"Desert" in this context means "people getting what they deserve," in other words it's a subset of the broader idea of justice. The arguments people make in defense of economic inequality are many and varied, but they overlap a good deal and share some assumptions. In substantial part they rely on the pseudoscience of Economics 101. So there's a tangled skein to sort out. I've decided to start here.
The desert argument is that some people are justly wealthier than others for such reasons as they work harder, or their talents and skills are superior, or they make a greater contribution to society.
The first seems transparently easy to debunk. I'm willing to concede that all things being equal, someone who chooses to work 60 hours a week can legitimately claim twice the wage of someone who chooses to work 30 hours a week. Of course this is not likely to be a free choice. People who have responsibility for unpaid work -- caring for children or older relatives, keeping house -- and people whose health is not great may not be able to work 60 hours a week. But we'll put that aside, it's really what people generally mean by this.
The fact is, if you think about it for just a few seconds, you will realize that the jobs that require people to work the hardest, that are the most unpleasant, even dangerous, generally pay the least. Nursing home aids, construction laborers, trash collectors, farm laborers, meat processing workers -- these are jobs you probably wouldn't even consider if they paid twice as much as they actually do. On the other hand highly paid professional jobs are much more pleasant to do and even intrinsically rewarding. Many people who do such jobs never want to retire, even though they don't need money.
What about the superior talent and skills? Of course talent is just a matter of luck, so it isn't obvious why people deserve to be compensated for it. And people can have highly lucrative talents that seem to be of dubious benefit to society, but we'll put that one aside for the upcoming section on whether inequality benefits the general welfare.
The second half of this argument is that people deserve to be compensated for undergoing training and working to acquire skills. There may be an embedded assumption that having skills is also partly a function of talent so better pay is partly an incentive to people to develop their talents, as well as a reward for doing so. There are several problems with this, not least of which is that the opportunity for higher education is very unequally distributed. Most people who want it can't get it because of their economic circumstances, which correlates with their receiving an inferior basic education.
But that aside, you can take it from me that for a lot of people, probably most, getting an education is not in the least onerous. In fact, college is a hell of a lot more fun than real life and I'm probably not alone in saying that if I had the chance to live my entire life as a college undergraduate I would seriously consider it. And for me at least learning -- acquiring both information and skills -- is intrinsically rewarding and I keep on doing it all the time in fields that have nothing to do with anything I am paid for. Anyway, being a college professor is a much pleasanter occupation than being a nursing aid or a bus driver or a tile setter.
I'll concede that some training programs are more demanding. For example, it's an ordeal to become a physician. Physicians also have some daunting responsibilities, and the consequences when they make a mistake can be much greater than that of most occupations -- though no greater than a mistake by a truck driver. So I can accept that some differential in pay may be justifiable. But there is no reason why investment bankers or stock traders or corporate CEOs deserve to be fabulously wealthy, at least not based on any of the arguments I've presented here. I'll take on some other arguments anon.
A couple of notes: Brown University is named for Nicholas Brown, Jr., who was an abolitionist. His father was a slave trader. We have been through this before here, at least a couple of times.
Yes, many university presidents are overpaid. I intentionally set aside the question of prominent performers such as athletes, musicians and actors because it's more complicated and it fits better with the next installment. I'll get to it.
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