The Utopia
Survey
This is part of your homework
assignment for section 1. We had hoped to be able to collect
some of the results online but at the moment that's not
possible. So you'll have to write down your answers and hand
them in (you can print this out and use it as a form if you
like).
(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).
Note:
average responses (69 respondents) are in red.
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 = ____2.5______
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.
_13_%
how much property the person owns.
__6
_% the person's characteristics at birth (e.g.
aristocracy, caste, race, gender)
__20
_% the person's need for the goods
_ 51__%
how much or how hard the person has worked (time or effort)
_ 10__%
luck
__100____
Total (check to see that your entries add up to 100%)