Financialization and Distributive Justice

Abstract

Wealth inequalities throughout Europe and the share of income and wealth of the upper percentiles of the most wealthy have been increasing the last couple of decades. This trend has been accompanied by a growing concern within the academic, political and societal debate, for the economic and societal consequences. A process that has increasingly gained attention in the academic and political debate as having a significant influence on the growing inequalities and concentration of wealth is the process of financialization. The research question or aim of this thesis has been to answer the question whether states have a moral urgency to fight this process of financialization. As theories of distributive justice can give moral guidance as to whether certain distributive patterns inherent to an economic framework are justifiable, to answer the research question, the effects of financialization were evaluated with different theories of distributive justice. This evaluation showed that financialization violates principles of distributive justice for all theories discussed. Furthermore, the thesis shows that for fighting financialization, states unavoidably have to cooperate on a supranational level. The thesis discusses the arguments for and against this form of cooperation and shows that the moral urgency for states to fight financialization, although on a supranational level, remains.