Fair Innings

Greg Bognar (La Trobe University)

Abstract: In many societies, the ageing of the population is becoming a major problem. It also raises difficult issues for ethics and public policy. On what is known as the fair innings view, it is not impermissible to give lower priority to policies that primarily benefit the elderly. Philosophers have tried to justify this view on various grounds. In this paper, I look at a consequentialist and a fairness-based justification. I argue that both of them have implausible implications and fail to correspond to people's moral intuitions. I end by outlining a different kind of consequentialist justification that avoids those implications and corresponds better to our considered moral judgments.