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Imagine a mercantile and materialistic polity, Pecunia, in which achieving a modest improvement in the economic position of the poor by progressive taxation is infeasible inasmuch as most members of the middle-class majority simply cannot bring themselves to work at the requisite level of intensity for less pecuniary gain (cf Cohen 2008, ch. 1). Now consider the claim that (1) The Pecunians ought to improve the economic position of the poor by progressive taxation. What should our reaction be to normative claims such as (1) that make infeasible demands? The reaction that many of us in fact have, I take it, is to feel deeply conflicted (see Nagel 1991, ch. 2). On the one hand, claims such as (1) seem to be evidently false in virtue of demanding the infeasible (Goodin and Pettit 1995; Brennan and Southwood 2007; Southwood and Wiens forthcoming; Gilabert 2012; Gilabert and Lawford-Smith 2012; Wiens 2015). While it would be nice to imagine a world where members of the middle-class were disposed to be less concerned with their own lot and more concerned with the lot of the less fortunate, this is not the world we live in. In the world such as it is, where most members of the middle-class cannot bring themselves to do what is required to improve the economic situation of the poor by progressive taxation, it is simply false that the Pecunians ought to improve the economic situation of the poor by progressive taxation. To insist otherwise would amount to objectionable unworldliness-to chasing "pies in the sky." On the other hand, claims such as (1) also seem to be evidently true in spite of making infeasible demands (Estlund 2011, pp. 219-21; Cohen 2008; Gheaus 2013). The case of the Pecunians seems to be aptly described as a case where objectionable character traits of the * For invaluable comments on and discussion about previous versions of this article I would like to thank

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