This paper addresses a question which is fundamental to the perceived
legitimacy of the distribution of resources today: to what extent does
unfairness in how assets came to be acquired in the past affect incomes
and wealth now? To answer that question requires two things: first, a
principle to determine what is, and what is not, a just acquisition of
wealth or a just source of income; second, a means of using that
principle to estimate what fraction of wealth and income is now unjust. I
use a principle put forward by Robert Nozick to provide the first of these
things and then use a model of wealth accumulation and economic
growth to illustrate its implications for the scale of unfairness today. The
greater is depreciation of assets, the higher are saving rates out of labor
income and the less important is human capital the more transient are
the effects of past economic injustices. I use data on the perceived
unfairness of economic outcomes to see if there is any evidence that
those features which the model implies should influence the durability of
injustice help explain cross-country differences in attitudes towards
unfairness