Kagan - What exactly is desert?

I enjoyed Shelly Kagan’s piece “Comparative Desert” for several reasons. Kagan is a very clear thinker and writer. I am a visual learner, so the graphs made his points clearer. However, Kagan did not convince me that there is such a thing as comparative desert, or at least, completely optimistic comparative desert. I realize that many people come into the discussion with the intuition that comparative desert exists. For whatever reason, I do not. Thus, I saw Kagan’s piece as an attempt to convince the few like me who don’t intuitively go for comparative desert.

I have several objections to Kagan, but prior to those, I want to make sure I understand his view. And here, the first complaint arises. What is the metaphysical status of desert? I realize that this is not a course on metaethics; my question is intended to be analogous to Dr. Sorensen’s “periodic table of ethical elements”. Does Kagan believe that desert is part of the periodic table?

When I first read him, I thought that Kagan was placing desert somewhere else. With statements like “I take it as… a good thing – other things being equal – if people get what they deserve” and “what they deserve more of is well-being. The more virtuous deserve to be better off…”, I took Kagan as a welfarist who is examining desert as a non-personal factor in judging possible worlds to be better or worse. If he thought that desert was part of judging a person’s life to be better or worse, wouldn’t he include that qualification when talking about desert, and also avoid using “better off” as a synonym for “well-being”?

I believe that understanding this properly is essential later on in Kagan’s paper to determining the success of his arguments. Unfortunately, I lack the space here to show the way these hang together and motivate my substantial objections to Kagan.