Forum Post: Economic Justice
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 25, 2011, 11:11 p.m. EST by MVSN
(768)
from Stockton, CA
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Will one or more of you PLEASE tell me what that term means?
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
--MLK-- April 4, 1967
Economic justice is when the product of the nation is more or less shared on a almost equal distribution between the Producers and the workers....Look at the industrialized nations and you will see the USA is at the top in wealth and the bottom in income distribution, the worker get shit and the producers and wall street get almost the whole pie. which without the workers there would be no pie.
The workers are the producers. Nobody but the workers produces jack.
I guess I used the wrong term, "the Company's". Instead of Producers.
Thank you. Now I understand.
I'd suggest reading John Rawls. Here's a good summary: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/rawls-on-wall-street/
any relation to Ron Lawl
:o)
It could also be in reference to John Rawls's Second Principle of Justice:
Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that (Rawls, 1971, p.303; revised edition, p. 47): (a) they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle). (b) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rawls
One interpretation might be - those that create or add the value are rewarded accordingly. Today wealth is not only removed disproportionately from those who actually created it but from the investments in companies and communities needed to sustain them. Earnings are increasingly steered into few pockets and often the pockets of those who had little or nothing to do with its creation. (equitable, wise) Distribution of wealth is an unsolved societal problem of long standing.
So as a small business owner what could I do in the name of economic justice? According to some it means Affirmative Action.
Treat your employees the way you would want to be treated if you were them.
Empathy.
Listen I would be cool with profit sharing with my employees, if they were cool with taking the losses with me too .... they aren't into it.
I don't like to work for companies that aren't on sound footing. They have their choice when they hire me or not and dictate terms, I exercise my power to Leave when I want. That's business. Nothing personal!
No, I'm not into losses, and I do not want to work for companies that have a propensity for losses and lay-offs.
Don't take it personally. Just Business. Two Way Street!!!
You name a single company more than a decade old that has never posted a quarterly loss? Not even Goldman Sachs can say that. My point is lets be fair, if employee benefit when business is good they should lose when business is bad.
SHELL OIL
In a win-win, I provide the expertise and willingness to put in work hours for job that you guarantee a set salary. I promise my expertise, you your money. That agreement. I will NEVER work for a greedy employer that wants me pay his bad expert decisions. I don't balance his books and he doesn't ask me for permission to make his command decisions.
Do you ask your employees to second guess your "big" decisions since you want them to be responsible for them? Can they tell you NO?
Your greed wants it one-sided. You just stumbled on some lame way you dreamed up to minimize your risk as business man by making your $10 shoulder your risk that makes you rich and keeps them with bare necessities of life!!!
.....................................You are the scrooge!
Merry Christmas
As a small business owner I would suggest, assuming your employees earned you a decent profit by the end of the year, that they be entitled to a nice Christmas bonus. In my somewhat limited experience with the world, I have found that a Christmas bonus goes a long way toward keeping your employees happy, both with their job and with their boss.
They do get a Christmas bonus. So that is it? A bonus? That is economic justice?
It was just one small suggestion, MVSN, lighten up. I don't profess to have all the answers. And yes, in one small way, that is economic justice. It's doing the right thing, isn't it?
Probably not much - it's more of a public policy issue I think. I don't think it's strictly related to affirmative action - is that still a thing?
I'm expecting you to pounce any minute, but that's ok.
No pouncing here. And Affirmative Action is alive and well. Just lok at Obamas judicial appointments.
Cool. So, Obama aside, I was just looking it up, and while the executive order is still in effect that directs government contractors and publicly-funded universities to have active policies to recruit and advance minorities, there are no quotas or any such thing - which are not legal. Just fyi.
Your point?
Like I said, just fyi. I didn't really know affirmative action was still a big talking point on the right side of things (it isn't on the left).
AA was invented by the Left to fuck and oppress whites. You God Obama wants to appoint many unqualified non whites to judgeships that effect many Americans. Wake up stupid.
I'm black and I support MVSN 100% ... you cannot fix inequality with more inequality. It should be public policy to promote diversity, just not government enforced by unaccountable bureaucrats. White males have suffered more than anyone and its shameful.
There's the pounce.
The world makes sense again, thanks. :o)
So that is what matters to you? Instead of having a conversation....
The conversation was over when you a) implied that the left is out to fuck anyone based on race, b) called Obama my god, and c) decided to go with "Wake up stupid."
[Removed]
Economic Justice means, directly, to prevent theft, and to bring the thieves to justice. Marketplaces that are economically unjust are areas where large govt and large corporations cheat. Its like if you went to a casino, and everytime you played, you lost because the game is fixed and there is cheating. But when other players played, they always won, because the game was fixed.
I see. But wouldn't the government be the enforcer of economic justice? Is a large government capable of that without rampant corruption?
Surprisingly, US Citizens have the responsibility of protecting the US Constitution. The govt is SUPPOSED to be the enforcer of economic justice, but unfortunately for all of us, they are not the enforcer, they, with corporation support, cause lots of theft. Hence - check out a site I made up about 5 years ago - http://www.iaej.org
Citizens must now enforce economics justice, and thats what Occupy is all about.... And yes I think a large govt can work better if the leaders were chosen by competition instead of popularity contests, and if we had real voting, with real voting receipts, instead of fraud voting. All this would help.
There are good leaders out there, but they are not in a position of power.
Nothing.
Really, I mean really ... Economic Justice, the name tells you everything both are imaginary concepts. For some reason people think that life is supposed to walk some magical line where things are evenly distributed and all things are equal ... its annoying at times. When there is production, the people who financially funded the venture make the most, followed by the person or people who came up with the idea, and what ever is left over goes to cost of production where wages exist.
"Economic inequality" is a side effect of technological progression and innovation, not some conspiracy. Look at it this way, think incomes of musicians or actors 200 years ago ... yes, you had a handful of stars in the big cities and even they didn't make much, but the difference between what they made and a traveling show or music group was nill. Now lets bring in the movie and the record, the technology allows one performance to be duplicated with no additional effort by the artist ... now the difference between the average and the superstar is exponential, the AVERAGE album sells 7-10k copies ... Michael Jackson's "Thriller" sold 140 mil. The AVERAGE actor is part time and makes less than $7k a year doing it ... how many actors make $20mil or more per film?
So this is why increasingly the difference between the "average" or middle class worker and the "superstars" or "1%ers" is so great ... not some Illuminati plot to keep people down.
on a final note, think about JK Rowling, she has made $1 bil on the Harry Potter series ... and no one is protesting her, saying she is greedy, or exploiting the 99%. She made the lionshare of the money ... did she rob the actors, the people who actually printed and bound her books or package her DVDs, the set people for the movies? Why aren't we Occupying Barnes&Nobles demanding she stop hoarding the book wealth? let me guess she's "different", yeah right, a billionaire is a billionaire no matter the source of their wealth.
You make more sense than any of these Marxist twits.