Back to basics: economic justice (political)

[Roxanne Appleby]

Uh... no. You are too many assumptions of malice away from the actual question.

Do I have to repeat it? Ok, here goes: "What, for you, is economic justice? And how can the government best ensure it?"

A perfectly viable answer to this would be: Wealth redistibution. To take money that person has rightfully owned A and give to person B.

Another perfectly viable answer would be: To ensure that money that person A has rightfully earned is not taken from person A and given to person B without person A's consent.

...repending on what philosophy you subscribe to, I suppose.

But lambasting the question as being about wealth distribution and nothing but, is presumptuous and defensive.



ETA: I was actually interrested in hearing basic economic position defined from various viewpoints, with that pretty neutral question as a starting point. Color me dissapointed. But not very surprised..

Nuh-uh again. Your second formulation is not about so-called "economic justice" - the "so called" because the concept is so amorphous and attempts to impose it so arbitrary and coercive. It's about just-plain justice - thou shalt not steal. Tacking on the little "given to person B without person A's consent" is just another attempt to obfuscate the reality of what you describe there, which is simple theft. If you stick-me-up - "your money or your life" - and turn the loot over to your moll instead of buying crack for yourself, it's still stealing. I don't really care what you do with your ill-gotten gains.

 

[Pure]

yep

Originally Posted by SEVERUSMAX
The fruits of one's labor belong to those who labor for it. Anything else is injustice.

Yes, a fine marxist principle.

Man owns a building. He rents to four artisans for X dollars total per month.

Let's say, for the sake of argument they make decorative stone ornaments. Their busness prospers. They sell, and all the proceeds belong to them, for their labor. They do have 'costs', let's say for electiricity; also rent. No additional expenses are incurred by the owner.

At that point the owner says, When you renew your lease, there will be a 'profit sharing' provision. You are to pay me 10% of your profits.

When they demur, he says, well at the alternative you can pay me 5 times your present rent. (IOW, he wants the alternative to be UNpalatable).

It would be very expensive for them to move; the landlord knows that. Lots of machinery.

According to Severus, would he be [improperly]coercing them to give up what rightfully belongs to them? I think so. Note that the landlord will NOT be laboring for the additional money. He's taking a chunk of the fruits of their labor. He provides no additional service, and he does no additional labor [if indeed he does any].

 

[incubus666]

American individuals, estates, foundations, and corporations gave an estimated $240.72 billion to charitable causes in 2003.

http://www.aafrc.org/press_releases/trustreleases/americansgive.html

Mike S.

 

[Liar]

Nuh-uh again. Your second formulation is not about so-called "economic justice" - the "so called" because the concept is so amorphous and attempts to impose it so arbitrary and coercive. It's about just-plain justice - thou shalt not steal. Tacking on the little "given to person B without person A's consent" is just another attempt to obfuscate the reality of what you describe there, which is simple theft. If you stick-me-up - "your money or your life" - and turn the loot over to your moll instead of buying crack for yourself, it's still stealing. I don't really care what you do with your ill-gotten gains.

*sigh* I tried, I really did,. But I give up. You're apparently hell-bent on everything and everyone going into a conversation with malice, and evil ulterior motives.

Civility my motherfucking ass.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

*sigh* I tried, I really did,. But I give up. You're apparently hell-bent on everything and everyone going into a conversation with malice, and evil ulterior motives.

Civility my motherfucking ass.

Liar! I protest. I have done nothing here but try make very explicit what exactly this discussion is about - wealth redistribution, by force. You haven't denied that, you've simply tried to describe it in different ways that either dress it up, or shifted the discussion to something else. (The latter being what you did with, "To ensure that money that person A has rightfully earned is not taken from person A and given to person B without person A's consent.")


So - why don't you engage the issue? If you think wealth redistribution is moral and proper, then make a case for it. I might disagree with you, but I won't think that you're not motivated by goodwill.

To repeat, I have not given a verdict on the concept in this this thread. Only tried to make clear what the concept involves.

 

[WRJames]

That's a damn good question. I'm still working on the answer.

At minimum, to me, government should maintain a safety net so that when people fall off the mad ride that is life they don't go 'Splat!' It should do what it can to maintain a minimum level of nutrition, shelter and health care.

