American Patriot News Feb. 27, 2017

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(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Some Real Fake News on Trump and Trade Data

Friday, 24 February 2017

Posted by Alan Tonelson    LINK

Talk about a non-story. That some globalization cheerleaders have tried to blow up into a scandal. And all because the Trump administration seems to be interested in correcting important distortions in some commonly used U.S. trade data that presents a misleading picture of America’s exports, imports, and trade balances.

Here’s the situation. Last Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported that  “The Trump administration is considering changing the way it calculates U.S. trade deficits, a shift that would make the country’s trade gap appear larger than it had in past years, according to people involved in the discussions.”

According to the Journal, “The leading idea under consideration would exclude from U.S. exports any goods first imported into the country, such as cars, and then transferred to a third country like Canada or Mexico unchanged….”

Continued the article, “Economists say that approach would inflate trade deficit numbers because it would typically count goods as imports when they come into the country but not count the same goods when they go back out, known as re-exports.”

So in other words, President Trump and his minions are thinking of artificially deflating the figures describing what the United States sells to the rest of the world, but not making a corresponding change on the import side that would reduce the amount of goods that the nation buys from its trade partners. The result would be a larger U.S. trade deficit, and added ammo for the administration’s claim that America’s trade policy needs major surgery. Talk about creating “alternative facts,” right?

That’s what the Journal‘s editorial board concluded. Charged these trade zealots, the Trump-ers’ “effort to recalculate U.S. trade flows to show larger deficits” is a “trick….borrowed from the political left” that “deserves to be hooted down as an attempt to manipulate statistics to assist bad economic policy [i.e., curbs on trade flows].”

But these allegations aren’t even close to the mark – that is, if you believe theJournal‘s own reporting. For as the original piece eventually reveals (based, as is the entire article, on anonymous sources), the president’s team is indeed mulling making those import data changes, too – which would involve switching the import measure “to ‘imports for consumption,’ a slightly narrower way of measuring imports that would make less of a difference in the overall balance. “

Which means that – weirdly – the Journal reporters decided not to tell those outraged economists that the supposed Trump administration exercise would make statistically valid symmetrical changes, or that these (of course nameless) economists received this info from the reporters and decided to ignore it in order to try to create the appearance of impropriety. It also means that Journal editorial writers either didn’t read their own publication’s coverage all the way through, or chose to ignore that decisive material. Either way, someone has just massively violated their profession’s ethics.

As for the change (reportedly) under consideration itself, it’s entirely justified because those re-exports that under the main system for presenting trade data are counted as real exports literally are not Made in America. As indicated above, they enter the U.S. economy from abroad and then are shipped overseas (or across the border to Canada or Mexico) in nearly all cases entirely or virtually unchanged.

This means that they add virtually nothing to American economic growth or employment – a major and entirely valid reason that exports are so beloved). Andalthough, as some trade advocates claim, their transit into and through the United States creates logistical jobs (in transportation and,warehousing services), such logistical jobs would be created anyway if those goods were domestically produced (Unless you think that such products typically don’t need to be stored after production and then transported to customers, too?)

Moreover, the distortions resulting from sloppy methodology of the main exports numbers are anything but bupkis. Last year, for example, failing to strip out foreign-produced goods boosted total U.S. merchandise exports by 15.43 percent – or $224.33 billion. Relatively speaking, the impact on manufactures exports was even bigger – 17.48 percent, or $223.36 billion.

And the effects on America’s goods exports to Mexico and Canada, its partners in the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), are especially noteworthy. Proper counting would reduce 2016 U.S. merchandise exports to the former by 23.19 percent and manufactures exports by 25.30 percent. The comparable numbers for Canada are 17.14 percent and 17.93 percent.

Moreover, since proper counting has little effect on import totals, either globally or for NAFTA trade, raising its profile would definitely show higher U.S. deficits. And the export gap has been growing steadily across the board.

Fittingly, this story can be closed on an absurd note, too. As indicated above, the U.S. government already compiles and reports (though in an unsatisfactorily low-profile way), export and import data that quantify exports actually produced in America, and imports actually consumed in America (although, as discussed inthis solid Public Citizen analyses, the import numbers could still use some improvement). So a changeover to more accurate figures that reveal trade’s true impact on U.S. production and job creation looks to be pretty easy. Think we’ll be reading about that in The Wall Street Journal?

