| Worker's share | Non-worker's share | Total social product | Worker's pay | Non-worker's pay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
$10,000 |
$5,000 |
$5,000 |
||
$20,000 |
$13,333 |
$6,667 |
||
$21,000 |
$15,750 |
$5,250 |
||
$25,000 |
$22,500 |
$2,500 |
||
$30,000 |
$29,700 |
$300 |
Note that as the worker's share increases, s/he works harder and harder, producing more and more. There's an especially big jump between the first row (representing completely equal shares) and the second row (where the worker is given a substantial incentive increase). In the first row, no one has any incentive to work at all, since everybody gets an equal share, but qualifying for a greater proportion of the social product provides an incentive for the worker to work harder.
However, there is a limit to how hard the worker can work and how much s/he can produce; s/he's only human, after all. So I've supposed that s/he can produce no more than $30,000 worth of goods, no matter how much incentive s/he has.
The consequence, as the table shows, is that the increasingly unequal shares make the non-worker's pay go up initially, as the non-worker benefits from the increase in the worker's efforts, but then goes down at higher levels of inequality as the worker's share eats up more of the social product than the increase in the total social product is worth. So according to Rawls's difference principle, we would select a 2-1 ratio of inequality as the most just.
This all assumes that there are no increases in productivity, that there is only one worker and one non-worker, that these are the only possible social arrangements, etc.
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