In his 1980 television series, “Free to Choose,” economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman argued against government efforts to produce equal economic outcomes for all citizens. He said they were counterproductive, undermined freedom and had damaged the economy wherever they had been introduced.
Friedman’s co-panelists assailed him for knocking down what they suggested was a straw-man version of equality.
“I think he’s tilting at windmills,” said former British ambassador Peter Jay. “There’s almost nobody on the other side of that argument.”
But Friedman unflinchingly replied that equality of outcome was the implicit doctrine of many egalitarian politicians. Sure enough, 35 years later, equality of outcome is the evident the explicit goal of the Democratic presidential candidate who leads the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire.
“It would, I think, be hard for anyone in this room to make the case that the United States today is a just society or anything close to a just society,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said Monday in a speech at Liberty University. “In America today, there is massive injustice in terms of income and wealth inequality. Injustice is rampant.”
This conflation of justice and equality of income and wealth is should be forcefully rejected.
What Sanders, Friedman, libertarians and Christians studying at Liberty University can agree on is that America should have a safety net. Mercy and humanity dictate that the poor should not face starvation or homelessness.
But Sanders’ idea is something very different from this. His vision of justice is one in which state compulsion is employed to equalize economic outcomes.
Economic justice requires that each person be allowed to enjoy the fruits of his or her own labor and risk. That way there is a connection between actions and outcomes. It dictates that everyone should be able to own property and dispose of it as he or she pleases.
Justice also requires that the law treat everyone equally. It does not require and never has required that people be made to enjoy the same or similar levels of wealth or income, nor that all levels of income in a society should fall within an arbitrary range prescribed by government officials.
Sanders rejects the conception of justice that nearly every American embraces. That conception holds that inequalities arising from special or unequal treatment under the law are unjust. But it also praises and welcomes inequalities that arise from the free choice of millions of people acting independently to reward those who develop or otherwise participate in providing products and services that improve their lives.
Such inequalities are not only just, but indispensable for promoting the common good and improving living standards for humanity. If Americans fail to defend this true conception of justice from Sanders and his outdated socialism, the world will be poorer for it.
