Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"

[Flora]

The natural law demands that we not deprive our neighbor of his due.

"His due" might be interpreted variously.

Is it recompense for existing and residing within that State?
Is it compensation for inability to earn, in the same time period, what a more able-bodied or able-minded person could earn?  (i.e., Disability Payments)
Is it compensation for breaching the immigration laws of our country, and if so, what is "due" those who do honor those same laws?
Is it compensation based on political power or perceived political power of particular special interest groups?
Is it defensive compensation based on anticipation of political backlash or other consequences if the State does not anticipate the "due" of certain groups vs. other groups or all groups?
Is it another form of Unemployment Compensation?
Is it the closing of emotional and/or practical gaps due to greater earned economic status of the skilled vs. the less skilled?  (Is it an attempt to eradicate theoretical or actual inequalities?)

These are essential questions that need to be answered if one wants to move past hypothetical utopia into real-world application.

Thank you, Flora.  However, I asked those questions not for their "utopian" application but for the moral considerations.   Classic moral theology in the Church has been discarded in the post-V2 era by mainstream new-Church in favor of emotionalism (emotional justifications for an invented "social justice" which ignores the parameters suggested in specificity by certain popes and in accordance with the permanent deposit of faith).  Probably for that reason I prefer the term "social theology" to "social justice," because the latter has been severely corrupted by the Conciliar Sect and tends to lack moorings, yet with an often-inaccurate assumption of "justice" for a few despite injustice for many more, and -- more importantly -- despite a deeper injustice which does not emanate from the Church's social theology but is subjective, novel, politically-driven, and otherwise modernistic.

I agree completely. I am not against a "just wage" or giving my "neighbor" his "due". But we have to first understand what those terms mean. For example, just to address one of your questions, who is my "neighbor" who is "due" such things? Are illegals who are flooding this country my "neighbor"? Are they and their children "due" what a legal citizen is "due"? According to the Conciliar Sect, they WOULD BE. Yet, that is completely unjust.

[Flora]

Elsewhere I've stated that it is possible for a family of 4 to eke it out (no room for emergencies) on a single, full-time job paying $9 an hour with a take-home pay of $17,000 annually.

Perhaps in small towns.  In a major metropolitan area, no way.  But even so, this is only the case due to government help in the form of EITC, Medicaid, food stamps, child tax credits, public education, etc.

So it looks like the system is already "just"? Unless you are suggesting that they should take away all of the assistance and supplement people's income with hard cash instead?

To expand on this, I have noticed that people often say: "you can only live on those wages in a small town". My question then is: "does that make it unjust?" Is it a matter of justice to be able to live anywhere one wants and according to X, Y, Z standards? If I move to SF, should my husband be paid six figures so that we can afford "just" housing (ie., middle class housing -- it would be quite "unjust" to subject families with small children to areas with homeless, gangs, other riff raff, right?) with enough space for our six kids? Even though his job is mowing lawns?

If society could somehow pull that off, I don't see why anyone would be against that. Doing simple labor jobs and being able to raise a family comfortably anywhere one wants. Sounds like the dream. Not even being sarcastic. Beats being a "Catholic" school teacher (in reference to the other thread).

[Baldrick]

The calculation problem is is always side-stepped by utopian/statists of all flavors; and, despite being unable to demonstrate what is meant by a "just wage," the term is simply repeated ad infinitum as if it actually means something beyond a vague yearning (if not a kind of virtue signaling) "for a better world'; and only entrepreneurs and other economic actors (unless a laborer or a member of union hierarchy) suffer from Original Sin.

The Church knows exactly what is meant by a just wage.

43. We now approach a subject of great importance, and one in respect of which, if extremes are to be avoided, right notions are absolutely necessary. Wages, as we are told, are regulated by free consent, and therefore the employer, when he pays what was agreed upon, has done his part and seemingly is not called upon to do anything beyond. The only way, it is said, in which injustice might occur would be if the master refused to pay the whole of the wages, or if the workman should not complete the work undertaken; in such cases the public authority should intervene, to see that each obtains his due, but not under any other circumstances.

