Wealth and Poverty

Reading Response: Plato's Republic - Justice in the City and the Soul

What is justice? What is injustice? We seem to use these terms often, but do we ever really think about what they mean? In Plato's Republic, we have a transcription of Socrates asking Adeimantus similar questions. Socrates' idea was that if we can decide what is justice/injustice in the State, we can then see what it is in individuals.
Socrates made a proposition that society would be more benefited if each person did that for which he was best suited and did only that. Then, all people in the State would provide for one another based on their own skills. For example, a farmer would grow crops for him and his neighbor, and a carpenter would build houses for himself and his neighbor. Then the farmer would provide food for the carpenter, and the carpenter would provide shelter for the farmer. This Utopian society seems plausible until Socrates begins asking more questions: Where would the farmer get his oxen and plows? Where would the carpenter get his tools? Where would either of them get their shoes or clothes? Or healthcare? Or protection? Soon the imagined society would need many more people. Adeimantus brought up another slant to the whole proposition: can people live and be happy in such a society or would they begin to want the luxuries of life in addition to the necessities?
Socrates determines that "wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and [poverty] of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent." It is interesting to point out that Socrates did not believe people should try to change their class or social status because that would disrupt the society and thus be unjust. So can there be an ideal society in which every one does only that at which he is skilled, shares his skills with his neighbors, and gets neither too wealthy nor too poor? If there can be, that society would be truly just in Socrates' opinion. As he said, "...our aim in founding the State was not the disproportionate happiness of any one class, but the greatest happiness of the whole."