MÁS ALLÁ DE LA DIGNIDAD DEL TRABAJO
AMERICAN JOURNAL
of LAW and EQUALITY
MÁS ALLÁ DE LA DIGNIDAD DEL TRABAJO
Comment on M. Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit
Daniel Hemel*
In starkly polarized times, the “dignity of work” has emerged as the rare catchphrase
with resonance on both the right and the left. “[t]he dignity of work—it’s really a good
term,” said President Trump, in June 2017, upon signing an executive order promoting
apprenticeships and vocational training.1 His successor, President Joe Biden, agrees.
“[t]he dignity of work,” Biden recently remarked, “is really important to me and to
all of us.”2 And it’s not just the figures at the top of the ticket. Republican Senator Marco
Rubio of Florida recently penned an essay entitled “America Needs to Restore Dignity
of Work,”3 while across the aisle, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio criss-
crossed the country on a “Dignity of Work” tour.4 Republicans and Democrats can’t
Author: *Daniel Hemel is a Professor of Law and Ronald H. Coase Research Scholar at the University of Chicago Law
School, where he teaches courses on tax, nonprofit organizations, and torts. He is a graduate of Harvard College, Uni-
versity of Oxford, and Yale Law School and has taught as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and Stanford Law
School. Before joining the Chicago faculty, he clerked for Judge Michael Boudin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First
Circuit, Judge Sri Srinivasan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan and
served as visiting counsel at the Joint Committee on Taxation. Thanks to Martha Minow and Shishene Jing for thought-
ful comments on an earlier draft.
1
2
3
4
President Donald J. Trump, Remarks at the White House upon signing an executive order on apprenticeships and
workforce development ( Junio 15, 2017), https://www.c-span.org/video/?430049-1/president-trump-steve-scalises
-condition-hes-trouble.
Geoff Bennett, Adam Edelman & Rebecca Shabad, Biden Formally Introduces Economic Team, Including Yellen
for Treasury Secretary, NBC NEWS (Dec. 1, 2020), https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/ biden-formally
-introduce-economic-team-including-yellen-treasury-secretary-n1249497.
Marco Rubio, America Needs to Restore Dignity of Work, THE ATLANTIC (Dec. 13, 2018), https://www.theatlantic
.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/help-working-class-voters-us-must-value-work/578032.
SHERROD BROWN: THE DIGNITY OF WORK, https://dignityofwork.com (last visited Dec. 20, 2020). For a thoughtful
critique of “dignity of work” rhetoric that appeared while this essay was in the publication process, see Ezra Klein,
There’s No Natural Dignity in Work, N.Y. TIMES, Feb. 18, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/opinion
/theres-no-natural-dignity-in-work.html.
© 2021 Daniel Hemel. Publicado bajo una Atribución Creative Commons-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 4.0
International license (CC BY-NC-ND).
https://doi.org/10.1162/ajle_a_00007
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agree on basic facts about the world, but they can—apparently—agree on the dignity of
trabajar.
Below this surface-level agreement, aunque, is a deep fissure as to what exactly the
“dignity of work” entails. In one iteration, the “dignity of work” refers to the claim that
all work is worthy of appropriate respect and remuneration. And with a few exceptions
(p.ej., contract killer, narcotics dealer, tobacco-industry lobbyist), this claim is both power-
ful and sound. But there is a darker side to the “dignity of work” that emerges when the
phrase is used to refer to the claim that individuals are worthy of respect because they work
y, correspondingly, that nonworkers deserve relatively less respect. That devaluation of
nonworkers is pervasive, it is pernicious, and it ought to be rejected resoundingly.
