What?!

Fairness is "impartial and just treatment or behavior without favoritism or discrimination." Wait, isn't that a good thing? The keyword in that definition is the word JUST. Just is defined as "based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair." Being just is when a person gets what is deserved. Morally right and fair. Fair indicates impartiality and without prejudice. So these are all good things, but Life isn't fair.

The weather isn't fair. It rains on the just and the unjust. It rains on the good and the bad. It rains on the road and the fields. Rain doesn't care. If you're looking for justice, you are looking for a legal response to a set of circumstances. Did Mrs. McDonald steal the package from the neighbor's porch? Did Mr. Wilson have the qualifications and experience to get the promotion? Did Mr. Roberts and Ms. Swain work the same number of hours doing substantially the same work? This is why we make and follow laws: to establish a legal precedent or follow legal policies that determine what is deserved by all parties involved. We, in America, are very much concerned about what is fair and just.

Because of our Constitution, our inalienable rights are spelled out so that to the best of our ability, we can make sure that people get what they deserve. We are a nation of laws. If you watch any law shows on TV, you'll note they have law libraries that take up a full wall. There are the laws themselves, the laws set by Congress, amendments, torts, and legal opinions by the Supreme Courts. There is no way in the world they can legislate every contingency, but they try. Are there still inequities? Of course!

The point I'm trying to make is that this belief that everything should be fair and just is ingrained into every US citizen. When we see injustice and unfair treatment, we bristle. There are many of us that think that when something so egregious comes up we respond, "There ought to be a law!" There probably is one buried in those book stacks. Generally, people believe that the default of any situation is that people get what they deserve. And that is a good thing. Right? No. The law of Unintended Consequences states that since the default is that everyone gets precisely what they deserve, that means that billionaires deserve the money they're making regardless of how they're making it, and homeless people live on the street because that's all they deserve.

Let that sink in.

Those that find that inequity unpalatable are labeled socialists or communists. This is not the essence of capitalism, this is exploitation and lack of human kindness. This is not the product of an inefficient economic model, it is the product of a flawed social model. Our attitude toward the unfortunates of this world is that they deserve nothing better. They have not earned the right to have a good life. It has gotten so out of hand that we see some think that the poor have not earned the right to live with dignity at all. We also believe that the rich deserve all that money because of the work and effort they took to earn it. Does the football coach for a university deserve twenty times the salary of the Biology professor? Granted, the biology students don't have to risk life and limb in front of 80,000 fans when dissecting fruit flies. The biology professor will never bring in that much entertainment income to the college.

It has been said that should everyone start at 0 and all the wealth be redistributed equally, it wouldn't take more than a decade before the people that had all the money before have regained all they had, and all those had their dreams come true with all the money they gained would lose the money and go back to what they had before. I have said this before: the rich think differently.

NEVERTHELESS: As a free society, as a compassionate people, we see someone in need and we help. We give to food pantries and soup kitchens. We donate coats, blankets, and warm clothes. We drop money into cans and hats. We may hire indigents to do manual labor. We protest unfair labor practices and illegal exploitation or treatment of our fellow human beings. We watch countless law and crime and punishment programs to get that feeling of justice. But in the back of our heads, we're thinking, "They should have worked harder. They shouldn't have pulled out a cell phone when stopped. They should have studied in school. They should have taken their meds. They deserve to be poor, not like us..."

So what have you done to deserve the lupus diagnosis you have? What have you done to deserve that college education you got? Did you actually earn all that money or was it given to you? What child deserves cancer? What adult deserves it? How is your work more important than that of the janitor or the linemen or the retail cashier?

Anyone that thinks a "burger flipper" doesn't deserve $20/hour has never flipped burgers. Can you imagine making 60 burgers per hour for four hours, and 30 burgers per hour for the slow hours, 5-6 days a week, 52 weeks per year? Oh, and then restocking, stacking those forty-pound boxes of fries, burgers, potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes...every day. Then they have to clean a grill that has done about 1000 burgers all day, clean the oil that has done nearly 160 pounds of fries, scrub and degrease all the surfaces, count the waste, and do the prep for tomorrow's onslaught in less than an hour? They also get to contend with the Karens and the Todds of the world that think that the college students manning the windows don't deserve their respect. Then there are the brats that overflow their pants in the baby chairs and the parents that don't clean it up because that's what these people get paid for. Or the guys that have a projectile vomiting episode in the bathroom that must be cleaned up...they have a special place in our hearts. Do these people deserve $7.25/hour? Is that just? Is that fair? In our current society, with the beliefs we've chosen to adopt, Of Course they deserve that! In fact, if life were truly just and fair, they'd be getting no money at all! The customers deserve fast and accurate orders of low-priced food, and what happens to those people that deliver it is none of their concern. The workers are living and breathing androids and do not deserve any life at all because this is a temporary position--something for high school kids to do to earn some money for gas or a car or some useless stuff for their game system. What they're getting is far more valuable than money! They are learning customer interaction, cooking and cleaning skills, responsibility, a servant leadership experience! *Stands on the sarcasm button until sparks fly.*

Thank Goodness we don't have to justify our privileges. Thank Goodness we don't have to defend our ability to purchase everything we want for our families. We haven't done anything to deserve what we have, really. Defend your right to live in a house in your current neighborhood. "Well, I studied hard and got a good job." "I worked hard and saved my money and spent it wisely." "I kept my credit score very high and continued to keep up on my continuing education." "I followed all the laws and paid my fair share of taxes." Really. So did I. But so did Bob and he's living on the street. And Fauntleroy did NONE of that and lives next to you.

So if someone says, "Life's not fair," reply "Thank goodness!" We tend to say that life's not fair only when WE don't get what we want. I prefer to say, "Life IS fair, it's just impartial." No one really deserves ALL that he or she has. No one should have to justify their lifestyle to anybody in order to have a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. Only we, as a community, can affect the fairness and justice of the society we live in. Don't give people what they deserve, you can't judge that. Give people what they need and go from there.

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