If you want to argue the economics of this safety net, just ask which is cheaper? Said safety net? Or the massive number of police, courts and jails that will be required to keep a lot of people without hope in line.

Hear. hear!

An adequate safety net actually ENCOURAGES entrepreneurship. In the US you have to worry about getting some sort of "real" job so you can get health insurance. There is a tremendous disincentive to try to start out on your own with a small business.

Of course, if the safety net is TOO comfortable, people don't bother to work. It must be about fifteen years ago now I had a professor from Denmark contact me for an interview -- he taught industrial engineering or something of the sort. And during the conversation, he remarked that if his students didn't find a job within a year or two, they probably would never work -- they would just live out their lives on the Denmark equivalent of welfare.

One of the summers my son was an intern at JPL, one of his roommates was from Italy -- he had the same complaint, that Italians didn't bother to work.

Of course, I'm not really one to talk at this point, retired early with no intention of ever taking a "real" job again. But still -- any notion of economic justice needs to include some motivation for people to work and to work effectively. Socialist economies have failed because of this -- and so have large corporations.

 

[rgraham666]

Socialist economies have failed because of this -- and so have large corporations.

In my experience I've found there's little real difference between the two. Save for maybe uniforms.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

For those who believe that taxes constitute theft at gunpoint:

Do you believe society should place any limits on the aggregation of wealth and power, and its use to perpetuate further accumulation of wealth and power via economic coercion of those with less?

Violence is coercive. Money is voluntary. One can opt out. Just look at Thoreau.

Socialism takes away the rights to keep one's labor, the fruits of it, and the fruits of risk and investment. Were it not for the employer, the workers would have no jobs.

 

[Pure]

plea for a change.

enconomic justice has many angles. why not let's talk about something beside 'redistribution'?
here are some:

is there a crime of usury? (should there be, IOW).

are there unconscionable contracts?

assume a bunch a people are slaves from conquest (i.e. more like ancient greece than the South of the US in 1850, when a high proportion of slaves are born to it.) is there any economic injustice in slavery? is there a 'moral problem'? (assume the slaves have room and board and the basics of healthy life.).

 

[gauchecritic]

Violence is coercive. Money is voluntary. One can opt out. Just look at Thoreau.

Socialism takes away the rights to keep one's labor, the fruits of it, and the fruits of risk and investment. Were it not for the employer, the workers would have no jobs.

Where is it written that the fruits of ones labour are the property of the labourer?

Is that one of those inalienable rights?

If my labour involves guns and masks and banks is it my right to retain those fruits?

If the answer is no then you're talking about laws made by other people in the society to which you belong.

Socialism as a word that comes from the same roots as society. Without society the fruits of your labour are farm produce.

 

[colddiesel]

That's a damn good question. I'm still working on the answer.

At minimum, to me, government should maintain a safety net so that when people fall off the mad ride that is life they don't go 'Splat!' It should do what it can to maintain a minimum level of nutrition, shelter and health care.

.

I agree with this but would substitute society for government- ok a semantic difference in modern society because we wouldn't in fact help out enough. Therefore there has to be compulsion and therin lie the arguments.

I would vote for fairly plain support except in education where opportunity should be as equal as possible. But that's only my notion of economic justice.

 

[Liar]

Liar! I protest. I have done nothing here but try make very explicit what exactly this discussion is about - wealth redistribution, by force.

Exactly. You have done nothing here but trying to define a hegemony for the term. (For reasons that I still don't understand) A hegenomy that I disagree with, and therefore called you on.

You haven't denied that, you've simply tried to describe it in different ways that either dress it up, or shifted the discussion to something else. (The latter being what you did with, "To ensure that money that person A has rightfully earned is not taken from person A and given to person B without person A's consent.")

It's not something else. You either deliberately misunderstand what I say, or we live in so different worlds that we can't communicate. "What is economic justice?" was the question. "To steal from the rich and give to the poor" was one answer "To not steal" was another. And that. Is. That.

How is my A and B abstraction "dressing up" anything? You're assuming malice again, m'dear. Even if you don't realize it.

So - why don't you engage the issue? If you think wealth redistribution is moral and proper, then make a case for it. I might disagree with you, but I won't think that you're not motivated by goodwill.

