The dangerous myth that wealth inequality, as such, is a injustice is the rationale for proposed racist law in New Jersey.
In N.J. must ‘repair the harm’ of huge wealth gap between white and Black families, advocates say, Susan K. Livio reports:
The state Assembly Community Development and Affairs Committee met at the Statehouse in Trenton to hear testimony based on the report: “Making the Two New Jerseys One: Closing the $300,000 racial wealth gap in the Garden State.”
The committee focussed on three pieces of legislation:
One bill, A1519, would make it easier for real estate appraisers to lose their license if they caught [sic] scaling down property evaluation based on race, creed or national origin.
Obviously, discrimination based on race, creed or national origin is evil. But how does one distinguish between appraisals based on legitimate economic criteria and one infused with personal bigotry. In today’s culture, with its extreme intolerance for bigotry, real estate appraisers are highly unlikely to openly admit that they are slanting their appraisals based on race, creed, or national origin. So how do licensing boards go about determining if bigotry is involved?
This looks like a license to frivolously sue, and coerce higher appraisal values based on fear of lawsuits, enriching existing homeowners/sellers on paper, at the expense of buyers overpaying. How is it good to scale up property evaluation based on race, creed or national origin, for fear of getting accused of scaling down property evaluation based on race, creed or national origin? How is that fair to buyers, who will pay above-market prices for homes? How is that fair to sellers, if they believe their net worth to be higher than actuality?
Another bill, A1579, would allocate $70 million to launch a Baby Bond Account Program, which would invest $2,000 in a state-managed fund for every child born to a family that earns no more than 200% of the poverty level. A family of four earning no more than $27,740 a year would qualify, based on federal poverty rules.
The third bill, A938, sponsored by Sumter, would create a New Jersey Reparations Task Force. The 11-person body would hold hearings and write a report that would “examine the extent to which the State of New Jersey and the federal government prevented, opposed, or restricted efforts of former enslaved persons and their descendants who are considered United States’ citizens to economically thrive upon the ending of slavery.”
After documenting wealth disparities between “races”, the article says:
These inequities stem from slavery and generations-old systemic policies and practices, such as “redlining” or steering Black people away from buying in white communities, and restrictive housing covenants that barred Black people from ownership, she said.
There is no question that past racist government policies were horrible. It may even be plausible that some lingering effects of those policies, which had hindered the economic advancement of blacks, are responsible for part of today’s wealth gap. But those laws, Jim Crow, ended almost 60 years ago. It’s hard to imagine that, after so much time much of the statistical gap stems from generations-old system policies and practices, let alone centuries-old slavery. My wife and I married in 1972. Neither of us got one iota of a financial head start from our parents. We are not wealthy. But we are comfortable in our retirement. We built our wealth through work and thrift. If there is a gap compared to some hypothetical black couple, how is that an inequity stemming from long-ago injustices?
As to the racist-inspired Baby Bond Account Program, how is it equitable to reward or not reward 18 year-olds with a Baby Bond windfall based on what their parents earned in the year they were born? And as to slave reparations, how is it fair to hand a windfall to people who were not victims of past injustices, paid for by people who were not culpable for those long-ago injustices?
Another bill not directly related to wealth inequality is also on the legislative agenda. In White men dominate most N.J. government boards. This bill aims to change that.by Susan K. Livio and Kelly Heyboer (NJ Advance Media for NJ.com) report:
State boards and commissions that collectively control billions of dollars and make decisions affecting everyday life in New Jersey must include more women and minorities, under a bill approved by state Senate committee Monday.
Judging people by skin color or gender, rather than merit, experience, and character, is both racist and sexist. How is that just?
All of these bills are not about compensating actual victims of unjust government policies. In fact, not one individual victim, backed by evidence, was even identified. These initiatives are collectivist, racist, in some measure sexist, and motivated by economic egalitarianism—an axis of philosophical evil.
History is settled. What happened, happened. It can’t be changed. The practice of using unchangeable history as a weapon to impose new injustices on innocent people who were not part of that history, through revenge discrimination based on color or sex, to favor non-victims who were not part of that history, is not the sort of actions that civilized societies that supposedly value individual sovereignty and rights and justice for all should tolerate.
These initiatives highlight the danger of elevating a non-issue into a big problem. Apparently, the statists are losing confidence in their “historical injustice” rationalizations for socialist agendas. So they are turning to wealth inequalities. But egalitarianism is the greatest collectivist evil, and is no more a justification for racist policies than history.
Related Reading:
NJ Governor Murphy’s COVID-19 Double Standard Toward the Demonstrators
NJ Turns its Back on the 14th Amendment – and History
Beneath the Title IX Controversy
Equal Is Unfair: America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality by Don Watkins and Yaron Brook
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