Just Savings, Compensation, and the First Generation

The just savings principle is the centerpiece of John Rawls’s account of intergenerational justice. Yet it is hard to see why the parties in the original position could accept it, for it imposes net costs on the worst-off first generation. Many attempt to solve this “problem of the first generation” by offering explanations as to why the parties could accept Rawls’s principle. Here I take a different approach. I show that most of these attempts neglect a crucial consideration; there is an alternative savings principle that the parties should prefer to Rawls’s own. According to the compensated savings principle, the first generation should be compensated for the cost of their savings by younger generations with whom they overlap. I defend this principle as the most promising explanation yet of why the parties could rationally choose a savings principle that generates the accumulation required for a just basic structure.