"The Meiji government wanted the household to become a unit of welfare, in which younger people were responsible for the care of their elders, so they made it a legal obligation," Ms. Ochiai said.
But as is the case with Arneson's responsibility-sensitive prioritarianism, on this view the moral value of an extra unit of welfare to a person is "greater, the larger the degree to which the person deserves this gain (loss avoidance)." The concept of luck is a curious one (Dennett 1984, 92; see also Pritchard 2005, 125 133).
This means that drugs for rare indications will typically be much more expensive per course provided and unit of welfare gained than similarly effective medicines for common complaints.
Think again of Smith and Jones, deserving 10 and 20 units of welfare, respectively.
Then Alternative 1 from the tables above comes out at \((1 \times 5 \times 10,000) + (10 \times 100,000)\), which comes to 1,050,000 total units of welfare.
When 10 units of welfare goes to someone highly deserving, someone who deserves a high welfare level, the value of that 10 units is "augmented," so that 10 units of welfare corresponds to a much larger number of units of value-for-the-world.
Again with the welfare of the worst off counting five times as much, Alternative 2 comes out at \ 8 \times 5 \times 10,000) + (9 \times 100,000)\), which comes to 1,300,000 total units of welfare.
If Smith deserves 10 units of welfare and Jones deserves 20, and you can either ensure that Smith receives 10 units, or that Jones receives 10 units, the theory says that it is better to ensure that Jones receives the 10 units.
A desert-adjusted theory of intrinsic value could say that, if Smith and Jones each deserves 25 units of welfare, then a world in which they each receive 25 units is better than a world in which Smith receives 50 and Jones receives 0. Feldman (1995a, 567) is explicit that the goal of his desert-sensitive version of consequentialism is to respond to Rawls' objection.
When a mobile unit of the Essex County welfare office, as part of a pilot program to distribute food-stamp applications in other counties, stopped in Shop-Rite parking lots recently in Morris County, it was swamped.
Millions of ducks are raised for meat in the UK, many in highly intensive units where the standard of welfare is shockingly low.
