FAIRNESS played a central role in Barack Obama’s state-of-the-union address, and I suspect it will play a central role in the president’s re-election campaign. But what does Mr Obama have in mind when he deploys the f-word? It may not be the case that fairness is, as Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, puts it, “a concept invented so dumb people could participate in arguments”. But it cannot be denied that fairness is an idea both mutable and contested. Indeed, last week’s state-of-the-union address seems to contain several distinct conceptions of fairness worth drawing out and reflecting upon.

Toward the beginning of his speech, as Mr Obama was trying to draw a parallel between post-second world war America and today’s post-Iraq war America, he offered this rather stark choice:

We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well while a growing number of Americans barely get by, or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.

Here we have three distinct conceptions of fairness in a single sentence.

To get a “fair shot” is to be offered the opportunity to participate fully and succeed within the country’s institutions. This is, I think, the least controversial conception of fairness in America’s political discourse. Conservatives who strenuously object to the idea that the American system should aim at “equality of outcomes” will sometimes affirm “equality of opportunity” as an alternative. But this is a mistake. To really equalise opportunity requires precisely the sort of intolerably constant, comprehensive, invasive redistribution conservatives rightly believe to be required for the equalisation of outcomes. If one is prepared to accept substantial inequalities in outcome, it follows that one is also prepared to accept substantial inequalities in opportunity.

Getting a fair shot doesn’t require equalising opportunity so much as ensuring that everyone has a good enough chance in life. The content of “good enough” is of course open to debate, but most Americans seem to agree that access to a good education is the greater part of a “good enough” and thus fair shot. Naturally, there is strong partisan disagreement over the kinds of education reform that will do right by young Americans. And there is also disagreement over elements of a “fair shot” beyond education. For example, many liberals believe workers don’t have a fair shot at achieving a decent level of economic security without robust collective-bargaining rights. And many conservatives believe that an overly-strong labour movement invites outsourcing by raising domestic costs, and thereby deprives American workers of a fair shot at employment. There may be some fact of the matter about which policies are most likely to benefit students or workers. But if one is more fair then the other, how would we know?

What is it to do one’s “fair share”? In small groups, it’s clear enough. If my friend and I are shoveling the front walk, my fair share of shoveling, and his, is about half. Often we adjust for differences in ability. If I am big and strong and my friend is small and frail, his fair share may be as much as he can manage. That won’t mean that the whole remainder is my fair share, though. If we’re going to get the walk shoveled, I may have to do a bit more than my fair share. These things get complicated quickly. That’s why the question of what it means for an American do his or her fair share, qua citizen, is completely baffling.

Suppose I’m a surgeon pulling down six figures. Perhaps doing my fair share is to pay 33% of my income in taxes. But, hey, wait! My sister, who could have been a surgeon, chose instead to make pottery in a little hippie arts colony. She makes only as much as she needs to get by, works relatively short hours, smokes a lot of weed with her artist friends, and pays no federal income tax at all! If paying 33% of the money I make saving lives is doing my fair share, then it’s hard to see how my sister—who could have been a surgeon, or some kind of job- and/or welfare-creating entrepreneur—is doing hers. But if she is doing hers, just playing with clay out there in the woods, benefiting next to no one, paying no taxes, then clearly I’m doing way more than my fair share. Which seems, you know, unfair.

Are you doing your fair share? How would one know? Actually, I just made myself feel slightly guilty for not going to med school and joining Médecins Sans Frontières. But unless government can come up with a way of taxing the leisure of people who aren’t doing as much as they might for kith and country, I reckon I’ll just stick to part-time pro blogging and let all you 9-to-5 suckers finance the necessary road-building and foreigner-bombing.

Playing by the same set of rules—the president’s third notion fairness in the passage above—is at least as important to fairness as the sufficiency of a “fair shot” and the proportionality of a “fair share”. A political economy with rules as convoluted as ours is sure to fail by the “same rules” criterion. Why should people who prefer leisure to income face lower tax rates? Why should parents and homeowners get tax breaks single renters don’t get? Why should young black men get longer sentences than young white women who commit the same crimes? Why should some industries get subsidies unavailable to others? In every case, they shouldn’t. It’s unfair. But it is this sense of fairness I think Mr Obama cares least about.

At one point in his address, Mr Obama says “[i]t’s not fair when foreign manufacturers have a leg up on ours only because they’re heavily subsidized.” I agree. It’s not. But just a few paragraphs earlier, Mr Obama had said:

[N]o American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas. From now on, every multinational company should have to pay a basic minimum tax. And every penny should go towards lowering taxes for companies that choose to stay here and hire here in America.

… [I]f you’re an American manufacturer, you should get a bigger tax cut. If you’re a high-tech manufacturer, we should double the tax deduction you get for making your products here. And if you want to relocate in a community that was hit hard when a factory left town, you should get help financing a new plant, equipment, or training for new workers.

So my message is simple. It is time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America.

On the one hand, Mr Obama argues it’s unfair when foreign government subsidise their manufacturers. On the other hand, he seems to think subsidising American manufacturing is not only not unfair in the same way, but is somehow required by fairness.

It’s this sort of confusion that tempts me to agree with Mr Adams when he argues that fairness is “purely subjective”. But I’ll resist the temptation. I don’t think judgments of fairness are entirely whimsical. It really is unfair to eat more than your share of the cake, or to do less than your share of the shoveling, or to get ahead by flouting reasonable rules to which others faithfully adhere. And it really is unfair that America wields so much geopolitical power; our government really does behave unfairly when it condemns other countries for doing what it does on the world stage. Of course, we didn’t hear the president complaining about this.

I would conclude not that judgments of fairness are purely subjective, but that the rhetoric of fairness is used so opportunistically that we would be wise to look upon arguments from fairness with a jaundiced eye.