John Rawls And John Rawls's Theory Of Justice

John Rawls is an Egalitarian, which is someone that stresses the importance of equal access and opportunity to primary goods, such as shelter and education. They believe that the income gap in today’s world should be reduced to the extent that justice is present in society; this requires all people to have a fair opportunity to fulfill their fundamental needs. Rawls argues that people can distributive justice can be obtained if everyone obtains basic liberties and fair equality of opportunity. Rawls theory that no person should be either granted or denied social benefits based on circumstances for which they are not responsible is supported through his first and second principle of justice. The first principle of justice has a strong emphasis …show more content…
Rawls states, “inequalities as defined by the institutional structure…are arbitrary unless it is reasonable to expect that they will work out to everyone’s advantage” (225). The first part of this principle specifies that social and economic inequalities, if they are to exist, are to benefit the least-advantaged members of society, which is the difference principle. An example that was provided in class was that you are allowed to make as much money as you want as long as you are helping benefit the least advantaged because it is only a just society if people are not without a home and basic rights. This principle rests heavily on social institutions being organized so that inequalities of wealth will specifically be the greatest advantage to those worse off. A specific example that further supports Rawls theory of justice would be Whole Foods Market; a multimillion-dollar company that helps to benefit the least advantaged. Whole Foods makes the effort to focus on working with people to help create economic prosperity in emerging economies. On a local scale, all 431 stores donate food to shelters as well as food banks within their area to help out since they have plenty they are able to provide. There are also a few times throughout the year that the stores have community-giving days where five percent of the net sales that day are donated to either an educational organization or a local nonprofit. Each year, Whole Foods’ community giving surpasses five percent of their total net profit and their average net income over the past five years has been around five hundred million dollars, which would be an average of two million and five hundred thousand dollars they give back. On top of the money they donate and food they give, their employees are also constantly volunteering their time to nonprofits within their community. Whole