I did. My only approach is and will ever be pragmatism. If we look at it from the perspective of wealth redistibution, "economic justice" is like "fair weather". A mostly irrelevant thought experiment. Is it right to take from A and give to B? aMaybe not. is it nessecary for shit that both A and B depend on to work properly? Sometimes. The flipside of having this very complex herd that we call civilization, is the overhead mainteneace cost. A cost that must be adressed. It's niether moral nor immoral, it just is.

Now, to taxes. I hear the "taxes are theft" mantra ever so often. And sure, at a fundamental level, it might be. But there comes the qualifiers. The same people who say "taxes are theft" usually still make exceptions for stuff like the military, the police and the jucidiary system. Which makes the "taxes are theft" argument null and void. Because taxes either are theft, or they're not.

And if there's a middle ground, justified taxation (theft) to finiance things you like, then we've moved beyond principle and into subjective cherry-picking.

Therefore I say taxes are not theft. They are fees, and every transaction contains an implicit EULA with the society you are in that grants them right to a percental fee. If you don't agree to the EULA, don't make the transaction.

And what tax revenus are used for? And how high taxation? Depends on the need of the community. Something that is to be decided by a democratically elected congregation, in every instance as decentralized as possible.

To repeat, I have not given a verdict on the concept in this this thread. Only tried to make clear what the concept involves.

And I wholehearteddly disagree with a) that you haven't given a verdict on wealth redistibution and b) that that's all the concept of economic justice involves.

Another perspective of economic justice could be in jucidiary terms. What is fair financial punishment for a crime? In Finland, a speeding ticket is proportional to the culprit's wealth. The idea is that the punishment should not sting less for the rich than for the poor. Is that fair, or is it fair to have a set sum, that people sould not be extra punished for being well off?

And is there such a thing as a fair wage for a job? Is it morally wrong to pay my employees a dollar a day, if they for some reason agree to that?

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Where is it written that the fruits of ones labour are the property of the labourer?

Is that one of those inalienable rights?

It is written in this sense: The worker has possession of his fruits unless some person takes them away from him. The "right" to those fruits is a proper negative right - the right to not have something taken away from you by someone else, whether it be your life, liberty, freedom of conscience and speech, etc.

Because I like you, and feel bad that Liar misunderstood my posts in this thread, I will venture onto ground that no one has covered yet here: Why do humans all think simple theft is wrong? They think that before they know anything about "rights" or "justice," etc. It's part of the golden rule, which they also seem to know intuitively.

So here's my little gift to the coercive redistributionists: Is it possible that some differences in economic outcome are so extraordinarily disadvantagious to some people or groups that they "shock the conscience" in a way that triggers a similar "intuitive" moral objection?

Here's an example from the past: French aristocrats vs. strarving peasants. The former's only claim to their position is that some ancestor was a better bloodyhanded imperialist bastard than the next guy.

How relevent is that example in a modern, liberal, capitalist republic? Social mobility is demonstrably possible. The fact that some dynasties like the Kennedies or Hunts exists doesn't hold anyone else back.

In this country we do have an underclass, which I argue is the product of self destructive habits, and Pure argues is the product of economic exploitation. Even if I'm correct (I am), what about the kids - they aren't born with those destructive habits; it's just bad luck that they are socialized in ways that set them up for failure. They are victims.

Or, what about the thing that concerns Charles Murray, which is the growing gap between the earnings of educated vs. unskilled workers, and the fact that it's increasingly difficult for the latter to have what most of us would call a comfortable bourgeois standard of living even if they work full time-plus. My hard core libertarian friends correctly point out that they are still much better off than almost everyone in all previous generations, and then expel me when I say, "Not good enough if they can't enjoy a level of comfort and security that meets certain arbitrary modern standards set by me."

I suspect that this gap may be a temporary product of the transtion from an manufacturing to a service-centered economy, but "temporary" could mean a couple generations or more. And I could be wrong. None of us want to live in a class society without opportunities to get ahead available to every person willing to work hard and not engage in self-destructive behaviors.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

The market is always a struggle between vampires and parasites.

 

[Guest]

<snip>

How relevent is that example in a modern, liberal, capitalist republic? Social mobility is demonstrably possible. The fact that some dynasties like the Kennedies or Hunts exists doesn't hold anyone else back.

