To this point, we have argued that government policies should aim at uniformity if they are to conform to the generality principle. Government policies that have uniform consequences for all within a polity obviously meet the requirement. A pure public good is equally available to all within its reach. A proportional tax on a broad base implies uniform marginal and average tax rates. Transfers may take the form of universal demogrants. General laws of property should apply to all within the polity of interest without regard to the geneology, region, age, or wealth of the owner. We have argued that such uniform treatment of individual citizens generally improves political and economic efficiency by reducing coalitional instability and incentives for rent seeking.

In this and the following chapter, we demonstrate that some departures from ex post uniformity may be consistent with our analysis of the political merits of the generality principle. It is well-known that there are many cases in which conventional economic efficiency requires nonuniform service levels insofar as preferences, wealth, or circumstances among persons vary significantly. It may seem troubling, indeed problematic, that the generality principle seems to demand uniformity in settings in which established normative theories of public economics seem to require differential treatment. One can well imagine some cases in which completely uniform policy consequences would fail to command a consensus even from behind an idealized Rawlsian veil. Nonetheless, issues of political efficiency would remain germane.

It bears noting that the benefits of adhering to the generality principle do not require completely uniform service levels in the objective sense that every citizen must be observed to receive exactly the same measured flow of service as any other.