The “dignity of work” plays a central role in Michael Sandel’s thought-provoking new
libro, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?5 It lies at the heart of
both his critique of meritocratic institutions and his vision for renewal. Sandel argues that
a “credentialist prejudice” has infected America’s educational and economic elites, bajo-
mined the “dignity of work” for those lacking college degrees, and stoked the resentment
that propelled Donald Trump to power.6 His alternative to the “meritocratic ethic” is a
“producer-centered ethic” that extolls the ordinary workingman and workingwoman
instead of the Ivy League degree holder.7 “Only a political agenda that . . . seeks to renew
the dignity of work can speak effectively to the discontent that roils our politics,” Sandel
concludes.8
Despite the centrality of the “dignity of work” to Sandel’s argument, it is not always
clear what Sandel means by the term. A veces, he uses the phrase to refer to the idea
that all work—including low-wage work of noncollege graduates—merits respect and
remuneration. En otra parte, aunque, Sandel comes much closer to implying that dignity
depends upon work. Por ejemplo, in the book’s final chapter, Sandel suggests that “we
are most fully human when we contribute to the common good and earn the esteem of
our fellow citizens for the contributions we make.”9 Appealing to Aristotle, Hegel, Catholic
social teaching, and the American republican tradition, Sandel says that “the fundamental
human need is to be needed by those with whom we share a common life.” “The dignity of
trabajar,” Sandel writes, “consists in exercising our abilities to answer such needs.”10
What exactly Sandel means when he says that we are “most fully human” when we
answer the needs of others is opaque. Somos, por supuesto, Homo sapiens all day long—when
we eat, sleep, and brush our teeth just as much as when we work. Interpreted less literally,
5
6
7
8
9
10
MICHAEL J. SANDEL, THE TYRANNY OF MERIT: WHAT’S BECOME OF THE COMMON GOOD? (2020).
See id. en 73.
See id. at 24–25, 211.
Id. en 208.
Id. en 212.
Id.
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MÁS ALLÁ DE LA DIGNIDAD DEL TRABAJO
aunque, Sandel seems to be saying that we are most worthy of human dignity when we
engage in something describable as work. Work may not make us free, but it does—Sandel
suggests—make us human.
There are at least two fundamental problems with such a claim. The first is that this
crimped conception of full humanity omits large swaths of the population and significant
segments of human life. It overlooks children, who are no doubt fully human even though
they are not yet endowed with the dignity of work. It gives short shrift to retirees, who do not
cede their full humanity when they cease to work full time. It omits more than 22 millón
nonworkers between the ages of 25 and 54—over two-thirds of whom are female and more
than three-quarters of whom have left the workforce due to family responsibilities, enfermedad, o
disability.11 All in all, it leaves out—in addition to children—more than 110 million U.S.
adultos (forty-three percent of the adult population) who are not currently employed.12
Sandel might respond that the “dignity of work” need not be limited to individuals
who engage in paid labor. My two-year-old son, Por ejemplo, “contribute[s] to the com-
mon good” by being absolutely adorable, and he thereby “earn[s] the esteem of [su] fellow
citizens” (es decir., his parents and grandparents). But to describe his daily activities as “work”
honors neither the dignity of paid labor nor the dignity of child’s play. Childhood merits
honor and respect not because it is like paid labor or because it is a prelude to paid labor,
but because it is a life stage with an intrinsic worth of its own.
As the previous paragraph suggests, we could perhaps salvage Sandel’s argument from
some of its uncomfortable implications by developing a definition of “work” that includes,
Por ejemplo, children growing up, adults growing old, full-time caregivers, and others out-
side the formal labor force. But the phrase “dignity of work” inevitably brings to mind paid
labor as its paradigm case. Valuing, Por ejemplo, stay-at-home parenting by analogy to the
factory floor blinds us to the aspects of parenting and caregiving that make these activities
distinct from—yet as important as—work remunerated with wages.
The linkage between full humanity and the dignity of work would be objectionable
even if the policy implications were innocuous. But they are in fact quite injurious. El
second fundamental problem with the linkage between full humanity and the dignity of
work is that it all too easily serves to justify policies that are quite inhumane. Once we
accept that work is essential to human dignity, then policies that condition public benefits
upon labor force participation—and cut off benefits to nonworkers—can be rationalized as
helping the very people they harm.
11
12
See Steven F. Hipple, A NOSOTROS. Bureau of Lab. Stat., People Who Are Not in the Labor Force: Why Aren’t They
Working?, 4 BEYOND THE NUMBERS, Dec. 2015, en 4 tbl.1 (Dec. 2015), https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-4
/pdf/people-who-are-not-in-the-labor-force-why-arent-they-working.pdf.
See U.S. Bureau of Lab. Stat., Employment Situation Summary, USDL-21-0365, tbl.A-1 (Mar. 5, 2021), https://
www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm.
