Social policy is not an issue for Sunday’s prayers, it is for hard work, needing sound criteria that allow a rights based approach. Leaving aside if Rawls is correct in providing the latter, he is surely right in his critique of an approach also many left pursue:
In any case, moral worth would be ut terly impracticable as a criterion when applied to questions of distributive justice. We might say: Only God could make those judgments. In public life we need to avoid the idea of moral desert and to find a replacement that belongs to a reasonable political conception.
(Rawls, 2001: Justice as Fairness. A Restatement; THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: 73)
COMMEDIA DELLA VITA OR PÁNTA RÊI'S FIRM GROUND 