The Cost of Justice

Matthew 25:29 – “For to every one who has, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from the one who has not, even what they have will be taken from them.”

Last post, I wrote about the cost to individuals of fighting for justice. Today, I want to address the flip side: the cost of injustice to society. This verse is the perfect description of how money naturally flows; from those who have little to those who have much. Money makes money in the US economy as it did for the servants. 

There are several ways that those who have little are robbed of what they have. Some of those I am thinking of are consequences of deep tax cuts and reforms. The obvious example here is the “tax reform” bill of 2017. “This brings us to an oddity of the tax bill: the individual tax cuts expire over the course of the decade.” The corporate tax reductions are permanent. Individuals will have to rely on the beneficence of Congress to extend these tax cuts; corporations do not. The article linked shows how, in the aggregate, the middle class gets a bigger tax cut. However, that amount is spread around more taxpayers. “And though the $1 million-plus group appears to have the smallest percentage change, it still means that 572,000 people get to share a tax cut of $37 billion, compared to 27 million sharing $23 billion.” You probably don’t need to do the math to see that those who benefited the most were corporations and those who were already wealthy. The salient fact, though, is that these billions of dollars could have been used for necessary spending instead of enriching already rich people.

Deep tax cuts are also at the heart of cities, counties, and states charging prisoners and others caught up in the legal system for all sorts of things. This doesn’t include bail and the loss of jobs from being stuck in jail due to lack of bail money. For-profit prisons also add to this problem. Add in that most people caught up in the legal system in this way are Black, Latinx, or Native American and we have again the situation of those who are oppressed and with the lowest incomes having “even what they do have” taken away. 

I live in a majority-Black neighborhood. When we first moved to Cleveland, I checked out a lot of books from the library about its history. I learned a lot about how my neighborhood got the way it did. The short answer? Racism. It’s more complicated as I live around the corner from where a man raped and killed many women before he was caught. He was able to get away with it because the police didn’t believe the Black women who escaped. That decimated our neighborhood.

However, the arrest of that person came right after the recession of 2008. Many people in Cleveland were renting houses that landlords walked away from, leaving them scrambling to find housing. Unfortunately, I don’t remember where I read that. This led to a drop in tax revenues in Cleveland, which has exacerbated existing problems, including education funding, lead in the water, and the increase in homelessness. All of these problems cost society more in the long run. Not just in tax revenues but in productivity and participation of people in society. Injustice costs us not just in productivity and revenues, but in the increase in crime and violence. It costs us in the lack of a healthy, happy society. As one neighbor described his life, “we’re just trying to survive.” When people are “just trying to survive,” it wears on their physical and mental health.

Injustice costs the US in the squandering of our tax dollars to keep people out, detention camps, border walls, Muslim bans, and mounting healthcare costs. This money could be used for the benefit of all and is wasted on ineffective “solutions.” The mishandling of the corona virus pandemic is an injustice that will add to the taxpayer burden as well as increase the number of preventable deaths. Many people who never test positive will be challenged by the lack of income should their place of employment close. For all Donald’s efforts to downplay the seriousness of the pandemic and to focus on keeping numbers low, he will not be able to stop its effect on our economy or our people. 

Don’t forget the injustice of officials using their offices for gain, the cost of incompetence at the highest levels, the removal of necessary personnel (such as the entire office responsible for overseeing the response to a pandemic, which Donald did in 2018), and the cost of the loss of trust in government due to the ubiquity of Donald’s lies and mistruths. 

In addition, to follow up on our discussion of usury, those who can least afford it are charged more to borrow money in the form of higher interest rates. This figure is calculated in part by where a person lives. Historically, at least, those African-Americans who were granted loans or mortgages were charged higher rates of interest. Those who have little, even what they have will be taken from them.

Whew. Injustice is expensive. It might seem after reading this incomplete list that it is hopeless. To be sure, there is a lot of work that needs doing even after we get Donald out of office. Remember that God holds us in her hands. According to Rev William Barber, when it’s dark, that’s our (Christians’) time to shine. 

It’s time to shine. Let's get to it!

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