Genesis of social justice

[royal_archer]

Ummm…the Roman government was not comprised of Jews, Christianity was in its embryonic stages. Why exactly would Jesus ask a government which was utterly indifferent to his message let alone his religious heritage to accept responsibilities which were completely foreign to it?

Please do not take biblical materials out of their historical and cultural contexts. More harm and suffering has been caused by those who want to quote “biblical principles” to deny any form of personal or political responsibility to assist people in need.

An today - should governments have no role in places like Haiti? What about countries suffering from drought or famine - should government have no role in addressing the needs of their people?

In an ideal world - you are right - individual donations and assistance would cover all needs. Unfortunately, history teaches us time and time again - while individual responses are necessary and important - government has a role…the question is how large and in what areas? And the questions aren’t easy to sort through.

tpw

But why stop there, humans have more needs than just health and housing.

Why doesn’t the government take on the responsibility of finding spouses for people and if someone has a hard time finding an addequate spouse, the government can force someone to be there spouse.

 

[royal_archer]

I am not suggesting socialism, I am just suggesting that the “when” in did you feed me when I was hungry? is pretty inclusive and the withholding from some who are too least is pretty exclusive.

Doesn’t matter if you are rightist ,leftist, tea party or pinko, still got to treat the least like they might be He. Its being Christian not socialist .

That part of Jesus frequently gets lost when we say we are against the real least getting help.

Peace

There is no issue with helping the needy, the issue is the mechanism.

Ask your typical lefty if animals should be kept in zoos or if they should be rehabilitated back into the wild and most will advocate rehabilitating them. but when it comes to people they flip their perspective. They want people to be fed, housed, and taken care of instead of taught basic life skills and allowed back into their natural habitat.

 

[royal_archer]

Why is it that a child in China makes our shoes? Oh, yes, Nike, et al couldn’t find anyone to make shoes at say .50 an hour. Until those who vent against social justice teachings in the church take seriously the destructive character of globalization to local economies…and get beyond this “blame the poor” for not working hard enough, then no real discussion can be had.

The poor or those on unemployment did not cause banks to crash, play games (derivatives) with mortgages, disinvest in manufacturing, continue absurd business practices (the automobile companies) and a host of others.

I also wonder if you royal archer has worked in the fields? You seem so interested in telling us what God would have others do, have you taken your own advise?

tpw

Actually the poor were responsible for the bank crash. Them and the government at least. The government mandated that the banks including fannie mae and freddie mac give high risk loans. Then there were many people who really could not afford the loans who couldn’t afford to pay them back. This resulted in mass defaults and then the crisis.

I have worked in the fields of a nursery, digging up, balling, moving, replanting trees, hauling mulch, hauling water, etc. All the grunt work while the more experienced workers did the stuff that required skills. 100+ degree, no shade, and long days. It was a great experience and I learned a lot!

 

[royal_archer]

I have worked in the fields as a teenager. I could not do it now, as it is physically too demanding. Well I could do it, but it would not pay enough to raise my family. we would have to charge a LOT more for the food. A lot of people would go hungry if food was priced so that US workers would do the labor.

I guess you could find social justice in terms whereby each society makes its own serf. Currently we have imported serfs, under this definition we would need to create a US serf class. Unfortunately I think it is coming, although not out of choice…

It would be nice if we as individuals could get a tax break for providing jobs to individuals and sharing our income. That would lead to a lot of people hiring others to do jobs they could do them selves if they had to.

 

[Tom_Qualey]

Hi, Royal Archer,

Did you know there were laws against beating a dead horse…

There is no issue with helping the needy, the issue is the mechanism.

As I appreciate the situation, the thread is to deal with social justice and this could be what we as individuals have an obligation to do, or, what we as a society have an obligation to provide or protect from. Now, maybe I am wrong here, but as individuals we are to be generous to the poor and disadvantaged and we can do this by donating our time to charitable group or to donate money to charitable organizations whose mission we want to support. As a society, we should support equal access to employment, encourage more groups to become involved with promoting education and living healthy life styles. As I see this, such actions would not only improve any communty - but, can set the example for others on following Christ in our daily lives.

