Review Essay: Exclusion, Fragmentation, and Theft: A Survey and Synthesis of Moral Approaches to Economic Inequality

Abstract

This review of economic and theological literature explores three models of inequality: exclusion, fragmentation, and theft. By differentiating three types of injustice in inequality, and by connecting those accounts to specific economic factors of the problem, we can name the problem at different “places” in the society more precisely. We are able to see that a significant part of the problem of inequality is not a matter of the very poor or the very rich. Finally, by looking at these different areas through the lens of the market’s “moral ecology,” we are able to name – with increasing precision – the responsibilities of justice that must be undertaken to build a genuinely human and grace-filled economy. That economy may not give everyone everything that they want, but it will do a better job at giving people what they deserve, and just as importantly, binding people closer together in solidarity in pursuit of common goods.