44. To this kind of argument a fair-minded man will not easily or entirely assent; it is not complete, for there are important considerations which it leaves out of account altogether. To labor is to exert oneself for the sake of procuring what is necessary for the various purposes of life, and chief of all for self preservation. "In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread."(33) Hence, a man's labor necessarily bears two notes or characters. First of all, it is personal, inasmuch as the force which acts is bound up with the personality and is the exclusive property of him who acts, and, further, was given to him for his advantage. Secondly, man's labor is necessary; for without the result of labor a man cannot live, and self-preservation is a law of nature, which it is wrong to disobey. Now, were we to consider labor merely in so far as it is personal, doubtless it would be within the workman's right to accept any rate of wages whatsoever; for in the same way as he is free to work or not, so is he free to accept a small wage or even none at all. But our conclusion must be very different if, together with the personal element in a man's work, we consider the fact that work is also necessary for him to live: these two aspects of his work are separable in thought, but not in reality. The preservation of life is the bounden duty of one and all, and to be wanting therein is a crime. It necessarily follows that each one has a natural right to procure what is required in order to live, and the poor can procure that in no other way than by what they can earn through their work.

45. Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice. In these and similar questions, however - such as, for example, the hours of labor in different trades, the sanitary precautions to be observed in factories and workshops, etc. - in order to supersede undue interference on the part of the State, especially as circumstances, times, and localities differ so widely, it is advisable that recourse be had to societies or boards such as We shall mention presently, or to some other mode of safeguarding the interests of the wage-earners; the State being appealed to, should circumstances require, for its sanction and protection.

46. If a workman's wages be sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income. Nature itself would urge him to this. We have seen that this great labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.

I assume that you are talking about this part:

that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.

Is that what the Church means by a "just wage"?  I just want to agree on this before we go on to talk about it. 

[Akavit]

Elsewhere I've stated that it is possible for a family of 4 to eke it out (no room for emergencies) on a single, full-time job paying $9 an hour with a take-home pay of $17,000 annually.

Perhaps in small towns.  In a major metropolitan area, no way.  But even so, this is only the case due to government help in the form of EITC, Medicaid, food stamps, child tax credits, public education, etc.

But we do have all those things plus medicare, social security, workman's comp and unemployment insurance.  I didn't factor EITC into my calculations but that would just increase the amount of take-home pay.  I did factor in other tax credits.   Though I do wonder why the government taxes low income people then creates complex tax credit systems to give it back.

Of course all of the above does cost money and it does come out of the checks of low-paid workers.  A worker claiming zero exemptions at a wage of $10/hr. will cost the employer an average of $12/hr yet go home with under $9/hr.  Eliminate those benefits, give the worker cash and that $17,000 a year goes over $24,000 per year.

Now your comparison of metropolitan vs rural settings is one of the things I was referring to when I said people couldn't agree on an acceptable baseline.  I've quoted numbers based upon life in small town Illinois.  Illinois is a great example because Chicago and the surrounding suburbs dominate the politics but the southern rural villages have to live with the consequences.  State politicians supporting a $15/hr. minimum wage know that the city will be able to absorb the increase since wages and costs are already higher to begin with.  The rest of the state would be hit with a sudden, destabilizing wage inflation followed immediately by a major price inflation.

The big problem is that no two people can agree upon what constitutes a minimum standard of living.  In my opinion, this is about $30 a week of food per person plus a roof and basic medical (occasional checkups and the occasional antibiotic subscription plus conventional first aid).  Other people consider that baseline impossibly cheap.

So what are they supposed to wear and how are they supposed to get to work?

I consider walking the basic form of transportation.  Certainly it doesn't make sense to take a long commute for a low-income job when there are always non-skilled positions available in every community.  Clothes are a negligible expense by the time garage sales and thrift stores are factored in.  Even new clothes aren't that expensive.  Shoes are the biggest cost and I've spent roughly $35 a year on new, quality brands.

[Quaremerepulisti]

I assume that you are talking about this part:

that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.

Is that what the Church means by a "just wage"?  I just want to agree on this before we go on to talk about it.

Yes.

[Quaremerepulisti]

Baldrick, Akavit, and Flora:

You raise some good issues, and the Church does not claim competence to decide them.  The exact "nuts-and-bolts" about how to implement what the Church teaches about a just wage is in the realm of economics and free opinion.

[Miriam_M]

Baldrick, Akavit, and Flora:

You raise some good issues, and the Church does not claim competence to decide them.  The exact "nuts-and-bolts" about how to implement what the Church teaches about a just wage is in the realm of economics and free opinion.