Ask your typical lefty if animals should be kept in zoos or if they should be rehabilitated back into the wild and most will advocate rehabilitating them. but when it comes to people they flip their perspective. They want people to be fed, housed, and taken care of instead of taught basic life skills and allowed back into their natural habitat.

You know, Royal Archer, I never thought of this in that light… That is really hitting the nail on the head.

God bless

Tom

 

[Tom_Qualey]

Hi, Royal Archer,

I don’t quite agree with you on this one - but, ‘the poor’ are not the innocents that many would like to believe. The view I have, they are probably the least culpable group in this entire assortment of crooks.

Actually the poor were responsible for the bank crash. Them and the government at least. The government mandated that the banks including fannie mae and freddie mac give high risk loans. Then there were many people who really could not afford the loans who couldn’t afford to pay them back. This resulted in mass defaults and then the crisis.

it is really, at least in my mind, just too complex to make this blanket statement, Royal Archer. The Wall Street Bankers had help from Federal Regulators to ease restrictions on what could be packaged together. The the Wall Street ratings groups (Standard & Poors, Moodys, etc.) decided that it was just too complex to really look under the hood of this new vehicle and see what was actually powering it. The the Traders got in the act and promoted this new ‘vehicle’ of collaterilized debt - and it started to take off. What becaem so quickly toxic is that those who were getting these loans did not have the resources to pay them off - and were then coached on how to comlete the forms in a deceitful manner. Oh, and don’t forget the assessors who inflated the value of these homes so that everyone got large commissions! Ultimately, the pressure that Congress put on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - to get more people involved with home ownership was another good intention bound for a total destruction.

Some folks are simply NOT credit worthy! It has nothing to do with the color of their skin - only the color of their bank account… Gold is great, green is good, silver is ok … ah, but, red is the kiss of death. And, more often then not, people with little money and poor credit were being qualified for loans that they knew they would default on if ANYTHING changed. Well, things changed, and then the economy began to sag so that those who were just getting by suddenly found that there Adjustable Rate Mortgage suddenly turned out to be a rocket heading skyward into interest rates that were simply unaffordable for virtually anyone.

There really are many guilty parties in this mess - and, quite honestly, starting at the top to throw some of these guys in jail may be a good way to begin this process. Those who encouraged others to lie and defraud should also be held accountable. Ah, but, those who knew they were lying and still signed the form are not innocent…

I have worked in the fields of a nursery, digging up, balling, moving, replanting trees, hauling mulch, hauling water, etc. All the grunt work while the more experienced workers did the stuff that required skills. 100+ degree, no shade, and long days. It was a great experience and I learned a lot!

Personally, I am glad you guys have all of this agricultural experience … if everyone was like me - we’d probably starve! While knowing one end of the hoe from the other is a good start… it won’t bring the fruit and vegetables in to the table!

God bless

Tom

Did you know there were laws against beating a dead horse…

 

[royal_archer]

Hi, Royal Archer,

I don’t quite agree with you on this one - but, ‘the poor’ are not the innocents that many would like to believe. The view I have, they are probably the least culpable group in this entire assortment of crooks.

Bottom line is that people signed up for mortgages they could not pay and then instead of fulfilling their obligation they wimped out and claimed bankrupcy. There is a lot of contributing blame to go around but bottom line is that the individuals put their name on the line for something they could not afford and enmasse it caused the problem. It may have been an over generalization to use the term poor but it was more lower income than higher income people involved.

 

[athair_siochain]

Actually the poor were responsible for the bank crash. Them and the government at least. The government mandated that the banks including fannie mae and freddie mac give high risk loans. Then there were many people who really could not afford the loans who couldn’t afford to pay them back. This resulted in mass defaults and then the crisis.

I have worked in the fields of a nursery, digging up, balling, moving, replanting trees, hauling mulch, hauling water, etc. All the grunt work while the more experienced workers did the stuff that required skills. 100+ degree, no shade, and long days. It was a great experience and I learned a lot!