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President Trump and his advisers were especially opportunistic in their use of “dignity
of work” arguments to justify benefits cutoffs. In December 2019, Estados Unidos. Department of
Agriculture finalized a rule that would have dropped approximately 700,000 adults from
the food stamp rolls “so that they can know the dignity of work,” as a top Trump admin-
istration official explained at the time.13 Fortunately, a federal judge ultimately blocked the
regla, expressing astonishment that the Trump administration had not renounced the ini-
tiative on its own after the COVID-19 pandemic struck.14 But other benefits cutoffs jus-
tified on “dignity of work” grounds have taken full effect. El 1996 welfare reform
legislation is an especially consequential example. Although President Clinton praised
the law for encouraging parents to “teach[] their children to honor the dignity of work,”15
in all too many cases it left single mothers and their children to face the indignity of pov-
erty without the support of a welfare check or a paycheck.16
Sandel, for his part, does not advocate work mandates or benefits cutoffs. En cambio, él
suggests that we should “lower or even eliminate payroll taxes” and “raise revenue instead
by taxing consumption, wealth, and financial transactions.”17 But the net effect of this pro-
posal—like the Clinton-era welfare reform and Trump’s attempted food stamps rollback—
would be to harm the very worst-off members of society, who do not earn wages (y por lo tanto
would not benefit from the payroll tax cut) but who do purchase goods and services (y
thus would bear part of the burden of the consumption tax).
Sandel, to be sure, is quite right to reject the idea that our worth as human beings
depends on how much we are paid for our labor. But he ought to go a step further and
discard the idea that our worth as human beings depends on whether we are paid for our
labor at all. The choice he presents between a market-oriented meritocratic ethic and a
producer-centered ethic fails to exhaust the available alternatives. We can instead con-
struct an economic agenda oriented around the widely shared intuition that all human
beings are worthy of our respect and our concern—regardless of the degrees they attain,
the salaries they command, or the marketable goods and services they produce.18
13
14
15
16
17
18
See Laura Reiley, Trump Administration Tightens Work Requirements for SNAP, Which Could Cut Hundreds of
Thousands from Food Stamps, WASH. POST (Dec. 4, 2019), https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/12/04
/trump-administration-tightens-work-requirements-snap-which-could-cut-hundreds-thousands-food-stamps/.
District of Columbia v. A NOSOTROS. Dep’t of Agric., No. 20-CV-00119 (BAH), 2020 A NOSOTROS. Dist. LEXIS 192508 (D.D.C. Oct.
18, 2020).
The President’s Radio Address, 2 PUB. PAPERS 2207 (Dec. 4, 1999).
Ver, p.ej., Lesley J. Tornero, Sheldon Danzinger & Kristin S. Seefeldt, Failing the Transition from Welfare to Work:
Women Chronically Disconnected from Employment and Cash Welfare, 87 SOC. SCI. q. 227 (2006).
See SANDEL, supra note 5, en 218.
For a step in this direction, see Almaz Zelleke, Institutionalizing the Universal Caretaker Through a Basic Income?,
3 BASIC INCOME STUD. (2008). The claim that all human beings are worthy of respect and concern is not intended to
imply that nonhuman animals are unworthy of respect and concern.
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MÁS ALLÁ DE LA DIGNIDAD DEL TRABAJO
What would an economic agenda oriented around the dignity of all human beings—
and not only the dignity of workers—entail? Most centrally, it would seek to ensure that all
members of society—adults and children—have access to adequate health care, housing,
and nutrition, whether or not they or their parents can secure a paying job. It would
provide at least a thin cushion so that parents could exit the workforce temporarily to care
for a child—and so that children could exit the workforce temporarily to care for a dying
parent—without suffering financial ruin as a result. It would ensure that all Americans
have access to job-training opportunities, but it would also recognize that paid work is
not the be all and end all of life.
