PHIL103: Moral and Political Philosophy

When he wasn't stealing test booklets and passing them on to KDCP, the principal in the elite Plano school district was dedicated to his main job: making sure students in his building receive an education qualifying them to do college-level work. Over at the College Board, the company's CEO leads a complementary effort: producing tests to measure the quality of that preparation and consequently determine students' scholastic aptitude. The principal, in other words, is paid to make sure high schoolers get an excellent education, and the CEO is paid to measure how excellent (or not) the education is.

Just from the job descriptions, who should get the higher salary? It's tempting to say the principal. Doesn't educating children have to be more important than measuring how well they're educated? Wouldn't we all rather be well educated and not know it than poorly educated and painfully aware of the fact?

Regardless, what's striking about the salary that each of these two actually receives isn't who gets more; it's how much. The difference is almost ten times: $87,000 for the principal versus the CEO's $830,000. Within the doctrine of utilitarianism, can such a divergence be justified?

Yes, but only if we can show that this particular salary structure brings about the greatest good, the highest level of happiness for everyone considered as a collective. It may be, for example, that objectively measuring student ability, even though it's less important than instilling ability, is also much harder. In that case, a dramatically higher salary may be necessary in order to lure high-quality measuring talent. From there, it's not difficult to fill out a utilitarian justification for the pay divergence. It could be that inaccurate testing would cause large amounts of unhappiness: students who worked hard for years would be frustrated when they were bettered by slackers who really didn't know much but managed to score well on a test.

To broaden the point, if tremendous disparities in salary end up making people happier, then the disparities are ethical. Period. If they don't, however, then they can no longer be defended. This differs from what a libertarian rights theorist might say here. For a libertarian – someone who believes individuals have an undeniable right to make and keep whatever they can in the world, regardless of how rich or poor anyone else may be – the response to the CEO's mammoth salary is that he found a way to earn it fair and square, and everyone should quit complaining about it. Generalized happiness doesn't matter, only the individual's right to try to earn and keep as much as he or she can.