"Justice requires fundamental economic equality, not absolute economic equality."

National Catholic Register recently posted online a November 23rd article by Mark Brumley, titled, "Should We Seek Economic Equality?" Here is part of it:

What about the claims of some in the Occupy Movement? Here we can make a few observations.

First, we need clarity regarding the economic value of work. The only meaningful economic measure is the value attached to work by those willing to pay for it. If people are willing to pay the 1% more for what they do than people are willing to pay the 99% for what they do, then the 1%, all other things being equal, ought to receive more for what they do.

Second, although the market determines the economic value of one’s activity, there is also the human or ethical value, rooted in one’s dignity as a person. “Even prior to the logic of a fair exchange of goods and the forms of justice appropriate to it,” wrote Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Centesimus Annus, “there exists something which is due man because he is man, by reason of his lofty dignity” (35).

The “something which is due man because he is man” is the same for all human beings. Fundamental human dignity and equality give moral value to a man’s effort to provide a decent life for himself and those for whom he is responsible. Consequently, everyone should have or should be able to obtain wealth sufficient to lead a decent human life because of what is due to people as human beings.

In other words, every man should be a “have” when it comes to a certain minimal level of economic resources; no one should be a “have not.” There should be, then, fundamental economic equality, even while justice sometimes demands economic inequality for wealth over and above the fundamental minimum. Justice requires fundamental economic equality, not absolute economic equality.

When some folks in the Occupy Movement decry the disparity of wealth, they err if they think unequal wealth is itself unjust. Different activities can justly have different economic value, even vastly different economic value, and thus people can justly receive vastly different incomes or vastly different rates of income growth.

On the other hand, if someone has less than the minimum any human being naturally needs in order to lead a good human life, that situation contradicts fundamental human dignity. Such an inequality of condition shouldn’t exist.

The challenge for those seeking social justice is to create a society in which everyone is a “have” — everyone can from his labor or other sources of income generate sufficient wealth to meet his moral obligations to himself and others — while ensuring that those whose work is economically more valuable receive their due, in proportion to its greater economic value.

Read the entire piece, which is a very helpful primer on an oft-misunderstood and misrepresented topic.

Comments

[LJ]

The challenge for those seeking social justice is to create a society in which everyone is a “have” — everyone can from his labor or other sources of income generate sufficient wealth to meet his moral obligations to himself and others — while ensuring that those whose work is economically more valuable receive their due, in proportion to its greater economic value.

The challenge as well, then, is to quantify that before you even talk about a system or a modification of an existing system to meet that standard. Moreover, the standard cannot be an absolute in monetary terms because of the sliding value of money itself. And, of course, the temptation is also to put the standard itself on a sliding scale of need and want, wherein "wants" become seen as needs particularly in a hyper-consumption society pumped up with advertising.

A tricky business indeed in a world with heavy doses of greed and envy.

[Mark Brumley]

Yes, but that's the world in which we live. I understand your concern. The distinction between real needs and only apparent needs or wants is crucial. Likewise, it is important that we foster an economy in which as much as possible people are enabled to care for their own needs--doing for themselves rather than having others "do for" them.

At the same time, I would rather risk going beyond needs to supply wants than to risk ignoring needs for fear of winding up addressing wants. I think it better to risk more "doing for" than is necessary than to risk doing less "doing for" than is necessary.

[LJ]

Point taken, Mark. But I have to step back, while sympathetic in one sense with the original theme of the Occupy movement, I first have serious disagreement with their whole characterization "1%" and "99%". If we are discussing America and the rest of the western democracies, those proportions have little to do with what they were talking about. Catchy symbols, no doubt, but when we listened to the far left side of the protest we quickly realized that we had to wedge every CEO of every corporate entity, every business owner, etc. into that narrow 1% and it became a joke, and simply an old style labor vs management argument.

This is where we have to take stock and look out at the big picture. What is considered poverty in America is wealth in many parts of the world. And yet when we look out on the entire world, we witness in stark relief the great ugly truth of the starvation of nations, and that is in most if not all cases, the absolute vicious "leadership" that sits on immediate wealth and wealth of resources, in a true equation of 1% vs. 99%, brutally enforced.

It causes us to realize as well that the source and root of these problems and any milder problems we may have in our western societies is fundamentally a moral one, not a systemic one per se.

We are discussing the issue, so the presumption is that there can be some "system" or some revamping of the current state of affairs to come closer to achieving what you have pointed out is the true meaning of "social justice." I would suggest that if we are talking about a "system" in any sort of model form the political component must necessarily factor that understanding of the nature of humanity.

I think one can be cynical, better yet a realist, without being a Calvinist. What does history teach us, going right back to Moses and the people of Israel? We can count on people to forget God and head off into every kind of immorality and vice over time. Well then, as the Church, we must then consider our mission and set up the model that would maximize our freedom and opportunity to carry out that mission. What is that? Maximize religious liberty, personal liberty and minimize government. What about economics? Whether you call it capitalism or free markets or nothing at all, economics is what happens between people. Rule of law protects people from robbery and fraud. Who deals with economic disparity? Why we do, the Church. That is part of our mission regardless of the government. In a truly free society we can do that without interference.

How do you tweak what we have now? Here's a thought. Perhaps the G20 could get together and muster the courage to change the economies of the west from debt based currency to reclaiming the authority to print money out of thin air from private banking interests to the governments of each nation. Then, the wealth of the nations would be with the people of the nations, which is only right because they are being held up as surety for the debts of the governments anyway. This would really address the underlying issue of the Occupy movement, diverting the proceeds of the work and business of the nation from the true 1%, the usurers, back into the nation, the people.

It is a scary proposition. American presidents have been assassinated for trying it but if the entire west did it at one time, there would be too many heads of state to take down. The usury that is crippling all of the economies would not control those economies and reap the cream from the top anymore. Perhaps it might put some of the money-changers out of work for awhile, but I think that if we wish to talk about the fundamental immorality of our economic systems that is where you start.

The real economy of a nation is the people and the natural resources that surround them, all God-given, not created by bankers. In a recession or depression those resources and the people remain the same as they did the day before, the year before. So what then causes a recession? A shortage of liquidity, that is all. Who controls that today? The true 1%, the usurers. Take it out of their hands and recessions are a thing of the past, as are booms, busts and bubbles.

The Occupy people had the right instinct at first, but they didn't know who to talk to and what to say.