The government did not mandate to give high risk loans, if you understood the banking system you would understand,
Some banks created loans that amounted to sixty times the amount of cash deposited in their Bank, work that out, this cash never existed until the borrower put it out into the community, bankers are fixers they lend against a property worth $100.000 after they and the landlords have forced up prices the property is assumed to be worth $200.000 this is a example, we allow this to happen, because the majority of politicians and lawyers are landlords or moneylenders… why cant we create another way to create equity that benefits all, the present system of legalised theft, benefits the parasites from the top end of town… all this talk about economic management

Christ was a socialist of sorts, I wonder how many of his stories were censored deleted, the Bible was put together by people from the top end of town

 

[Tigg]

Bottom line is that people signed up for mortgages they could not pay and then instead of fulfilling their obligation they wimped out and claimed bankrupcy. There is a lot of contributing blame to go around but bottom line is that the individuals put their name on the line for something they could not afford and enmasse it caused the problem. It may have been an over generalization to use the term poor but it was more lower income than higher income people involved.

I agree. The “poor” or lower income are just as culpable of greed and covetousnes as the rest of us and although they were told they could qualify, how does it justify a person on an income of $35,000 to think they can buy a home in San Francisco for $400,000! True story - I saw a clip quite a while ago. WHAT were they thinking?

And the ripple down effect of this has been devastating to those who owned homes in areas where the default rate was high. As banks took over the mortgages and rented those properties to just about anyone, the lawns died, the covenants went unheeded and a general deterioration took place in those neighborhoods to the point where responsible homeowners had to sell at losses that were staggering.

 

[sedonaman]

But why stop there, humans have more needs than just health and housing.

Why doesn’t the government take on the responsibility of finding spouses for people and if someone has a hard time finding an addequate spouse, the government can force someone to be there spouse.

This just shows you that to implement the liberal agenda requires the government to take away the peoples’ rights.

 

[sedonaman]

The government did not mandate to give high risk loans, if you understood the banking system you would understand,

That statement is just flat not true.

While President Carter in 1977 signed the Community Reinvestment Act, which pushed Fannie and Freddie to aggressively lend to minority communities, it was Clinton who supercharged the process. After entering office in 1993, he extensively rewrote Fannie’s and Freddie’s rules.

In so doing, he turned the two quasi-private, mortgage-funding firms into a semi-nationalized monopoly that dispensed cash to markets, made loans to large Democratic voting blocs and handed favors, jobs and money to political allies. This potent mix led inevitably to corruption and the Fannie-Freddie collapse.

Despite warnings of trouble at Fannie and Freddie, in 1994 Clinton unveiled his National Homeownership Strategy, which broadened the CRA in ways Congress never intended.

Addressing the National Association of Realtors that year, Clinton bluntly told the group that “more Americans should own their own homes.” He meant it.

Clinton saw homeownership as a way to open the door for blacks and other minorities to enter the middle class.

Though well-intended, the problem was that Congress was about to change hands, from the Democrats to the Republicans. Rather than submit legislation that the GOP-led Congress was almost sure to reject, Clinton ordered Robert Rubin’s Treasury Department to rewrite the rules in 1995.

The rewrite, as City Journal noted back in 2000, “made getting a satisfactory CRA rating harder.” Banks were given strict new numerical quotas and measures for the level of “diversity” in their loan portfolios. Getting a good CRA rating was key for a bank that wanted to expand or merge with another.

Loans started being made on the basis of race, and often little else.

“Bank examiners would use federal home-loan data, broken down by neighborhood, income group and race, to rate banks on performance,” wrote Howard Husock, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute.

“How A Clinton-Era Rule Rewrite Made Subprime Crisis Inevitable”
By Terry Jones
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY
September 24, 2008

The irony of the situation was that while Clinton’s people looked at the percentage of loans approved for minorities, they did not consider their default rate, which at the time was about the same as for whites. This was a much better indicator that minorities were being evaluated the same as whites, and any lowering of the standards would increase the minority default rate, which is what happened. This is not rocket science.

