I do have a solution to poverty in Australia, Don Aitken.

To begin with, let's stop importing poverty. Aghans alone have employment rates of only 6% after five years of residence. Iranians are the next group most at risk from long unemployment and poverty, with 88% still unemployed after five years. In Europe, 50% of the Muslim population is on welfare benefits. Angela Merkel summed it up nicely. The reason for European stagnation, she said, was because "Europe had 12% of the world's population, 26% of the world's manufacturing capability, and 56% of the world's welfare recipients."

In 1965, 3 % of the working age population in Australia was on welfare benefits. Now 16 % of adults rely on welfare. This is bad for them, bad for their children, and is financially unsustainable – ie bad for taxpayers. Another take on this – in 1965 there were 22 taxpayers for every one person on welfare; now the number is 5.

Extrapolate forward and you see a vision of Greece, Spain, Cypress, and Ireland, with their own national insolvency problems. The populations of these countries and their elected representatives were acutely aware of their financial insolvency, decades ago. But like irresponsible creditors with a new credit card, they borrowed until they could borrow no more, and they wished away their problems until the bailiffs arrived.

Poverty is primarily a factor of intelligence and culture. Some cultures which advocate opposition to birth control are not surprisingly poverty stricken cultures. Cultures which express opposition to wearing condoms are not surprisingly those most prone to community destroying human pathogens like AIDS. Importing people from these failed cultures is a recipe for social catastrophe.

As for intelligence, smart people do not eat unhealthy food, they don't gamble away their wages, become obese, educate themselves to get good jobs, save their money and invest it, do not engage in risk taking behaviour, and possess self control. Dumb people are the opposite and they are a burden on smart people. Doing anything to raise intelligence levels is one very good way to alleviate poverty.

Society becomes the bad guy when it fails to both uphold good actions and protect others against our bad choices.

A good society is one that protects not just its own members but people everywhere, including tomorrow’s children, against our bad choices.

Sometimes a society embeds the injustice of bad choices for the economic benefit of an elite or a majority.

For example, we say people have a right to live, but when land where they could build shelter, grow some veggies has been completely commodified, they are REQUIRED to serve that system, good or bad. How do people actually have a choice “about how they live”?

By firstly ensuring the state is behaving justly in relation to access to land, we can then ask “What are the responsibilities of families, or at least the heads of them?”. The socially just answer will not be that the head of the family should get a job, any job, even in the real estate, tobacco, arms or some polluting industry to pay the rent.

The job (the responsibility) of someone who has access to land by birthright rather than by “ownership” is to use only the access they need for its purpose of sustaining life - to build and maintain shelter and grow as much for their own sustenance as an equitable entitlement would allow … and to do so in the most socially and environmentally responsible way known, so as to pass on that birthright intact or improved to future generations. That is a real job – a big job! Only then should one look for additional ways (just and environmentally sustainable ways) to contribute in return for the benefits of being part of a good society.

A solution becomes apparent and sustainable only if we can see things from a perspective where there is a proper relationship to the land. There is no solution available in the injustice of denying people their fundamental free right of access to nature’s gifts of air water sunlight and LAND.

Chris Baulman
@landrights4all

A nice thoughtful piece, Don.

In my grumpier moments I tend to think of social justice as the vague euphemism the left has invented because it is not respectable to talk about socialism any more. But there is something behind it, however elusive. It seem to have elements of liberal virtues (equality, dignity of the individual, mutuality) and collective ones (responsibility to others, recognising that poverty and injustice can be products of systems and institutions as well as the malign acts and selfishness of individuals). Rather than addressing the tensions between collectivism and individualism, it seeks a balance.

I like the idea of social justice but my own experience has been that those who flaunt the term most readily use it as an excuse to justify using the power of the state to back up their own set of prejudices.

There is little of no concern for the collateral damage of social justice policies, there is little or no concern for injustice against those outside of preferred groups.

From those I've know well enough to have a sense of how it works in their own lives those who call the most loudly for expenditure of taxpayer money for social justice causes do whatever then can to minimise their own contributions to the tax system.

R0bert

My view of social justice is that a society functions for ALL its members, not just the stronger, wiser, healthier, richer and more mature ones.

This means: those who live sensibly and those who don’t, those who have a knack for generating wealth and those who are financially hopeless, those with a strong sense of responsibility and those who are supremely selfish, those who live healthy lives and those with a talent for substance abuse, those with a strong work ethic and those who don’t believe that life is about working our butts off … and so on.

As soon as we start injecting moral judgments into what constitutes social justice, we miss the whole POINT of social justice.

Killarney very much agree with what I think I read in your post. I'm wondering if you mean something different to the way I've intepreted the post given some of the points we disagree on else where but the plain meaning is what you intended well said.

R0bert