Congress wants to spend $6 billion more on healthcare, but here’s a good suggestion for them

November 30, 2016 by Mark Meckler

Congress, you need to stop. Like, really.  Just stop.

With the release of a 1,000-page health care spending bill, the Republican-heavy Congress has proved it has no interest in shrinking the size of the federal government.

Despite spending a majority of the Obama administration criticizing the Affordable Care Act for increasing Washington DC’s footprint, House leaders now appear no different than their Democratic counterparts who crammed the law through without any consideration for the consequences. (Remember, “We have to pass it to see what’s in it?”) Even more concerning is why the GOP is forcing this bill through with a new administration looming; especially one that has promised to repeal Obamacare and its wasteful habits.

And what is the name of this new bill? The 21st Century Cures Act, which is ironic because it’s not going to cure what really ails this country: the fat-cat lobbyists and politicians who will be the primary beneficiaries of such an act.

Daniel Horowitz explains what’s packed in the bill and how they plan to pay for it at Conservative Review:

Despite all the hand-wringing about partisan fighting in Washington, the “21^st Century Cures Act” is a quintessential example of the two liberal parties coming together to grow the federal government, increase rather than decrease spending, give handouts to all their respective lobbyists, and sell the bill as the next step to curing cancer. In short, it represents everything wrong with Washington.

The $6.3 billion package contains $4.8 billion in extra funding for the NIH [National Institute of Health] to further research cancer, brain cells, and precision medicine. It also gives the FDA another $500 million to move drugs and medical devices to patients more quickly, and a billion dollars in grants to states to combat the “opioid crisis.”

As is always the case, the bill’s authors have concocted a hodgepodge of notional accounting gimmicks to “pay for” the cost of the bill. Not a single government program is eliminated to offset the cost of this new spending; rather the bill relies on receipts from selling off our Strategic Oil Reserves over ten years to pay for this bill. Using the Strategic Oil Reserves as a private piggybank to pay off lobbyists in order to grow government has become the new go-to source for “spending offsets.”

A similar version of this bill passed in the House just last year, but the new version has grown three times the size of the original. If the new version passes, the Department of Health and Human Resources will have billions of dollars coursing through its veins much like the very opioid addicts the bill vows to cure. It will be a non-stop taxpayer-funded binge, and Washington will never want to come off of that high.

Though the bill contains some reforms to the FDA and Bill Clinton’s 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, it’s canceled out by the billions in new spending. Much like the outgoing liberal administration, Republican leaders are selling the bill with keywords like “health” and “cure” in an effort to make the medicine go down easier. But the American people have spoken, and they elected a new administration which promised to repeal and replace Obamacare. When the “conservatives” in Washington won’t act like conservatives, how can they claim to be the party of small government ever again?

I’ll let Horowitz have the last word:

Rather than canceling the lame duck session and saving this endeavor for a new GOP mandate next year, House Republicans plan to drop this complex, multifaceted bill on the floor on Wednesday.

Inexcusable.

#JustGoHome

LINK

Why fears of a "runaway convention" can "finally be abandoned"

Posted by Rodney Dodsworth on October 11, 2016

Over the course of my three years in support of an Article V State Convention to propose amendments, a regular fear expressed by Article V opponents is that the convention will conduct itself in the same Animal House atmosphere of our sorry US Congress. While no one can predict the future of such things with certainty, recent experience points to a different place, one where ladies and gentlemen firmly, yet decorously, stood to express the will of the state legislatures that commissioned them to restore the American republic.

I wouldn’t have bothered with this post had not 137 commissioners from fifty states convened this past September at Williamsburg in a simulated convention of the states. The great and feared red, blue, and purple divide that threatens to tear our nation asunder was . . . gone! Where was the runaway convention so feared by the John Birch Society and Eagle Forum? State commissioners rose to the occasion and conducted themselves as if the eye of history was actually upon them.

At the risk of being admonished here for posting excerpts from a ratifying convention and drawing comparisons from it to a still-to-happen state convention to propose amendments, I think the analogy is legitimate. Passions run high in any gathering of strong willed people; they must be restrained and directed toward productive work. That is the essence of the often demanding job description of those who lead conventions, their presidents.

Every organization takes on the character and demeanor of its leaders. From the parents of a family, to the CEO of a corporation, to the President of the United States, they all, for better or for worse, have great influence over their institutions. Here, I wish to highlight the psychological environments set up by convention presidents Edmund Pendleton at Virginia's ratifying convention in 1788, and Utah state representative Ken Ivory at Williamsburg in 2016.