Unfortunately, the modernists and Conciliarists in the Church do, haphazardly and irresponsibly, claim competence to decide them, without the authority of the Church's traditional teaching to support that supposed "competence."  Bishops, Cardinals, and priests have made such statements regularly in the late 20th century and in this century.

[james03]

The Church knows exactly what is meant by a just wage.

  It knows the characteristics of a just wage, that is all (and you probably agree with that), not a number.

As Pope Leo points out, there are far too many variables.  The Church promotes collective bargaining to arrive at a just wage.

That's a job for economists.

They can't arrive at an answer because there is no answer.  In my book I give the example of an independent wheat farmer and the miller.  The wheat farmer, William Farmer, produces 2 sacks of hand ground flour a day.  The miller, Chaim Goldstein produces 150 sacks of flour a day using his automated farm and mill. Chaim realizes if he hires William he can increase production to 200 sacks a day.

I then challenge the reader:  You are in a distributist economy and head of the farming soviet.  Your job is to come up with the right wage, in sacks of flour, that Chaim has to pay William.  I then show that the "right" answer could be 3 sacks of flour (50% raise) to 199 sacks (Chaim doesn't have to go into the fields anymore), or anything in between.  Without a market you can't determine the right answer (the calculation problem).  Come to think of it, William might be happy with 1 sack of flour a day in exchange for Chaim doing the paperwork and the fact that William can do the job in an air conditioned combine.

An economist also can not determine the right answer.  What we have is the question on the proper way to allocate production between owners of capital and labor.  The market does this, kind of like an optimization engine (it is never "right", it tends towards the optimum).

Pope Leo seems to recognize this and recommend collective bargaining, which gives negotiating power to labor.  Note I know with the horrors of unions in the past many recoil from this, but economically Pope Leo is correct, and this is a good way to prevent undue influence from the State and let the market work it out.

As far as unions, we need reforms, but right now in a right-to-work state my go-to contractor is union.  We freely choose to use them.  So I'm speaking from first person experience, collective bargaining can work well, in fact it is great, if we learn from the past and fix the problems, e.g. work rules rackets.

[james03]

Except that Pope Leo does not talk exclusively about collective bargaining. Throughout this same encyclical and many others, the idea of the just wage is laid down as a social justice, a matter of the law, not just what one brings up in the confessional. Pope Pius IX spoke about a proper distribution of private property, and it is to this that I was referring above.

  Do you even realize you are not addressing my argument (because you are losing the debate), or is this just your muddled way of thinking?  Here's a question Louis for you to ponder: where have I denied the concept of the Just Wage?  Now go back and read what you wrote.

You keep talking about how the Church deputes the State to maintain private property. That is true. But it also deputes the State to maintain an economic system which is just, that is, one wherein wealth is so distributed that it is easy for men to actually procure private property, as well as basic temporal goods.

  More ambiguous waste of electrons.  This is the red flag that I'm dealing with a Utopian.  What the Church deputes is for the State to PROTECT private property, not "maintain it".  In a just economic system, wealth might not be distributed very much at all.  We can imagine a colonial economy where the colonialists have all the wealth because they out-produce the savages 10,000 to 1.  In a just economy the producers will have 10,000 times the wealth.  But owning property in the US is simple to do even with unskilled labor (outside of the ghettos, which are waste lands created by leftist utopians).

This is what you keep missing. The "many" who are like "heathens of old" are the ones who state that the State should supersede the Church in dealing with problems that can only be fixed with charity and justice. James, for one moment consider the text and what I am saying before you starting throwing around insults and essentially label me a heretic.

I have not labeled you a heretic.  I hold that you are an uneducated utopian.  You also lack experience in running a business, so you don't even bring personal experience to the table.  If you want to learn about economics, here's a good starting point.  https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=9760  These are regs I'm familiar with.  Note that you are under legal obligation to follow all of this if you make one change to your process.  If you don't, you go to jail.  This is less the 0.1% of the regs of one agency at the Federal level.  This is the reality of fascism/distributism/corporatism/crony capitalism that you refuse to see.  Paraphrasing the great Yuri:

I can take him to OSHA.  I can show him the regulations.  He still won't believe me.  Only when the government boot crushes his face will he understand, but it will be too late.  That is the tragedy of the situation of demoralization.