Here is a detailed explanation → floppingaces.net/2008/09/22/us-economy-a-perfect-storm-of-housing-and-lending-events

Some banks created loans that amounted to sixty times the amount of cash deposited in their Bank, …

Waitaminnit!!! Since when was the fractional reserve rate 1/60th? You got a reference?

 

[Tom_Qualey]

Hi, AthairSiochain,

Does this mean that you and your landlord are getting along? If not, I am still waiting for a response.

Tom

The government did not mandate to give high risk loans, if you understood the banking system you would understand,
Some banks created loans that amounted to sixty times the amount of cash deposited in their Bank, work that out, this cash never existed until the borrower put it out into the community, bankers are fixers they lend against a property worth $100.000 after they and the landlords have forced up prices the property is assumed to be worth $200.000 this is a example, we allow this to happen, because the majority of politicians and lawyers are landlords or moneylenders… why cant we create another way to create equity that benefits all, the present system of legalised theft, benefits the parasites from the top end of town… all this talk about economic management

Christ was a socialist of sorts, I wonder how many of his stories were censored deleted, the Bible was put together by people from the top end of town

 

[portarica]

This exportation of jobs is in part a response to the distributive justice imposed by the gov’t. The Gov’t created the problem of a high cost to do business in America and then we complain about business finding a solution to the problem. That said, I would like to see the importation of cheap goods from unfair labor markets stopped. I think a two fold solution would work best. Our costs to do business have to go down and the importing countries need to have a tarrif until the work practices in that country are more fair.

The jobs follow cheap labor and the lack of overhead on laborers.

The jobs left New England to the south to mexico to china etc. etc.

The high cost of business to not pollute, pay for infrastructure, decent wages etc. is a strawman, the class that sold the factories kept everything and added more to what they said they couldn’t afford to pay their workers.

For instance, when most people were getting fully paid health insurance through their jobs, the country was booming and wages for manufacturing were high, but the wealth was shared .

Now its not shared and what is the result? Well its great if you work at Goldman , but it sucks if you live in TX or SC and don’t have a high paying job.

Peace

 

[cdeterma]

The jobs follow cheap labor and the lack of overhead on laborers.

The jobs left New England to the south to mexico to china etc. etc.

The high cost of business to not pollute, pay for infrastructure, decent wages etc. is a strawman, the class that sold the factories kept everything and added more to what they said they couldn’t afford to pay their workers.

For instance, when most people were getting fully paid health insurance through their jobs, the country was booming and wages for manufacturing were high, but the wealth was shared .

Now its not shared and what is the result? Well its great if you work at Goldman , but it sucks if you live in TX or SC and don’t have a high paying job.

Peace

Maybe the country was booming and so people could afford to fully pay for health benefits. Even then people decried the rich. This is really a tired old saw. Even then the costs were less. Mandated health coverage of items many never use is a big problem with healthcare costs. For instance Why do I have to pay for Mamogram coverage? I am a man, I won’t get one.

The costs of doing business I am talking about are the unfunded mandates that gov’t imposes upon business. The high taxes, the regulations, the greenhouse gas lies, the EPA run amuck over some insigificant snail no one knew existed, etc… With all that business has to put up with I don’t understand who would want to own one in America.

 

[sedonaman]

…
For instance, when most people were getting fully paid health insurance through their jobs, the country was booming and wages for manufacturing were high, but the wealth was shared.

Now its not shared …

What are you talking about? When was wealth “shared” and in what way?

 

[sedonaman]

… Even then people decried the rich. This is really a tired old saw. …

Envy

…people who themselves desperately want power, attention and praise envy with a passion those who already have that. Businessmen, “the establishment”, rich people, upper class people, powerful politicians and anybody who helps perpetuate the existing order in any way are seen by the Leftist as obstacles to him having what he wants. They are all seen as automatically “unworthy” compared to his own great virtues and claims on what they already have. “Why should they have … ?” is the Leftist’s implicit cry – and those who share that angry cry have an understanding of one-another that no rational argument could achieve and that no outsider can ever share.