Richmond 1788. Sixty-seven-year-old Edmund Pendleton thanked the convention for electing him, despite his known physical infirmities and decline in mental powers. He assured the delegates he would execute his duties to the best of his ability, so as to prevent any dishonor or inconvenience to the convention.

Edmund Pendleton:

“Order and decorum in the deliberations of all public bodies is absolutely necessary, not only to preserve their dignity, but that reason and argument may have their proper effect in decision, and not be lost in confusion and disorder. You have made it my duty to be the centinel over order, and endeavors to preserve it shall not be wanting. But those will be wholly ineffectual, unless assisted by your example and support, which I shall therefore confidently hope for.”

He reminded the delegates that they were trustees for the citizens of Virginia, which required their most serious attention. Since they all had the same end in view, they should calmly reason with one another as friends. Strive to avoid all heats, intemperance, and personal altercations, which always impede and never assist fair investigation.

As the signers to the Declaration of Independence appealed to the “Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of (their) Intentions,” Edmund Pendleton hoped the Virginia Ratifying Convention may reasonably “stand justified in (its) decision, whatever it may be, to those we act for, God and The World.”

Williamsburg 2016. Convention president Ken Ivory of Utah thanked the assembled commissioners for the honor of electing him. Prior to the convention, he visited Monticello and Montpelier. Along with a few other commissioners, they sat in the room where James Madison drafted the Virginia Plan of Government, and took in the enormity of what took place there.

He compared our governing form to a near broken-down bicycle. In previous times, when it was maintained, it operated as designed. Today, the federal tire is so bloated that it may explode at any time, while the state tire is so flat that it’s about the chew the tire from the rim.

He invoked The Federalist #51, in which James Madison stressed separation of powers, structural checks and balances. In the machinery of the Framers’ system, the power of the sovereign people was divided into two spheres, like a bicycle’s two tires. When the machinery of a bicycle or government is near collapse, changing the rider or president is not a solution to the problem.

Representative Ivory said, “I would submit to you that the Founders, knowing like every good bicyclist that goes out for a long ride, you’re going to need a repair kit. You’re going to need tools and patch kits and pumps and a multi-tool, because they knew that there would need to be repair and maintenance on that system the more it was used. George Washington said, ‘We left the door open, we left the constitutional door open.’ And the constitutional tool they left is Article V. Article V of the Constitution is the multi-tool to repair and amend and maintain the system. Not personality, not policy. We have a system problem.”

Citing W. Edwards Deming, Rep Ivory said, “Every system is perfectly designed to achieve the results it gets.” Our system in disrepair is designed to achieve trillion-dollar a year deficits, $20 trillion in debt, 90,000 pages of regulation, 5,000 federal felonies. We also have a system designed to achieve the necessary repairs, and you all swore an oath, as you were intended to be constitutional officers, to work on the system. That’s you. That’s the people you represent. As I was walking from here to grab my binder after breakfast, someone that’s just staying in the hotel said, “What are you all doing here?” I said, “We’re Commissioners from every one of the states, here to exercise our oath to repair and maintain the system.” He said, “I’m so glad. I’m so glad. Please, do that job. We need it so badly.”

President Ivory closed with, “Commissioners, the winds of change are about to blow. You swore an oath, and as James Madison said in introducing the Bill of Rights, ‘The state legislatures will be the sure guardians of the people’s liberty. They will be able to resist the federal encroachments with more effect than any other power on earth can do, because they are the sure guardians of the people’s liberty.’ Today, as we work, please, let’s work diligently, because we are the sure guardians of the people’s liberty. Thank you very much, thank you for being here. I’m honored that there are so many people willing to stand up for the liberty of my children. I know that the nation has its eyes on you. Thank you for being here. Let’s get to work.”

Upon the close of the simulated convention, New Mexico State Representative Yvette Herrell reported, “What I found amazing about the simulated convention was the commissioner’s dedication to the process. It was remarkable to witness the level of participation and the various conversations happening throughout the convention floor. We took our responsibilities as commissioners seriously, as if to collectively exhibit to the nation that Liberty is alive and well, that through the Article V process, state legislators can succeed in amending the Constitution in a way that is safe and meaningful. Above all else, we exemplified that fears of a runaway convention can finally be abandoned.”