In this country we do have an underclass, which I argue is the product of self destructive habits, and Pure argues is the product of economic exploitation. Even if I'm correct (I am), what about the kids - they aren't born with those destructive habits; it's just bad luck that they are socialized in ways that set them up for failure. They are victims.

Or, what about the thing that concerns Charles Murray, which is the growing gap between the earnings of educated vs. unskilled workers, and the fact that it's increasingly difficult for the latter to have what most of us would call a comfortable bourgeois standard of living even if they work full time-plus. My hard core libertarian friends correctly point out that they are still much better off than almost everyone in all previous generations, and then expel me when I say, "Not good enough if they can't enjoy a level of comfort and security that meets certain arbitrary modern standards set by me."

I suspect that this gap may be a temporary product of the transtion from an manufacturing to a service-centered economy, but "temporary" could mean a couple generations or more. And I could be wrong. None of us want to live in a class society without opportunities to get ahead available to every person willing to work hard and not engage in self-destructive behaviors.

I disagree.

Hard-working, bill-paying middle-class folk are just one serious medical illness away from becoming the underclass of which you speak. Or one parent losing their job for a few months. Or any other serious complication.

And as for kids being socialized?

I see the kids of affluent parents every day. They have laptops. They have tutors. They have lessons in gymnastics, dance, karate, piano, grace. They own instruments and sports equipment. They go to space camp, band camp, science camp, writing camps, sports camps every summer. In high school they have their own vehicles. Their parents have connections. They are on a solid track to whichever college they wish because they will not be bound by scholarships or finances in any way.

So I have to ask. For the victim children of less-than-affluent parents, even well-educated parents, how in the hell can we compete or compare?

The truth is that we can't. We aren't socializing our kids to set them up for failure. We just don't have the money to socialize them to be affluent.

Of the many times you've slammed those who "don't have" around here, this one bothers me the most.

So I'm a terrible parent, then, raising victims instead of children, because we aren't wealthy? Fuck that.

Politically we argue vehemently. And every time you say even though we disagree politically, we both wish for the best for this country.

I don't believe that about you any longer. You care only about yourself, making sure you're set. And fuck the country. You've got yours, you're fine with that, let everyone else try and get theirs, but you won't help, and in fact, you'll look down on them for trying to succeed.

 

[Pure]

guess what...

None of us want to live in a class society without opportunities to get ahead available to every person willing to work hard and not engage in self-destructive behaviors.

we do live in such a society. republican conventioneering speeches on the 'american dream' notwithstanding. no doubt you'll say the absence of black faces their is caused by 'self destructive behavior.'

here is a simple question for those in this thread: are you better off in financial terms, including assets and savings, than your parents? or if that's unfair, i'd add "than your parents were when they were about your age." in simple terms, this is the question, does your life show 'upward mobility'.

 

[rgraham666]

She lost me a couple of years ago when she made clear her views on the place of the mentally ill in the world she envisions.

We can't have relationships, we can't have children and we can't have jobs.

She's just another economic determinist where people are only have as much value as they can contribute to the economy and no more. Not all that different from the Marxists, really.

 

[Guest]

I can't believe how upset this has made me.

But I am trying to put it into perspective.

It's far easier to blame the victim than to blame the situation, I realize.

I'm reminded of children who are living in abusive homes. Once the situation is discovered and people are trying to sort through the mess some actually ask the children, "Why didn't you just leave?"

Um - where would they go?

It's easier to blame the victim, because otherwise there is an element of fear and personal risk.

If it happened to those people, the ones who were actually playing by the rules, working hard, paying the bills, grad school educated, "nice" people, then maybe it could happen to me, too!

Therefore, it must be their fault. They're to blame. They are victims. They were indulgent or too self-destructive. They squandered their money or lost jobs due to incompetence. They didn't take care of themselves, and the medical problems were also caused by something they did to themselves.

Their situation will never happen to me. I'm above it all.

How on this fucking planet could I ever vote for a political party that looks down on me because I'm not affluent?

Fuck that. Fuck them. Fuck this mindset that people who aren't rich are beneath contempt.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

SARAH

Much of what you say is true. You make some good points.

 

[Guest]

SARAH

Much of what you say is true. You make some good points.

Thanks, JBJ.

