With all the hoopla over politics
and economics these days, you’d think there would be something with some
substance to it, but all we see is the same-old-same-old that does not get to
the root of any of the problems or exhibit any respect for human dignity. In any event, here are this week’s news
items:
• June Woodman, R.I.P. It is with
deep sadness that we received word of the death of June Woodman, wife of
long-time CESJ member and friend, Robert Woodman. June died November 8, 2019 after a long
illness. Details can be found in her
obituary by following
this link.
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| Silas Marner |
• Retirement Blues and Qs. There has been a spate of articles recently on the
internet about the benefits of retiring early and the perils of retiring early,
often posted in various news feeds alternately.
This makes it rather difficult to make up your mind . . . as to whether
the so-called experts can make up their minds!
Most of the “controversy” (and that’s pitching it very strongly for such
a silly discussion) revolves around whether it’s better to kill yourself and
act like Silas Marner denying yourself everything in your effort to accumulate
a million dollars in order to retire at age forty and enjoy yourself . . .
having forgotten how to enjoy yourself in your anxiety to save money as fast as
possible. A typical goal is to save
60-70% of your paycheck (presumably of the net, not the gross), forgoing everything
unrelated to keeping body and soul together for another day to continuing
striving for the Holy Grail of Savings.
Parties? Nope. Date night?
Are you out of your mind?
Vacations? Hoot, mon, a sinful
waste o’ pounds and pence.
Children? Don’t be
ridiculous! Then suddenly you’re forty
and you have the time you wanted, the money you sacrificed for . . . and have
no desire to do any of the things for which you were saving. Wouldn’t it be better to join with others and
work for a Capital
Homestead Act that would allow you to “save” for investment
without reducing your consumption or forgoing reasonable pleasures before you no
longer find them pleasurable?
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| Most people don't understand real social justice. |
• Social Justice Definition.
It becomes clearer every day that many people continue to think that
social justice is somehow a substitute for individual justice and charity. That idea completely misses the breakthrough
that Pope Pius XI made in the area of moral philosophy. Social justice is not a substitute for individual justice and charity, but enables individual justice and charity to function. To call, for example, payment of a just wage "social justice" is to misunderstand social justice at the most fundamental level. Social justice is not, as many seem to assume, a new term for socialism, but a virtue directed specifically to the common good, that vast network of institutions within which human beings as "political animals" acquire and develop virtue and thereby become more fully human. Both "democratic socialism" and "democratic capitalism" — by whatever name they are known (and the variations are endless) — completely miss the point of social justice. It is not mere philanthropy or (when the rich fail to divest themselves of their wealth voluntarily) coercive redistribution, even though those have limited applications under the principle of double effect (very limited). Social justice is not directed at the good of individuals at all, regardless of the number we are talking about. No, social justice is directed to the good of institutions, not individuals, and affects individual good only indirectly.
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| Walter Reuther |
• Fight for $15. Although
they are working very hard to muffle the downside, the New York
Times has come very close to admitting that the push to
raise the minimum wage to $15.00 nationwide might not be such a good
thing. While in the short term border
businesses in New York state, especially the Pennsylvania border area, are not
seeing too much of a downturn in restaurants and other businesses in the
service industry (and some claim business is booming), those engaged in
production are reporting decreased profits and loss of business in response to
the higher cost of doing business, and business owners overall are certain that
in the mid- to long-term they will see a flight of businesses and jobs to
places like Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
What the whole movement to increase the minimum wage to increase real
income does not take into account is that the people most hurt by rising costs
of wages are the people it is intended to help.
No one appears to appreciate what the labor statesman Walter Reuther
stated in his testimony before Congress, that raising fixed costs like wages
hurts everyone, but that taking increases out of profits as owners increases
real income without increasing costs.
• Social Security COLA. While the usual rhetoric about Social Security
almost always includes the mantra, “It’s my money, I paid it in,” the fact is
that in 1960 in Fleming v. Nestor the Supreme Court of the United States
upheld the original Social Security Act of 1935 as passed by Congress that
gives Congress the right to adjust benefits at any time. The Supreme Court specifically ruled that participants
in the Social Security system do not, repeat, do not have
ownership of what is credited to their accounts. If you look closely, you will also notice
that the money you pay into the system is a tax and not a “contribution.” You do not continue to own the taxes you pay
to government. You do own any
contributions you pay into a qualified retirement plan. The reason for bringing this up is that many
people are becoming upset that Congress might not increase Social Security
benefits to adjust for the rising cost of living, the now-expected “Cost Of
Living Adjustment” or COLA, and they are irate.
It’s “their money,” they argue, and Congress is a thief for withholding
it . . . forgetting that in many cases most people receive more out of Social
Security than they paid in. The only
real solution, of course, is to return Social Security to its original purpose
of a social safety net — after keeping all current promises — but make
the proposed Capital
Homestead Act the core around which to build individual savings
and investment, not only for retirement, but for everyday consumption income.
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| Contented books for contented cows? |
• Shop online and support CESJ’s work! Did you know that by making
your purchases through the Amazon Smile program,
Amazon will make a contribution to CESJ? Here’s how: First, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your Amazon account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington.” If you type anything
else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift through. Once you’ve typed (or copied and pasted) “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you will be taken to
the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• Blog Readership. We have had visitors from 28 different countries
and 34 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over
the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, India, Canada, the
United Kingdom, and Russia. The most
popular postings this past week in descending order were “Thomas
Hobbes on Private Property,” “Just
Third Way Video,” “News
from the Network, Vol. 12, No. 45,” “Never is
a Long Time,” and “The
Pons Asinorum of Binary Economics.”
Those are the happenings for this
week, at least those that we know about.
If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a
note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into
the next “issue.” Due to imprudent
language on the part of some commentators, we removed temptation and disabled
comments.
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