We are the many; our oppressors are the few. Be proactive. Be a Re-Founder. Join Convention of States. Sign our COS Petition.

Reference: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin. (1990). The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Volume IX Virginia. Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

LINK

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Can the U.S. Chamber Put One & One Together on Trade?

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

I’ve long urged trade policy critics (including Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump) to stop questioning the intelligence of globalization cheerleaders. Especially, when we’re talking about offshoring-happy multinational corporations and their hired guns in Washington, I’ve insisted, they’ve known exactly what they’ve been doing – pushing the trade and other international economic policies likeliest to reward the companies with the biggest profits in the shortest time-frame.

True, the longer-term effects have produced losses for many of them – especially since the immense imbalances resulting from these policies helped trigger the financial crisis and ensuing Great Recession, which at least initially hit earnings and stock prices. But charges of stupidity don’t seem valid even in this regard, since most of the American economic system’s incentives discourage long-term thinking.

A new U.S. Chamber of Commerce report, however, could justify a rethink. For it’s a great example of an organization ignoring evidence that’s been staring it in the face for literally decades – and that’s become especially glaring recently. Moreover, it inadvertently validates the claim made by American politicians like Trump that major numbers of manufacturing jobs could be returned to the United States if Washington only mustered the will to do so.

The Chamber, of course, has been one of the most powerful mainstays of the overlapping corporate offshoring and cheap labor lobbies, and this morning released a study bemoaning the worldwide growth of what’s often called “techno-protectionism.” That is, more and more countries have been working harder and harder to promote their own domestic information technology industries through a variety of new regulations that the Chamber rightly notes have cloaked simple beggar-thy-neighbor aims in national security rationales.

Read the entire post at...

Excerpts from American Enterprise Institute’s Panel Discussion on Article V with Panelist Antonin Scalia

Excerpts from American Enterprise Institute’s Panel Discussion on Article V with Panelist Antonin Scalia

May 23, 1979 

p. 5

MR. DALY: All right. Professor Scalia, Richard Rovere in the New Yorker, suggested that the convention method of amendment might reinstate segregation and even slavery, throw out much or all of the Bill of Rights, eliminate the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause, reverse any Supreme Court decision the members didn't like, and perhaps for good measure, eliminate the Supreme Court, itself. [Laughter.] Now, what would you anticipate from an unlimited convention?

ANTONIN SCALIA, professor of law, University of Chicago: I suppose it might even pass a bill of attainder to hang Richard Rovere. [Laughter.] All those things are possible, I suppose, just as it is possible that the Congress tomorrow might pass a law abolishing social security as of the next day, or eliminating Christmas. Such things are possible, remotely possible. I have no fear that such extreme proposals would come out of a constitutional convention. Surely, whether that risk is sufficient to cause anyone to be opposed to a constitutional convention depends on how high we think the risk is and how necessary we think the convention is. If we thought the Congress were not necessary for any other purpose, the risk that it might abolish social security would probably be enough to tell its members to go home. So, it really comes down to whether we think a constitutional convention is necessary. I think it is necessary for some purposes, and I am willing to accept what seems to me a minimal risk of intemperate action.The founders inserted this alternative method of obtaining constitutional amendments because they knew the Congress would be unwilling to give attention to many issues the people are concerned with, particularly those involving restrictions on the federal government's own power. The founders foresaw that and they provided the convention as a remedy. If the only way to get that convention is to take this minimal risk, then it is a reasonable one.

*** Read the rest... 

Bitcoin Wins in Court

Bitcoin Wins in Court

On July 25, Miami-Dade Florida circuit judge Teresa Pooler dismissed money-laundering charges against Michell Espinoza, a local bitcoin seller. The decision is a welcome pause on the road to financial serfdom.

It is a small setback for authorities who want to fight crime (victimless or otherwise) by criminalizing and tracking the “laundering” of the proceeds, and who unreasonably want to do the tracking by eliminating citizens’ financial privacy, that is, by unrestricted tracking of their subjects’ financial accounts and activities. The US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is today the headquarters of such efforts.

As an Atlanta Fed primer reminds us, the authorities’ efforts are built upon the Banking Secrecy Act (BSA) of 1970. (A franker label would be the Banking Anti-Secrecy Act). The Act has been supplemented and amended many times by Congress, particularly by Title III of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, and expanded by diktats of the Federal Reserve and FinCEN. The laws and regulations on the books today have “established requirements for recordkeeping and reporting of specific transactions, including the identity of an individual engaged in the transaction by banks and other FIs [financial institutions].”

