Ranking alternative distributions of wealth

[A]re there not economists who, not content with exaggerating the applicability of laissez-faire, laissez-passer to industry, even extend it to the completely extraneous question of property? (Léon Walras, [1874] 1954, p. 257) The arguments in Chapters 4 and 5 imply that the distribution of wealth in a society will change if there is a change in any one of five factors, namely the distribution of earned income, age structure, the propensity to save, bequest behaviour, or the rate of return on wealth. If one or more of these changes takes place, how can we determine whether the old or the new distribution of wealth should be given the higher ranking? It might appear that one could simply select a value of some measure of inequality, which in the case of the Gini coefficient would be nearer to zero the more egalitarian one’s views, and rank alternative distributions of wealth according to how closely they approximate to that value. However, there are two fundamental problems associated with this approach, a measurement problem and a distributive justice problem, neither of which can be resolved without reference to ethical values.