Programmatically, an economic agenda oriented around human dignity could take any
number of shapes, but the idea of a basic income offers one particularly attractive instan-
tiation. En otra parte, Miranda Perry Fleischer and I have proposed a basic income of $500 per month per person in the United States layered on top of existing income supports for the aged and disabled. By providing aid in the form of cash, a basic income would reflect the idea that individuals’ own allocative choices are at least prima facie worthy of our respect. And the program’s universality would avoid the stigmatic harms that sometimes accompany the receipt of targeted welfare benefits.19 The United States already has the economic resources to realize this vision.20 The pri- mary obstacle is not a budget constraint but a political constraint. Basic income proposals poll reasonably well—with somewhere between forty-five percent and fifty-five percent of Americans expressing support in recent surveys21—but sizeable numbers still see a basic income as, in the words of former Council of Economic Advisers chair Jason Furman, “giving up on work and giving up on people.”22 The rhetoric of the “dignity of work” risks reinforcing these objections. A subsistence- level basic income coupled with a corresponding increase in tax rates might depress 19 20 21 22 See Miranda Perry Fleischer & Daniel Hemel, The Architecture of a Basic Income, 87 Ud.. CHI. l. REV. 626 (2020). Although the $500-per-month figure appears to be less than the $1000-per-adult proposal popularized by 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, our proposal (unlike Yang’s) includes children, and our proposal largely maintains existing Social Security programs for the aged and disabled. See id. en 668, 673–75, 697–98. See id. en 669 (observing that a $500-per-month basic income would—with various offsets—amount to
approximately seven percent of gross domestic product and noting that “[w]e could thus afford a basic income
de $500 per person per month while keeping our government spending-to-GDP ratio below Nordic levels”).
See Hannah Gilberstadt, More Americans Oppose than Favor the Government Providing a Universal Basic Income
for All Adult Citizens, PEW RSCH. CTR. (Aug. 19, 2020) (forty-five percent support among U.S. adultos), https://www
.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/19/more-americans-oppose-than-favor-the-government-providing-a
-universal-basic-income-for-all-adult-citizens; Gabriela Schulte, Poll: Majority of Voters Now Say the Government
Should Have a Universal Basic Income Program, THE HILL (Aug. 14, 2020) (fifty-five percent support among
registered voters), https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/512099-poll-majority-of-voters-now-say-the
-government-should-have-a.
Kathleen Pender, Why Universal Basic Income Is Gaining Support, S.F. CHRONICLE ( Julio 15, 2017).
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employment a bit, though the best available evidence suggests that these effects would be
modest.23 If social welfare is our policy maximand, then these labor participation effects
would be balanced against the upsides, including improved health and educational out-
comes for children in recipient families.24 But if full humanity depends upon work, y
a basic income might deter some individuals from working, then the justificatory burden
for proponents rises significantly. A basic income is entirely compatible with a society that
respects work, but it is harder to square with a society that accords paid work an exalted status.
Hay, to be sure, seeds in Sandel’s book of an ethical and economic agenda that
encompasses nonworkers and that affirms life activities other than paid labor. Most sig-
nificantly, Sandel effectively dismantles the idea that labor market outcomes reflect any-
thing approximating moral desert. He also points to and draws upon arguments that
affirm the dignity of work without denying the dignity of nonworkers. Por ejemplo, Sandel
quotes from one of Martin Luther King’s last speeches, addressing the striking sanitation
workers in Memphis, in March 1968:
One day our society will come to respect the sanitation workers if it is to survive, para
the person who picks up our garbage is, in the final analysis, as significant as the
physician, for if he doesn’t do his job, diseases are rampant. All labor has dignity.25
All labor had dignity in King’s eyes, but dignity did not depend upon paid labor: dig-
nity, according to King, was a quality of “all human personality.”26 And later in the same
speech, King declared that “[norte]ow is the time to make an adequate income a reality for all
of God’s children.”27 Not only for all workers: King was quite clear, by the end of his life,
that a society as rich as America had a moral obligation to provide an unconditional min-
imum income to everyone.28
Sandel’s book has within it the resources to support a similar move: a rejection of a
politics that divides society into “makers” and “takers” and an embrace of an economic ethos
that values individuals not for their productivity but for their humanity. He powerfully urges
his readers to look “beyond the tyranny of merit toward a less rancorous, more generous
public life.”29 But it is not enough to topple the tyranny of merit if the successor is a regime
that honors only the fifty-seven percent of adults who engage in paid labor. The “less
rancorous, more generous public life” that Sandel envisions will require us to look not only
beyond the tyranny of merit, but beyond an ideology that anchors dignity to paid work.
See Fleischer & Hemel, supra note 19, at 658–60 (summarizing literature).
See id. at 651–52, 651 n.90.
See SANDEL, supra note 5, en 210.
23
24
25
26 MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., THE RADICAL KING 39, 48 (Cornel West ed., 2015).
27
28
29
Id. en 250.
See id. en 94, 172–73.
See SANDEL, supra note 5, en 228.
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