Thomas wrote:okie wrote:As soon as you start talking about "social justice," you lose me, as that is the language of the Pol Pots, Stalins, and Fidel Castros of the world. If social justice means you should be able to live just as well by sittin on your behind as the rocket scientist, then I think you are barking up the wrong tree, so quit your whinin and go to work.
It's always nice to define not just your own arguments, but also your opponents' arguments and who their most prominent proponents are. That makes it so much easier to argue against them -- never mind that you're wrong.
The most prominent philosopher of "social justice" today is John Rawls. To my knowledge, the concept first emerged in Catholic Social Teaching at the end of the 19th century. (Rawls's major 20th-century innovation was to give a secular foundation to the philosophy.) This school of thought holds that a social order should be measured by the welfare of its weakest members. (If you are a Christian, Okie, you may remember that the teachings of Jesus Christ were quite similar on this point.) The practical result of the philosophy is to accept capitalism as the best system for generating wealth, then supplement it with a welfare state for sharing the wealth. The optimal welfare state, according to this philosophy, is the one that redistributes income to the point that maximizes the wealth of the poorest members, but no further. Redistribute too little, and the strong leave the weak out in the cold. Redistribute too much, and productive members of society lose their incentives to produce. The trick is to hit the sweet spot in the middle.
You can get a feel of where this sweet spot is by looking into the
CIA World Factbook. There you can find GDP data for each country, along with the income share of the lowest 10% for most countries. From this, you can calculate which countries maximize the income of their lowest 10%. These countries would define the direction into which the proponents of "Social Justice" would reform the United States. The last time I did this excercise, the top five countries were Taiwan, Japan, Norway, Finland, and Austria. All of these countries are "more liberal" than the US currently is. But more importantly, all of them also resemble the current US much more than they do Stalin's Russia, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and Castro's Cuba. Your insinuations in this direction are pure demagoguery.
(Full disclosure: I am
not a Rawlesian myself, nor do I adhere to Catholic Social Teaching. I just don't like it when ideas are gratuitously defamed.)
I merely pointed out that the word, social justice, is a red flag to me, in terms of the poster's underlying philosophy. It typically denotes a dislike of capitalism and a love for government intervention to make things more fair. I have read about how the Pol Pots, the Castros, the Stalins, became motivated, and almost without fail it was in the name of social and economic justice. Further, I think the countries you cite are countries with more ubiquitous and homogenous populations, so I don't think the comparisons work perfectly.
If you are going to start quoting Jesus Christ, I don't think he was a proponent of government programs, and in fact he never became involved in any that I know of. It was all on a personal and voluntary basis, so your reference is not applicable. Who here has ever criticized voluntary giving to charity, which is a huge activity here in the States?
I read on forums like this all the time what government is not doing, and very little about what responsibilities that people have to be responsible for themselves. We don't teach citizenship, we don't talk about it much as a society, and we don't emphasize it. The emphasis is on what government is doing or not doing for every poor soul out there. Yes, I am in favor of justice and equality of opportunity, that is what this country is about, and that is the reason why millions want to come here.
If I wrongly offend anyone by the reference to communist dictators, I apologize, but they are free to call me on it and tell me that they are very pro-capitalist and anti-communist, but rarely do they ever do that, so I am assuming I was not too far off in my hunch most of the time I use the reference. After all, the reference is valid and I don't think valid references are necessarily demagoguery.
One last point, I fully realize we have a certain amount of social programs, but we are constantly needing to evaluate those to figure out if they are really helping us in the long run. I am not particularly thrilled about instituting more, and as I said, I don't think Japan and the other countries mentioned are particularly good comparisons.