I'm coming to understand that inexperienced utopians such as yourself truly do assume that the producers will always produce.  You can have your authority without responsibility.  B.S. like this OSHA reg has very real consequences, such as factories shutting down and moving overseas.  Also large corporations spend the bucks to come up with systems so that we can pencil whip the forms and stay in compliance.  OSHA (the government you idolize) is a huge barrier to entry of the little guy.  Also, NO company is 100% in compliance, so the government can shake down anyone at anytime for money, or jail political opponents.  This is the reality of the fallen nature of the men in government you will not see.

When you claim that the State is essentially relegated to maintaining private property but that issues like justice and charity are relegated entirely to the Church, I think that you fall into the same error of separating the Church and State, such that the task of one does not flow into the temporal governance of the other. 

I don't "claim" anything.  I have quoted the Church saying that relief of the poor is NOT a matter of justice and that it is NOT regulated by law.

[LouisIX]

Except that Pope Leo does not talk exclusively about collective bargaining. Throughout this same encyclical and many others, the idea of the just wage is laid down as a social justice, a matter of the law, not just what one brings up in the confessional. Pope Pius IX spoke about a proper distribution of private property, and it is to this that I was referring above.

  Do you even realize you are not addressing my argument (because you are losing the debate), or is this just your muddled way of thinking?  Here's a question Louis for you to ponder: where have I denied the concept of the Just Wage?  Now go back and read what you wrote.

You keep talking about how the Church deputes the State to maintain private property. That is true. But it also deputes the State to maintain an economic system which is just, that is, one wherein wealth is so distributed that it is easy for men to actually procure private property, as well as basic temporal goods.

  More ambiguous waste of electrons.  This is the red flag that I'm dealing with a Utopian.  What the Church deputes is for the State to PROTECT private property, not "maintain it".  In a just economic system, wealth might not be distributed very much at all.  We can imagine a colonial economy where the colonialists have all the wealth because they out-produce the savages 10,000 to 1.  In a just economy the producers will have 10,000 times the wealth.  But owning property in the US is simple to do even with unskilled labor (outside of the ghettos, which are waste lands created by leftist utopians).

This is what you keep missing. The "many" who are like "heathens of old" are the ones who state that the State should supersede the Church in dealing with problems that can only be fixed with charity and justice. James, for one moment consider the text and what I am saying before you starting throwing around insults and essentially label me a heretic.

I have not labeled you a heretic.  I hold that you are an uneducated utopian.  You also lack experience in running a business, so you don't even bring personal experience to the table.  If you want to learn about economics, here's a good starting point.  https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=9760  These are regs I'm familiar with.  Note that you are under legal obligation to follow all of this if you make one change to your process.  If you don't, you go to jail.  This is less the 0.1% of the regs of one agency at the Federal level.  This is the reality of fascism/distributism/corporatism/crony capitalism that you refuse to see.  Paraphrasing the great Yuri:

I can take him to OSHA.  I can show him the regulations.  He still won't believe me.  Only when the government boot crushes his face will he understand, but it will be too late.  That is the tragedy of the situation of demoralization.

I'm coming to understand that inexperienced utopians such as yourself truly do assume that the producers will always produce.  You can have your authority without responsibility.  B.S. like this OSHA reg has very real consequences, such as factories shutting down and moving overseas.  Also large corporations spend the bucks to come up with systems so that we can pencil whip the forms and stay in compliance.  OSHA (the government you idolize) is a huge barrier to entry of the little guy.  Also, NO company is 100% in compliance, so the government can shake down anyone at anytime for money, or jail political opponents.  This is the reality of the fallen nature of the men in government you will not see.

When you claim that the State is essentially relegated to maintaining private property but that issues like justice and charity are relegated entirely to the Church, I think that you fall into the same error of separating the Church and State, such that the task of one does not flow into the temporal governance of the other. 

I don't "claim" anything.  I have quoted the Church saying that relief of the poor is NOT a matter of justice and that it is NOT regulated by law.

Spoken like a true GOPer. If you don't own a business then you're uneducated. Nevermind actual education. That's not real education. How much money have you made? That's the real world.

James, you are incapable of having an actual conversation. For an adult that is supposedly so learned, you certainly can't seem to make a response without boiling everything down to calling me a leftist utopian, uneducated, and saying that my posts are a "waste of electrons."

