 An important response to Nozick’s “How Liberty Upsets Patterns” arguments is that they rely upon a mistaken picture of the patterned theorist’s program. According to this response, Nozick represents the patterned theorist as aiming at the daily (or weekly or monthly) fullest available realization of her favorite pattern. On this representation, at the end of each day (or week or month) the advocate of, e.g., the Rawlsian difference principle will determine whether the existing distribution can be transformed into one that provides a higher income for those in the lowest income positions for the next day (or week or month); if such a transformation is available then (on this representation) the difference principle advocate will require it as a matter of justice. Hence, the continuous interference in the name of justice with the results of people acting as they choose with their purported just holdings. However, the advocate of the difference principle will maintain that this principle guides the design of the basic institutional structure of society; it provides the basic structure with the aim of raising the lifetime income of the representative lowest income individual as much as possible. What is assigned to individuals as a matter of distributive justice is a lifetime stream of income that arises through some combination of permitted and protected modes of income acquisition, tax and regulatory structures, and tax-funded assistance. Wilt does not have a claim in justice to his holdings on the day before the fans transfer $250,000 to him or to his holdings on the following day. He has a claim in justice to the lifetime income that will accrue to him when a basic structure is in place which, through enabling income acquisition, taxing, regulating, and subsidizing income yields (something like) the highest possible lifetime income for the least advantaged. That claim in justice is not violated when the IRS seizes, say, 70% of his $250,000 windfall.