.
John Perkins Ralls, Sr. (January 1, 1822 – November 22, 1904) was a physician and representative from the state of Alabama to the Congress of the Confederate States during the American Civil War, not to be confused with John Rawls the 20th-century American philosopher.
Political Liberalism is a 1993 book by John Rawls, an update to his earlier "A Theory of Justice" (1971).
 In it, he attempts to show that his theory of justice is not a "comprehensive conception of the good" but is instead compatible with a liberal conception of the role of justice, namely, that government should be neutral between competing conceptions of the good.
 Rawls tries to show that his two principles of justice, properly understood, form a "theory of the right" (as opposed to a theory of the good) which would be supported by all reasonable individuals, even under conditions of reasonable pluralism.
 The mechanism by which he demonstrates this is called "overlapping consensus".
 Here he also develops his idea of public reason.

Question: John Perkins Ralls, an Alabama representative, and John Rawls, a political philosopher, died 98 years apart in what month?
Answer: November