(excerpted from Instructor’s Manual Test Bank to accompany Samuel Bowles and Richard Edwards, Understanding Capitalism. Competition, Command, and Change in the U.S. Economy, second edition, by Mehrene Larudee).

Imagine that you will fall asleep tonight and wake up tomorrow in a new society. Until you wake up you will know nothing about who you will be, except that you will have some set of characteristics that will determine your income level. YOU are in charge of deciding how each person’s characteristics should affect their income level--even though you have no power to decide who will have which characteristics. There will be exactly two groups: the well off and the less well off. What do you think the ratio of their incomes should be? (For example, if you think the well off should receive twice what the less well off get, write "2.")

income of a person in the well-off group
______________________________________ = ___________

income of a person in the less well-off group

Now indicate how important the following should be in determining who should be in which group (give each of the characteristics which you think should determine how well off a person is a percentage, with the total adding up to 100%. You may give 100% to a single characteristic if you want.

_____% how much property the person owns.

_____% the person’s characteristics at birth (e.g. aristocracy, caste, race, gender)

_____% the person’s need for the goods

_____% how much or how hard the person has worked (time or effort)

_____% luck