Tag Archives: social justice

AMERICA LOST THE ELECTION

When as man as dishonest as any who has ever held the office, with an economic record as dismal as that of the last four years, a man who refused to wear a flag pin on his lapel because he disdains the country he aspires to lead, a man who chose as his mentor a preacher who called in no uncertain terms upon God to bring damnation on America, when the people elect and then re-elect such a man to the Presidency you know you are no longer living in the land envisioned by the founders.  You are no longer living in an America as you have always known it.

Tuesday marked the start of the Post-American period for the United States.  Benjamin Franklin feared it; sages from Aristotle to Tocqueville predicted it; Democracy guaranteed it; too few people understand it; Barack Obama neither caused it nor led it.  He simply is presiding over the culmination of it.

It would take a thick book and a half to explain it but I will be foolish enough to try to do it in one paragraph.

Aristotle was the first to say that Democracy would bankrupt a society.  Karl Marx promoted the process with the populist theme “From each according to his ability to each according to his need.”  Today the same philosophy is expressed in the simple phrase Social Justice, which is defined as equal wealth for all.  Government is the vehicle for reaching that goal by taxing wealth away from those who produced it and re-distributing it to those who did not.  In any society achievers will be outnumbered by the masses and Aristotle warned that the masses would eventually deplete the national treasury by voting the wealth of the nation unto themselves and then squandering it.  He called it “the ultimate greed.”

It’s a slow process in a country with a large and prosperous middle class.  Freedoms must be taken away slowly and dependence created gradually.  It has been said that “The American people would never vote for socialism, but under the name of liberalism the American people would adopt every fragment of the socialist program.”  If Socialism is the ultimate greed then Obamacare was the ultimate deception.  It’s primary purpose was dependance, not healthcare.

How will it all end?  That’s the ultimate question.  Democratic countries like Spain, France and Greece have been ravished by overspending.  Unemployment is worse than it is in the United States.  The governments are literally running out of money to pay for benefits the people have come to believe really are entitlements.  The people riot, demonstrate and take to the streets demanding change then vote for a man like Hollande who promises to bring about the desired change by accelerating the very policies that caused the problem in the first place.

I am 81 years of age and will never know how it ends, but my grandchildren will.  That’s why my tagline reads “Driven by love of country and concern for its people, both present and yet to be.”

INCOME DISPARITY

A picture of income disparity

Vertical scale = per capita income Horizontal scale = population segments

This chart was published in Mother Jones to make some point or another about the shame of income disparity in America.  The chart is taken from a book titled “The Haves and the Have-Nots,” by the World Bank economist Branko Milanovic. I don’t know why Milanovic selected these countries and can only surmise it was because they were the three fastest growing major economies in the world over some recent time frame.

What the chart says to me is (1) the poorest group in the U.S. is infinitely better off than the poorest group in the other nations, (2) income disparity is the least in the U. S.  This is apparent all along the scale from the most impoverished to the wealthiest as shown by the relative flatness of the U.S. curve, (3) whatever faults the American economic system may have, they are insignificant when compared to the other systems because every group is better off in America, particularly the lower income ones.  Mother Jones picked a rose and called it a thorn.

China is a socialist country; India is not; Brazil is somewhere in between.  Nevertheless, the chart is a good illustration of the superiority of an economic system that incentivizes individual entrepreneurialism and protects the rewards for success with a healthy respect for property rights.  It’s a fact of life that equal treatment is bound to produce unequal results because people are not equal.  The capitalistic system gets the best from the best; socialism does not.  And if China can be taken as an example, socialism doesn’t reduce income disparity either.

THE NEW YORK TIMES ON DAVOS

The World Economic Forum is once again in cession in the posh town of Davos, Switzerland.  Today’s New York Times covers the conference with a story under the headline At Davos, a Big Issue Is the Have-Lots vs. the Have-Not.  The headline is right out of Alinsky, including the hyphens.

Believe it or not, I did not come here today to find fault with the New York Times.  I came to talk about bias; it’s just that taking examples from the Times was the easy way out.  Bias is the most insidious bias when it is subtle.  It is also very effective because from any given source it is usually incessant. Let’s examine this sentence taken from the Davos article.

“[The income gap now is] debated openly in areas where the primacy of laissez-faire capitalism used to be taken for granted and where talk of inequality used to be derided as class warfare.”  (emphasis mine)

Laissez-faire” is from the French where it means ‘let it happen’.  In economics it has come to mean that level of market freedom  which is free-wheeling, devoid of any meaningful regulation, a little bit reckless.  Later in the same sentence we read ‘used to be derided as class warfare’.  Removing the subtleties what we get are the notions that free-wheeling unregulated markets with minimal regulation are  the essence (primacy) of capitalism and that there is general agreement that pitting the poor against the rich is not an act of class warfare (used to deride).  Of course, there is no such agreement.

And what about that word ‘inequality’ in there.  In the context of the broad subject at hand it carries with it the connotation of unfairness.

The phrasing of a sentence in that manner comes easily to a liberally minded journalist and he would disclaim any bias in it.  But you saw it.  Or did you?  I told you it was subtle.

THE GREAT DIVIDE

When Obama refers to “social justice” he is lamenting the truth that some people are better off than others. There are the very rich and the very poor and that to him is the great injustice. Obama, I think sincerely, seeks to eliminate that inequality,an inequality of status.

Opposing thinkers do not use the term “social justice”. But if they did it would be defined as equal treatment. To create equal status you must take from the haves and give to the have-nots. This is not equal treatment. It requires force or coercion against one individual and charity to another without regard to merit. It is a great injustice.

Equal status vs. equal treatment, that is the Great Divide.

“A society that puts equality- in the sense of equality of outcome – ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests”   Milton Friedman

Bob B