I look at each efficiency/equity trade-off on its merit. If a proposal offers high efficiency gains and potentially low social costs (small impact on the earnings and quality of life of the poor or an impact which is manageable in other ways e.g. through small adjustments in the tax structure), I support the proposal. If the proposal threatens to generate high social costs while the potential economic efficiency or employment gains are small (as is the case with much labour market deregulation once we have reached the high level of labour market freedom we now enjoy), I reject the proposal and look for an alternative way of achieving the same ends, even if it means higher taxes.

That’s not killjoy but sound public policy in my books.

Whatever the correct terminology, I take issue with your depiction of “dry economists”, who you say are everywhere in the profession. I am considered by many of my colleagues to be a somewhat wet economist^, yet for analytical purposes I often assume that a dollar is a dollar. This does not mean that I am “insensitive” to distributional impacts or would not want to much more vigorously enforce the Robin Hood principle were I King: it simply means that I think that distributional concerns are often better handled through mechanisms other than the ones I am examining; and/or that I believe that over a suite of efficiency-enhancing reforms, there will be little net effect on equity (as losers from one reform will win from others); and/or that I believe that existing welfare mechanisms are appropriate to deal with any losers that a reform I am recommending might generate; and/or that I feel that I canot effectively incorporate distributional considerations into an analysis (perhaps due to imperfect information), leaving dollar-is-a-dollar efficiency criteria as the only basis for making a recommendation; or - yes - that the government has effectively said that I (or the organisation I work for) should go out there and recommend efficiency-enhancing policies and leave distributional issues for it - the government - to deal with.

Now, I know I’m not saying anything here that you don’t already know about, but my concern is that lay people reading your stuff may not appreciate the reasons that economists like me sometimes “ignore” distributional concerns (actually, we are really assuming them away, rather than ignoring them), and thus see such economists as heartless bastards who are, indeed, “insensitive” to such concerns.

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* After substantial market testing, I found that the best appelation to get girls interested was to describe myself as “a fully reconstructed, gender sensitive, ecologically sustainable, anti-nuclear gay whale new age male”, but that was back in the 1980s: I’m not sure that such a marketing stategy would necessarily be successful in reducing barriers to entry to GenZ.

^ Or, if not wet, then at least enigmatic.

Maybe you’re just a killjoy?

My point is this: dry economists (and they are everywhere in the profession) believe it is legitimate to ignore distribution effects of reform (they say it is “a matter for politicians not us”). They also take the high ground - claiming that they are not making value judgments - when in fact they are interposing their values just like I am.

I like to distinguyish mytself from these economists - take explicit account of the incremental distribution effects of a proposed reform in the evaluation process and to consider alternative reforms which can achieve a more distribution-neutral outcome. This issue arises most starkly with labour market deregulation where often trade-offs are involved.

Yet I share with dry economists their belief in competitive product and financial markets.

So what am I? No rude remarks please.

While I think I know what you’re getting at, Fred, I’m not sure that your use of “social” and “economic” - as in your distinction between social and economic liberals - is one that would or should be widely accepted. In particular, you seem to be using “social” to refer to liberals who worry about distributive issues, in contrast to those with economic.
I would have thought that a social liberal was one who favoured little government intervention in the social realm, whereas an economic liberal was one who favoured little intervention in the economic realm.
Further, one can be worried about social phenomena without any concern for distribution. For instance, one might advocate subsidies for volunteerism so as to build social capital, without any particular concern as to whether the social capital thus built benefits mainly the well-off rather than the poorly-off. Likewise, one might advocate funding for counselling bodies to improve the quality of people’s relationships, again on its own merits - ie without any distributional concerns underpinning the policy. Equally, as I’m sure you recognise, one can be concerned about economic phenomena alone and be concerned about distribution.
It seems to me that terms like “social”, “economic” and “environmental” are best used to describe domains of activity, where distributive concerns can arise and/or be addressed in any of those domains. I would thus reject any attempt to suggest that distributive concerns are soley or especially a “social” matter.

PS: On another point, I should say that I do not know of any economist who thinks that GDP approximates aggregate utility. You’ve clearly been reading too much Gittins!

Libertarians like more freedom of choice per se. They are not necessarily good economists.

“Dry” economic liberals, who make up a good proportion of the profession, have more claims to be economists. They tend to focus only on GDP outcomes (which are taken to approximate aggregate utility). They are happy to endorse a prospective reform if winners are potentially able to compensate losers and still remain themselves better off. With winners and losers presumed to have similar marginal utilities, there is no need for actual compensation or some social investment strategy to neutralise distribution effects.

However social liberals start with the assumption that an extra dollar is worth more to a poor person than a rich person, so the distribution effects are important in their own right and need to be considered in the evaluation process even when there are aggregate benefits for GDP.