The Leftist’s passion for equality is really therefore only apparently a desire to lift the disadvantaged up. In reality it is a hatred of all those in society who are already in a superior or more powerful position to the Leftist and a desire to cut them down to size. They are haters who want to subjugate everyone and everything to their rule. As Engels rightly saw, there is nothing more authoritarian than that.

“Authoritarianism is inherently Leftist, not the preserve of the right wing.”
By John Ray

 

[cdeterma]

I am really trying understand why there should be wealth redistribution anyway. First there is no mystery why I am not rich. I wasn’t willing to risk everything I had to form a company around any of the ideas I have. I am not willing to trade security in working an 8 hour day for the insecurity of working for myself and risking everything I own. I make enough to pay my bills as long as live modestly and I have a decent middle class life. Plenty of want-to-be-rich end up in the poor house. Most start-ups fail in the first five years. Even those people that are successful fail at first. I didn’t want that. So why should I feel like the rich owe me something?

Second if someone isn’t willing to even try to be productive where is there an obligation to help them? I understand if you’re unemployed, handicapped, or even you made some bad decisions but now want to change. I am willing to help those, who want to help themselves. I don’t understand the imposed duty to help those who do not want to work.

I think social justice ought to be geared toward providing equal opertunity. If you don’t want to take it, that’s your problem. Kinda of like leading a horse to water, if he doesn’t want to drink, then it his fault for being thirsty.

 

[royal_archer]

The government did not mandate to give high risk loans, if you understood the banking system you would understand,
Some banks created loans that amounted to sixty times the amount of cash deposited in their Bank, work that out, this cash never existed until the borrower put it out into the community, bankers are fixers they lend against a property worth $100.000 after they and the landlords have forced up prices the property is assumed to be worth $200.000 this is a example, we allow this to happen, because the majority of politicians and lawyers are landlords or moneylenders… why cant we create another way to create equity that benefits all, the present system of legalised theft, benefits the parasites from the top end of town… all this talk about economic management

Christ was a socialist of sorts, I wonder how many of his stories were censored deleted, the Bible was put together by people from the top end of town

The people who borrowed the money agreed to pay it back. It is just that simple. They took and did not return. They are responsible for returning what they took. You can’t blame the banks for going out of their way to help people.

 

[royal_archer]

I agree. The “poor” or lower income are just as culpable of greed and covetousnes as the rest of us and although they were told they could qualify, how does it justify a person on an income of $35,000 to think they can buy a home in San Francisco for $400,000! True story - I saw a clip quite a while ago. WHAT were they thinking?

And the ripple down effect of this has been devastating to those who owned homes in areas where the default rate was high. As banks took over the mortgages and rented those properties to just about anyone, the lawns died, the covenants went unheeded and a general deterioration took place in those neighborhoods to the point where responsible homeowners had to sell at losses that were staggering.

Yes but try to be exclusive on who you rent to and you will find yourself in court in short order.

The bank that makes high risk loans is liable to it self and its creditors. If they make bad decisions they go out of business. At least in a free society they do.

 

[royal_archer]

That statement is just flat not true.
The irony of the situation was that while Clinton’s people looked at the percentage of loans approved for minorities, they did not consider their default rate, which at the time was about the same as for whites. This was a much better indicator that minorities were being evaluated the same as whites, and any lowering of the standards would increase the minority default rate, which is what happened. This is not rocket science.

Here is a detailed explanation → floppingaces.net/2008/09/22/us-economy-a-perfect-storm-of-housing-and-lending-events

Waitaminnit!!! Since when was the fractional reserve rate 1/60th? You got a reference?

When I got off of active duty and came back to the states.I assumed that a VA loan would be my best option. It turned out that an FHA guaranteed loan was even cheaper (even with mortgage insurance) It is disapointing how veterans get lesser bennefits than those who are underemployed.