Implementing Post-Pandemic Economic Parity: A Potential Restoration Through Distributive Justice
Authors: Madhukumar Aswathy 
Published: March 2024

This paper explores the economic disparities created and augmented by the Pandemic and implores the state to adopt redistribution schemes based on the philosophy of distributive justice. The pandemic created and augmented gaping class inequalities, by pushing some into unemployment and poverty, while catalysing others’ prosperity. This may or may not have involved a fault element on the part of those that profited from the pandemic, which is to say, while some may have actively exploited the situation to increase their profits at the cost of general interests, others may have simply gained profits while retaining ethical practices in their conduct of business.

This Paper argues that, irrespective of the fault element, States must implement a special financial scheme that necessitates companies that gained enormous profits from the pandemic to contribute towards assisting those who were financially crushed by the pandemic. The paper will build this on the philosophy of distributive justice, examining the ‘difference principle’ as well as ‘luck and responsibility egalitarianism’. Simply put, this means that States must enforce a system that neutralizes the ‘luck’ element that the pandemic induced in the society, through a financial scheme best suited for its situation. This may be achieved through levying a special tax for a period of time on particular business entities and/or by requiring companies to include a special corporate social responsibility project in line with the quantum of additional profits owing to the pandemic.

Arguably, corporate houses that exploited the pandemic must not be placed at par with those that merely happened to profit from it (say, for instance, a pharmaceutical company that may have manipulated the drug market to increase prices and limit supply of an important drug, as opposed to a food/essentials delivery chain that naturally saw an increase in the number of consumers ordering deliveries online). But the obligation to carve out a part of their profits for social redistribution is not founded on whether they are at fault or not. Any fault may, of course, be used as a basis for levying a higher penalty or other legal measure, apart and distinct from the obligation that this paper builds on.

The scheme that is proposed by the Paper is not to penalize but is based on the philosophy of distributive justice and thus does not require that the company was ever in violation of laws, but merely that the pandemic that devastated most people happened to be a profitable enterprise for others in contrast. It is in the State’s interests to negate the widened gap of economic disparities thus created, and this justifies that the Government would require such corporate houses to carve out a fraction of their fortunes for those who suffered severely. The Paper builds primarily on the philosophical foundations of distributive justice, urging its practical implementation in post-pandemic the economy. States must adopt creative measures to restructure patterns of privileges created or amplified by such unprecedented (at least in recent history) circumstances, as the pandemic.