Publisher
University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress)
Reference13 articles.
1. Perhaps the closest philosophical progenitor is Robert Goodin’s Reasons for Welfare (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), although Heath devotes more attention to the organization and operation of government. That said, Heath’s book has recently acquired new company. See Adrian Vermeule & Cass Sunstein, Law and Leviathan: Redeeming the Administrative State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022).
2. As no doubt many have realized over the last three years, the mantra to ‘follow the science!’ often papers over quite substantial – and contested – normative commitments. See Danny Priel, ‘COVID–19: Cost-Benefit Analysis and Politics’ (2020) 57 Osgoode Hall LJ 537 (noting that cost-benefit analysis, particularly in contexts of great uncertainty, inevitably gives way to ‘political’ considerations).
3. ‘Public Social Spending as a Share of GDP, 1880–2016,’ online: Our World in Data
4. Ibid; ‘Central Government Expenditure as Share of GDP, 1972 to 2020,’ online: Our World in Data ‘Government Spending vs GDP per Capita, 2011,’ online: Our World in Data
5. Guido Calabresi, ‘The Pointlessness of Pareto: Carrying Coase Further’ (1991) 100 Yale LJ 1211. Calabresi, unsurprisingly, argues that ‘distributional’ questions – that is, deciding between winners and losers – are ‘inevitable’ (at 1227). One need not go as far as Calabresi in insisting that we are always already at the Pareto frontier to worry that a prevalence of distributional concerns will make it harder to defend an ideal of executive branch neutrality.