My feed came with this piece from the Raw Story this morning: America leads the developed world in child poverty. Yay, us. Here’s a quote:

The U.S. has one of the highest relative child poverty rates in the developed world. As UNICEF reports, “[Children’s] material well-being is highest in the Netherlands and in the four Nordic countries and lowest in Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and the United States.”

Our peer country is Romania.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m ready for all the Greg Mankiw-approved bullshit econ ideology to start paying off for poor kids. A timetable for delivering on all that trickling would be appreciated.

Frederich Hayek once thought he dealt a damning blow to the concept of social justice by penning The Mirage of Social Justice. He makes a fair point: given that what many look for in justice concerns the betterment of life for those who are impoverished, any gain in standard of living for those who are wealthy means that any progress for those who are impoverished seems diminished. People can always be made better off as along as any inequality exists. Hence, social justice is an insoluble, chimerical concept.

Sure. He’s right. I don’t see any real problems with the basic logic. Social conditions, and what is good and what is right, are always under deliberation. That’s news somehow?

But lots of life is enmeshed in these types of concepts. If I have to answer the question “How much justice is enough” then those who demand I answer it, in turn, have to answer the following for me: “How much wealth is enough?” and “How much economic growth is enough?”

Yeah, I didn’t think so.