There's No Justice In It At All - Granite Grok

There’s No Justice In It At All

Having laid out the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute as a think-tank puppet for the advancement of taxation and the Democrat parties social and economic justice agenda in New Hampshire, I felt compelled to follow that up with an addendum on the deeper evil that lay beneath the facade of a “well meaning” left wing policy group.

First, the terms Social and Economic justice are redundant.  They are the same thing.  The redistribution of money by the state through tax policy for some random, current notion of social justice is economic justice and vice-cersa.  You can’t have one lie without the other.  And as Jonah Goldberg points out in Tyranny of Clichés,  Social Justice as a concept can result in dangerously misleading nonsense.  On the matter of the injustice of high unemployment (for example) he asks..,

“..who is being unjust?  The employers who cannot afford more workers?  The consumers who refuse to create enough demand to justify more workers?  The government for not taxing innocent parties to pay for labor that isn’t needed and that they did not vote for?  Social Justice assumes rights–social rights, economic rights, etc.–that cannot be enforced.”

I would add to that (and perhaps this should be obvious) that even if you accept a government obligation to drive commerce or create employment though redistributive policy, all you are doing is institutionalizing the injustice and protecting the injustice with the force of law.  The state cannot know the wants and needs of every consumer or potential employer/ employee, nor can it by an stretch of the imagination apply resources to create equality.  It is impossible to achieve.  There will always be a favorite, some person, group, or industry will always get more than some other creating different inequalities from those originally perceived with the no path to resolution short of revolution.

So this suggests that what progressive social and economic theory is really after is not progressive at all.  It is a return to a Monarchical society where a privileged upper class decides who wins and loses while denying those ill-affected any ability to better their circumstances within the law.  Call it the State House, the Executive Branch, the King’s Royal Council, or the Politburo but the inevitable ends are the same.  Tyranny.

Acting based on a desire for Social and Economic Justice empowers the state to decide everything from earning limits,  how much you can keep, what you can get, why you have to give  it up, or why you are eligible to get what there is to have.  And this is always a moving target based on the whim of the moment with no predictable arc by which to make decisions about your own future.  No one can know what the Government will have or do, whether they are the taxpayer or the welfare recipient.  And you certainly can’t run a business (or even plan a life) under those conditions, and most wont try.  So where is the justice in re-ordering society such that the bulk of it has no idea what tomorrow might bring?

And unlike the Constitution (which the government ignores far too often already) there are no limits upon the reach of the Social or Economic Justice.  Under this endeavor government can never stop seeking “remedies” at taxpayer expense until the State has complete command and control of all the wealth to relieve all the “injustice,” essentially standing as the arbiter of Government defined morality du jour for everyone.  An immoral, liberty-less state-of-being better known as a fascist or communist dictatorship.

So does the NHFPI want to see the end of freedom in New Hampshire?  They would say no.  But the policies and the foundations upon which they are based do not provide them with the means to place limits on their agenda.  It therefore must follow that to pursue them without regard for the Constitutional limits that exist to prevent government from devolving into a centrally planned police state is not much different than simply accepting that most logical outcome.

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