Earlier the TV was on and I heard Bill O’Reilly say that President Obama is a proponent of economic justice. I wish an honest reporter would have the nerve to ask him exactlyto define economic justice.
In my mind, economic justice is allowing me to keep more of the money I work hard to earn. The more I keep, the more I have to spend. The more I (and my fellow Americans) spend, the more people achieve economic justice. Sounds pretty simple. But then, by the grace of God, I was able to avoid being brainwashed by a liberal media, entertainment industry, and education system. And I don’t like Kool Aid.
Something tells me Barack Obama and I have differing views of economic justice. He believes in spreading the wealth around. That’s code for taking something one person earned and giving it to another person who did nothing to earn it. If you ask me, that’s economic injustice!
On that note, I’m going to turn in. I have to get up and go to work in the morning. You know, to achieve a little economic justice.
This post brought to mind a wonderful Hayek quote on economic justice:
“No state of affairs as such is just or unjust: it is only when we assume that somebody is responsible for having brought it about. Now, we do complain that God has been unjust when one family has suffered many deaths and another family has all of its children grow up safely. But we know we can’t take that seriously. We don’t mean that anybody has been unjust.”
“In the same sense, a spontaneously working market, where prices act as guides to action, cannot take account of what people in any sense need or deserve, because it creates a distribution which nobody has designed, and something which has not been designed, a mere state of affairs as such, cannot be just or unjust. And the idea that things ought to be designed in a ‘just’ manner means, in effect, that we must abandon the market and turn to a planned economy in which somebody decides how much each ought to have, and that means, of course, that we can only have it at the price of the complete abolition of personal liberty.”
– F.A. Hayek
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I have no idea if Lead Pencil is trying to say he/she agrees or disagrees with Obama’s idea of economic justice. As he/she believes that quote is “wonderful” instead of “abhorrent” leads me to believe he/she is one of those who “need”.
In that quote we see, again “Need and deserve”—not ‘earned and deserved’. I am not, and will never be, one of those people who believes that merely to need is enough to deserve. It is a fact that some of us work hard and buy our own homes; it is further a fact that some people, whether they work hard or not, have lives just messy enough that they will never be in a position to do that and will live in a rented property all of their lives. It’s how things shake out, and no one is responsible for your ‘economic justice’.
Read the passage about the 20th Century Motor Company in Atlas Shrugged. No better illustration of the immorality and destructiveness of that whole idea of “each according to his need” has been written.
If I am wrong, Lead Pencil, and you are instead one of those people who believe you are wholly responsible for your own existence and success, do let me know.
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Daneen,
The quote supports your view, as it does mine.
I’m beginning to question my judgment by continuing to follow a blog whose commentors do not understand when I’m offering a quote which is not only fully supportive of the bloggers own views, but was delivered by a man who is still regarded as perhaps the foremost defender of economic freedom in the 20th century! In all seriousness, you may agree after a careful reading of the quote. Hayek was brilliant, even if he was verbose.
Everyone is responsible for themselves. The market does not take into account need. It is a system. This is not a bug, it’s a feature. Ensuring remuneration based on “need” would cripple the very market order which has enabled the great mass of the human population to simply be fed. It is economic ignorance beyond measure to think you can have your cake and eat it too.
I love “Shrugged” b.t.w.
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Hi lead pencil – I think Daneen may have misread the quote. I love Hayek. Like you said, though, a bit verbose. That was the style back then. I only wish more Americans followed the models of Hayek and Mises.
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Here is what I was taught as a kid, you don’t work you don’t eat.No one owes anyone a free ride in this country. Knock these leeches off the government dole and the budget would have a surplus overnight. Until the morning and these idiot’s in DC run it into the red again.
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