The professor's argument was fair enough.
However, there are many opponents to this view and their main argument is fairness – it is not fair to include productivity changes as a savings factor in the calculus because it will discriminate against people with low income (women, pensioners, ethnic minorities, immigrants etc).
The idea that the law went too far reached across party lines, with one conservative commentator saying it offered unions nothing more than collective begging.The scale of Mr Kasich's defeat probably came about because his opponents cleverly blended a national debate about inequality with local arguments over what is fair to workers particularly to the popular firefighters and police.
Just 36% agreed with the coalition's argument that "squeezing benefits is fair, seeing as wages for workers are also being squeezed", whereas 58% inclined to the case made by the opposition that squeezing benefits and tax credits "is unfair, seeing as it will hurt the vulnerable, including many who people who do work hard for low pay".
And the latest Guardian/ICM poll does reveal growing doubts about this key plank of government strategy: just 36% agreed with the coalition's argument that "squeezing benefits is fair", compared with 58% who thought squeezing benefits and tax credits "is unfair, seeing as it will hurt the vulnerable, including many who people who do work hard for low pay".
I think we've moved beyond [the argument over whether Bain is fair game] at this point.
This argument, to be fair, is often applied to children, whose capacity for responsible choice is immature.
(On this point, the S.E.C. had the better of the argument; it's fair to say he was the person at Goldman most responsible for the bad decision. Tourre's personal legal responsibility does not disappear because Goldman failed to supervise him properly).
Mr Wright is fair to the arguments made by Stresemann's critics.