You're exceedingly condescending. The fact that you stated that you think I am "losing the debate" just goes to show why engaging with you is imprudent. I'm not trying to beat you in a debate, James. I'm trying to discuss a topic with you as a fellow Catholic. Economics and politics are not always de fide topics, but one would never know it when talking with you.

Clearly you're more interested in winning some sort of debate with me. It's too bad that you aren't capable or willing to have a higher level conversation without reducing everything to winning and losing.

[james03]

Spoken like a true GOPer. If you don't own a business then you're uneducated. Nevermind actual education. That's not real education. How much money have you made? That's the real world.

No Louis, I am commenting on your lack of education AND your lack of experience.

I'm not trying to beat you in a debate, James. I'm trying to discuss a topic with you as a fellow Catholic.

No Louis, you are not trying to discuss a topic with me.  If you were, you would acknowledge points I have made.  From past experience I know you will never acknowledge even one.  You lack humility so you can't be taught.

[james03]

Where can I find your book?

The second edition is done, I'm (not) working on layout, which I hate.  It will be on Amazon.  I'll post when it is up.

[Baldrick]

I assume that you are talking about this part:

that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.

Is that what the Church means by a "just wage"?  I just want to agree on this before we go on to talk about it.

Yes.

There is simply no way that an economist or a group of economists can implement such a thing in a non-arbitrary manner.  James has already done an excellent job describing briefly why this is, so I won't repeat the argument.

It seems to me that people on the "just wage" side of the issue seem to think that there is all this money out there that isn't being paid to wage earners.  What they don't understand is that most businesses are barely scraping by, barely making payroll day-in and day-out.  Many of the people at the "top" of the company are not doing nearly as well as you might think.  An arbitrarily determined decree that wages should be such-and-such will simply mean closing the doors of many businesses and even higher unemployment than we already have.

It's the lack of specificity (thinking that the general definition of a "just wage" proffered above is even remotely useful in the context of the real world) AND the lack of experience regarding how things actually work that is quite frustrating to see and argue against because such people imagine that they have solution that even in principle they cannot possibly have.

And the damage done by such thinking ^ - particularly in the 20th century - is incalculable. 

Finally, the economy is in dire straits worldwide; and before we start talking about a "just wage" - and who is going to pay for it, much less the insane Corbyn idea of a guaranteed income, please give this very balanced overview of the state of the economy a listen.  It's a middle of the road guy, Jim Puplava, no right-winger by any stretch of the imagination: http://www.financialsensenewshour.com/broadcast/fsn2016-0820-2.mp3

Also, LouisIX is certainly not uneducated; I don't think James meant that generally.  I relish his thoughts on theology/thomism, for example.  But here, I'm afraid, he's a bit lost. 

 

[LouisIX]

Spoken like a true GOPer. If you don't own a business then you're uneducated. Nevermind actual education. That's not real education. How much money have you made? That's the real world.

No Louis, I am commenting on your lack of education AND your lack of experience.

Haha. You don't even know anything about me.

I'm not trying to beat you in a debate, James. I'm trying to discuss a topic with you as a fellow Catholic.

No Louis, you are not trying to discuss a topic with me.  If you were, you would acknowledge points I have made.  From past experience I know you will never acknowledge even one.  You lack humility so you can't be taught.

Hahaha. The irony. Well, thank you for trying to educate me, James. That was so humble of you, especially given my lowly status as forum imbecile.

[LouisIX]

Also, LouisIX is certainly not uneducated; I don't think James meant that generally.  I relish his thoughts on theology/thomism, for example.  But here, I'm afraid, he's a bit lost. 

What I'm trying to do is to question some of the premises of the average GOP position. I very much respect those who disagree with these objections. However, what I don't understand is how questioning trickle-down-economics, for example, automatically makes one a leftist or a socialist. I abhor socialism and love private property. I consider myself a political traditionalist.

I think that those who sell themselves on practical politics are losing sight of the Church's political principles in a blind effort to conserve. But all of this is complicated, right? That's why good Catholics have differing opinions. But it seems increasingly true that SD is not a place to discuss politics, at least not if you don't work with your hands, own a business, are voting for Trump, etc. If you disagree with the two or three vocal posters here you will just be insulted and relegated to the leftist bin.