These requirements are collectively known as Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) rules.
In particular, banks and other financial institutions are required to obey “Customer Identification Program” (CIP) protocols (aka “know your customer”), which require them to verify and record identity documents for all customers, and to “flag suspicious customers’ accounts.” Banks and financial institutions must submit “Currency Transaction Reports” (CTRs) on any customers’ deposits, withdrawals, or transfers of $10,000 or more.

To foreclose the possibility of people using unmonitored non-banks to make transfers, FinCEN today requires non-depository “money service businesses” (MSBs) – which FinCEN defines to include “money transmitters” like Western Union and issuers of prepaid cards like Visa – also to know their customers. Banks and MSBs must file “Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs)” on transactions above $5000 that may be associated with money-laundering or other criminal activity. Individuals must also file reports.

Carrying $10,000 or more into or out of the US triggers a “Currency or Monetary Instrument Report” (CMIR).” Any US citizen who has $10,000 or more in foreign financial accounts, even if it never moves, must annually file “Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts Reports (FBARs).”

In addition, state governments license money transmitters and impose various rules on their licensees.

When most of these rules were enacted, before 2009, there were basically only three convenient (non-barter) conduits for making a large-value payment. If Smith wanted to transfer $10,000 to Jones, he could do so in person using cash, which would typically involve a large withdrawal followed by a large deposit, triggering CTRs. He could make the transfer remotely using deposit transfer through the banking system, triggering CTRs or SARs if suspicious. Or he could use a service like Western Union or Moneygram, again potentially triggering SARs.

For the time being, the authorities had the field pretty well covered.

The Bitcoin "Loophole"
Now come Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Cash is of course still a face-to-face option. But today if Smith wants to transfer $10,000 remotely to Jones, he need not go to a bank or Western Union office. He can accomplish the task by (a) purchasing $10,000 in Bitcoin, (b) transferring the BTC online to Jones, and (c) letting Jones sell them for dollars (or not).

The authorities would of course like to plug this “loophole.” But the internet, unlike the interbank clearing system, is not a limited-access conduit whose users can be commandeered to track and report on its traffic. No financial institution is involved in a peer-to-peer bitcoin transfer. Granted, Smith will have a hard time purchasing $10,000 worth of Bitcoins without using a bank deposit transfer to pay for them, which pings the authorities, but in principle he could quietly buy them in person with cash.

Accordingly, “attempting to fit the sale of Bitcoin into a statutory scheme regulating money services businesses is like fitting a square peg in a round hole.”

In the recent legal case, it appears that this possibility for unmonitored transfers was noticed by Detective Ricardo Arias of the Miami Beach Police Department, who “became intrigued” and presumably alarmed upon learning about Bitcoin at a meeting with the US Secret Service’s Miami Electronic Crimes Task Force.

Detective Arias and Special Agent Gregory Ponzi decided to investigate cash-for-Bitcoin sales in South Florida. (I take details about the case from Judge Pooler’s decision in State of Florida v. Michell Abner Espinoza (2016).) Arias and Ponzi went to localbitcoins.com to find a seller willing to make a cash sale face-to-face. Acting undercover, Arias contacted one Michell Espinoza, apparently chosen because his hours were flexible.

Arias purchased $500 worth of Bitcoin at their first meeting in a Miami Beach coffee shop, and later purchased $1000 worth at a meeting in a Haagen-Daaz ice cream shop in Miami. Arias tried to make a third purchase for $30,000 in a hotel room where surveillance cameras had been set up, but Espinoza rightly suspected that the currency offered was counterfeit, and refused it.

At that meeting, immediately after the failed purchase, Espinoza was arrested. He was charged with one count of unlawfully operating a money services business without a State of Florida license, and two counts of money laundering under Florida law.

Bitcoin vs Money Laundering Rules
Judge Pooler threw out all three charges. Evaluating her arguments as a monetary economist, I find that some are insightful, while others are beside the point or confused. On the charge that Espinoza illegally operated an unlicensed money services business, she correctly noted that Bitcoin is not widely accepted in exchange for goods and thus “has a long way to go before it is the equivalent of money.”

