DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE?

"We've become a society in which the big bucks go to bad
actors, a society that lavishly rewards those who make us
poorer." So writes Paul Krugman (PK) in a NYT op. ed.
of 8/3/09. He had in mind Wall St. and the financial in-
dustry gamblers that "plunged us into economic crisis"
(his words) and were then rescued by taxpayers' money
to the tune of $1 trillion or so.

PK goes on to explain "high speed trading," where big
firms use super fast (and super expensive) computers to
act ahead of other investors by a millisecond to reap huge
profits by buying or selling a stock before ordinary inves-
tors can. Of course that's an unfair advantage, and should
be illegal.

The super fast computers also secure "insider information"
by anticipating by split seconds what the price of a parti-
cular stock will do. Trading with insider information not
available to the general public is illegal. But it is done with
impunity. There are cops, but they are blind! Who do you
suppose arranges that?

Making us poorer to enrich a few unscrupulous gamblers is,
of course, at the very heart of lais-sez-faire capitalism. They
play and the public pays. Twas ever thus. St. Jerome, one
of the early church Fathers, said: "The Gospel rightly calls
riches unjust because they have no origin other than injus-
tice, and nobody can own them without another losing them."

An arm of Citigroup that speculates in oil and other com-
modities has made so much profit (according to PK) that
their star broker is entitled to a $100 million bonus! Citi,
you will recall, is into us taxpayers for $45 billion. Where's
our bonus?

The finance wizards continue to move investment (and
therefor jobs) overseas, where the action is: China's GDP is
growing at 8% while ours has "improved" from -8% to
"only" -1% this quarter. But it's still minus, and unemploy-
ment continues to rise.

In the meantime, our manufacturing base continues to
shrink as more of those firms go out of business or out of
the country. The remaining jobs will be either in well
paying hi-tech areas (not enough of those) or in lower
paying service areas (most employment, actually.) The
latter do not enable families to flourish as the working
class once did. The underclass becomes enslaved by debt,
poor health, lack of education and underemployment. To
deal with it many turn to crime or recreational drugs.
Confucius (500 B. C.) said: "When poverty is widespread
the bold (among them) become robbers." Well, isn't that
what the richest among us become as well? And how
about their enablers is Congress? James K. Galbraith
has written about that brilliantly in The Predator State.

Tertullian, another influential church Father, said that
Jesus, who had no material possessions, always defended
the poor and condemned the rich. We've come a long
way, haven't we? But in which direction?

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net