I apologize for expecting the worst before I read your post.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

ROB

Unforunately, if a plague killed 90% of humans the loss would be inconsequential.

I'm reading a book about the Marine Corps. The Marines are of two minds about recruits: Is it better to cull the thugs and miscreants from the ranks and save a ton of money and stress, or is it better to find a way to connect with these people and maybe save a life?

The Marines say the Army has a 3rd option: Give everyone a gold star and let al Quaida sort them out.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

SARAH

I give the Devil her credit when its due.

 

[Guest]

SARAH

I give the Devil her credit when its due.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Sweetsubsarahh -

Are you implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) teaching your children that education is not important? Are you inculcating a non-work ethic in them, and an attitude of entitlement? Do you put getting high and hanging out with your friends ahead of spending quality time with your children? Do the examples you set for your teenage daughter tell her that it's OK to get pregnant even though she has no education, no prospects and no real relationship with the boy, who also has no prospects or education?

Of course not. The group that describes are the people I am talking about when I refer to the underclass. They primarily inhabit urban cores but there are pockets of them in many other places. I do not have a "blame the victim" attitude toward them because those bad parents also had bad parents and never had an opportunity to learn any better habits themselves.

I thought of you when writing that post in which I opened the door to wealth redistribution, but it was already too long so I didn't try to capture the situation you are in. Or more accurately, I don't understand why you seem to be so close to the edge financially with apparently little prospect of advancing, seeing as how you have a good education, good values and a good work ethic. I don't think our backgrounds are that different, and I know and work with lots of people who like you and me started with nothing except good values and did get manage to get a good education. Most of them get by and have done alright, and are not "just one serious medical illness away from becoming the underclass of which you speak." I don't know if you've just been the victim of a series of bad breaks, live in an impoverished area or what, but your situation does comport with the middle class reality that I see around me and which countless statistics suggest is the broader reality. (And I am fairly sophisticated in my understanding of the limitations and potenial misuse of various statistics.) Your situation seems to be an outlier in this on-line community as well.

Your experience is what it is, and I don't deny it, even though I don't understand it. You are being very unfair to me, however. You infer that I live in some ivory tower country club divorced from middle class realities, and based on that am contemptuous of those who are less well off. I don't and I'm not. In the past dozen years I have been fortunate enough to discover and build a career that for the first time in my life has allowed me to live in reasonable comfort (a nice 1,800 sf home with a mortgage) and security (a growing 401k), but I am in the late stages of my working life. I point this out out only to express that I am not disconnected from middle class realities.

In this thread I've pointed out the moral contradictions in wealth redistribution policies, but in the post that set you off I cited Charles Murray, who has proposed a very amitious redistribution program that I have endorsed. Notwithstanding my libertarian worldview I have tried to keep an open mind on these issue and to be introspective about them. Murray's concern and proposal is based on a reality that I see around me. You describe a personal reality that I do not see as any mass phenomenon. This gets us into the limits imposed by the anonymity imposed by the nature of this site, because you can't give me the personal details that would potentially open my eyes to a broader reality of which I am not aware.

Finally, I can't imagine how you could read my post about an underclass characterized by destructive habits and imagine I was talking about you. That almost suggests that you are looking for an excuse to unload on me for reasons that I don't understand.

 

[Liar]

Are there kids who are born into poverty and socialized, by their parents and/or the community they live in, to be non-achievers?

Yes. There are some. But I can't imagine that it's an epidemic. Most people want something better, and try to achieve it to the best of their abilities.

Is it possible to "pull oneself up from the gutter by one's own bootstaps" and make a good life for oneself and one's kids, despite being born into poverty?

Yes. But it involves two things. Hard work and luck.

Some people do all the right things, work hard, study hrad, stay out of trouble and away from bad company... and they're still stuck in the same bog. Because breaks are few and far between and they were too busy staying afloat to catch one when it passed by. A fair society needs to eliminate the need for luck. Or rather eliminate the situation where a streak of bad luck (for instance, illness) spells disaster.

A good society IMO, isn't one that makes life "at the bottom" comfortable, but one that doesn't allow people who really try their hardest, to fail. A good society is one that makes sure there's always a ladder, for those who wants to climb it.

Today there isn't. Not in your country, nor in mine. And that is just plain undignified.