Accordingly, “attempting to fit the sale of Bitcoin into a statutory scheme regulating money services businesses is like fitting a square peg in a round hole.” However she also offered less compelling reasons for concluding that Bitcoin is not money, namely that it is not “backed by anything” and is “certainly not tangible wealth and cannot be hidden under a mattress like cash and gold bars.” Federal Reserve notes are money without being backed by anything, and bank deposits are money despite being intangible. Gold bars are today not money (commonly accepted as a medium of exchange).

Judge Pooler further correctly noted that Espinoza did not receive currency for the purpose of transmitting it (or its value) to any third party on his customer’s behalf, as Western Union does. He received cash only as a seller of Bitcoin. Nor, she held, does Bitcoin fall into any of the categories under Florida’s statutory definition of a “payment instrument,” so Espinoza was not operating a money services business as defined by the statute.

Bitcoin is indeed not a payment instrument as defined by the statue because it is not a fixed sum of “monetary value” in dollars like the categories of instruments that are listed by the statute. It is an asset with a floating dollar price, like a share of stock.

If even casual individual Bitcoin sellers like Espinoza must also register as MSBs, that will spell the end to legal local Bitcoin-for-cash trades.

Here Judge Pooler accepted a key defense argument (basically, “the defendant was not transmitting money, but only selling a good for money”) that was rejected by Judge Collyer in U.S. v. E-Gold (2008). In the e-gold system, Smith could purchase and readily transfer to Jones claims to units of gold held at e-gold’s warehouse. Federal officials successfully busted e-gold for “transmitting money” without the proper licenses.

Judge Collyer accepted the prosecution’s argument that selling gold to Smith, providing a vehicle for him to transfer it to Jones, and buying it back from Jones is tantamount to transmitting money from Smith to Jones. Of course the Espinoza case is different in that Espinoza did not provide a vehicle for transmitting Bitcoin to a third party, nor did he buy Bitcoin from any third party.

On the charge of money laundering, Judge Pooler found that there was no evidence that Espinoza acted with the intent to promote illicit activity or disguise its proceeds. Further, Florida law is too vague to know whether it applies to Bitcoin transactions.

Thus: “This court is unwilling to punish a man for selling his property to another, when his actions fall under a statute that is so vaguely written that even legal professionals have difficulty finding a singular meaning.”

I expect that FinCEN will now want to work with the State of Florida, and other states, to rewrite their statutory definitions of money services businesses and money laundering to reinforce their 2013 directive according to which Bitcoin exchanges must register as MSBs and so submit to “know your customer” and “file reports on your customer” rules. If even casual individual Bitcoin sellers like Espinoza must also register as MSBs, that will spell the end to legal local Bitcoin-for-cash trades.

Reprinted from Alt-M and Cato.org.

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Larry White

Lawrence H. White is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and professor of economics at George Mason University since 2009. An expert on banking and monetary policy, he is the author of The Clash of Economic Ideas (Cambridge University Press, 2012), The Theory of Monetary Institutions (Basil Blackwell, 1999), Free Banking in Britain (2nd ed., Institute of Economic Affairs, 1995), and Competition and Currency (NYU Press, 1989).

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

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Informational link: https://www.cloudwards.net/what-is-bitcoin/

The ‘Pseudo-Ethics’ Of Social Justice In Economics, Politics And Religion

WRITTEN BY: PATRICK WOOD AUGUST 3, 2016

Introduction

“Social Justice” is a phrase that you see everywhere today. Global Warming is all about social justice. The United Nations sponsors an annual World Day of Social Justice.  The Peaceful Uprising  website states that Climate Change Is A Social Justice Issue.

The U.N.’s own website states,

“For the United Nations, the pursuit of social justice for all is at the core of our global mission to promote development and human dignity. The adoption by the International Labour Organization of the Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization is just one recent example of the UN system’s commitment to social justice.” [emphasis added]

One Christian blogger recently wrote,

“As we strive for social justice and attempt to love our neighbors, are we relying on Christ, or are we relying on the military, political leaders, the government, church authorities, institutions, and abusive ideologies?” [emphasis added]

Social justice is a slippery bar of soap, but it surely sounds important, doesn’t it?

The term has a long history, definitive philosophy and uniformly disastrous results to any society who dared to embrace it. Plus, others have written extensively about it.

Spoiler ahead. According to famed Austrian economist F.A. Hayek, social justice nothing more than “pseudo-ethics” that “fails every test which a system of moral rules must satisfy in order to secure a peace and voluntary co-operation of free men.”¹

^{Read at Technocracy.News...}