Ecological ceiling and the super-rich: Arguments for an income cap policy from a moral economy perspective

This paper contributes to the post-growth imaginaries by advancing theoretically and empirically motivated moral arguments for introducing an income cap policy. Great work has been done regarding “the polluter elite” (Kenner 2019) disproportionately contributing to the greenhouse gas emissions with their carbon-intensive lifestyles as well as their investment decisions (Barros & Wilk 2021; Oswald et al. 2020; Otto et al. 2019). The public support for policy interventions targeting the super-rich is however complex and faces difficult political obstacles, despite their disproportionately large appropriation of the remaining global carbon budget (Gössling & Humpe 2023). Among them, a major barrier concerns the fact that wealth accumulation is generally perceived desirable (François & Maréchal 2023), and relatedly, that progressive income and wealth taxation does not seem to enjoy major support (Emmenegger & Marx 2019).

Against this background, this paper develops arguments motivating policy interventions addressing the super-rich and their ecologically ungeneralizable lifestyles, focusing on an income cap policy. We develop the paper’s arguments in two steps, first based on a functionalistic perspective and second on moral arguments.

First, we motivate a consideration of an income cap policy based on the existing knowledge about the global carbon inequality. Here we also discuss the importance of sufficiency principle as a new benchmark for addressing the double crises of inequality and climate emergency, where distinctions are made between ‘excess’/‘luxury’ and ‘essentials’/‘needs’ (Bärnthaler & Gough 2023; Princen 2005). These are all functionalistic arguments in a sense that they can be motivated by the urgent need for societal transformation in light of the climate emergency, and a growing body of literature pointing to the importance of the demand-side climate mitigation measures targeting the richest population in the world (Creutzig et al. 2018; Otto et al. 2019).

Second, inspired by Orton and Rowlingson (2007, also Sayer 2015), we develop moral arguments distinguishing the ‘deserving rich’ from ‘non-deserving rich’. While previous research has pointed to the public perception of the rich where people who have ‘earned’ their money through ‘hard work’ are seen more deserving their wealth than others who have inherited wealth (Skilling & Mclay 2015; Sachweh & Eicher 2023), further distinctions can be made between different occupations and/or sectors based on their contribution to social and ecological sustainability. Previous scholarly work distinguishing ‘earned incomes’ from ‘unearned incomes’ (Stratford 2020; Sayer 2018) is of great importance, as well as a value judgement about how the super-rich spend their money.