What Would Jesus Tax?

From TCS Daily: What Would Jesus Tax? Excellent article!

"When Jesus tells us he will regard the way we treat the hungry, the homeless, the stranger, the sick, and the prisoner as if we were treating him that way, it likely means he wouldn't think capital gains tax cuts for the wealthy and food stamp cuts for the poor represent the best domestic policy."

-- Jim Wallis, Sojourners Magazine

When I read Jim Wallis's attempt to use the gospels to set the capital gains tax rate, I flashed back to a speech that I heard Ted Kennedy give in the 1980s. Attempting to stifle the rising tide of conservative evangelical political engagement, Senator Kennedy said "I suggest that the almighty has not taken a position on the IRA deduction." Great line, I thought.

How times have changed. Keeping the Bible out of public policy was the left's line in the 1980s. Now they've switched to trying to get a 25% marginal tax rate on long-term capital gains out of St. Luke.

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It's not that the Lordship of Christ doesn't extend over economics, or that God is indifferent to financial matters. If I believed that, I couldn't work in those fields. It's that no detailed legal and tax code could ever be sufficient for all times and all places.

A couple of decades ago, a group of Calvinistic thinkers launched a movement called 'theonomy'. It attempted to impose the details of the Deuteronomic law code on modern America. Theonomists did it from the hard right; it seems as though some on the left are trying to do it from the other side. They agree on the premises that we can skip the hard thinking about economics and finance and simply base our policies on Biblical revelation at one moment in time. They disagree only on the era. Theonomists wanted the to impose the law code that was given to a Neolithic tribe in the second millennium BC: Evangelicals on the left look to the communal practices of a small group of dissidents who waited in First Century Palestine for the imminent fall of the dictator, as our economic guide.

The problem with both approaches is that in the end, they provide elaborate theological justifications for their followers to stop reasoning about economics. ...

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Critics on the left charge that lowering the tax rate on capital helps the rich, not the poor. This reveals the fundamental presupposition error of their thinking—that the rich and poor have an inherent economic conflict of interest. They do not. The tendency in modern dynamic economies is for the rich and poor both to get richer, but at different rates. Growth-oriented policies are beneficial to both. They have an inherent harmony of interests. This is demonstrated by current economic data. ....

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The simple economic fact in the end seems to be a moral fact as well. There is an 'envy-tether' which, when tightened in an attempt to punish the wealthy, ends up hurting the poor. I live in the Mon Valley area of Pennsylvania, very near ground zero of American deindustrialization, just outside of the former Mill town known as McKeesport. We're so close that we actually have a McKeesport mailing address. In fact, a couple of years ago, our accountant got a little confused and prepared a McKeesport tax return for our business earnings, thinking that we actually lived in the same taxing district. The bill was incredibly high, so high in fact that we would have moved our business to avoid it. They actually have something called a 'business privilege tax' which you have to pay even if you don't make any profit at all.

In the summer time when we walk around the neighborhoods or are driving home from Church, and the windows are open, we can actually smell the stench of urine and liquor on the main drag. A thriving business district now sports liquor stores, second hand shops and places to sell blood plasma. How, I wondered, can things have gotten and stayed so bad? Then I remembered that tax bill, and it all made sense. The envy tether.

Jim Wallis came here to McKeesport last year as part of something with a name like March for Justice. He mentioned the poverty. He did not, to my memory, mention the business privilege tax.

The single best sentence in the whole article, "This reveals the fundamental presupposition error of their thinking—that the rich and poor have an inherent economic conflict of interest." If some of our religious social justice types could ever escape their Amos and Jeremiah aspirations, maybe we could actually develop sound public policy that matches good intentions, and actually reduce poverty.

Comments

[dlw]

I'm kind of in a hurry so I didn't read the whole thing, but I think the tradeoff between equity and efficiency is not something "scientifically" settled and that there is wisdom in spreading the tax-burden evenly through a variety of taxes.

I think one can also make a biblical args for caring about the incidence of the taxes and whether they are progressive or regressive.

Economics does not give us the answers. It helps us to better frame the choices and their likely impacts, though there often is more fluff than empirically-driven reasoning on the impacts in much of Economics today.

dlw

[Michael Kruse]

Yeah, I was less interested in the merits of his tax ideas than I was his observations about decontextualized Bible verses/ideas for justifying contemporary policy actions.

"Economics does not give us the answers. It helps us to better frame the choices and their likely impacts..."

Exactly. Then you can begin to have the discussion based on anticipated outcomes not moralistic bumper sticker idealism.

[dlw]

I think all exegetical applications of scripture are removed from their original context and thereby subject to some differences about whether the fallible analogy implicitly being made is God-glorifying or simply manipulative...

dlw

[Ryan O]

I agree that you can't take a direct link for your tax policy from Jesus words, but he does set up a perspective in terms of what our prorities should be. If we look at Capatalism as a system, I think we can take a radical view of it because of our Christian perspective. Personally, looking at what Jesus says about money (in an agrarian/subsistence economy) I have to examine what the repercussions of our assumtions inherent in the "success" of the free market.
I disagree strongly with the line "This reveals the fundamental presupposition error of their thinking—that the rich and poor have an inherent economic conflict of interest."
This conflict has been proven true in Capatalist systems through out the world. There are individual people of wealth who are not in conflict, but it is this conflict that ultimately gave birth to Marxist thinking, and consequently peoples movements. In fact the competion, leading to sme winners and some losers, seems to me indemic of creating such conflicts. Even in America there have been movements to protect people against the repercussions of capatalism, child labor laws are the best example of Christian ethics trumping the economics of capatalism. The only reason that rich and poor grow wealthy together is because of consciencious action on the part of the citezenry, or action of the Government on its behalf.

[Michael Kruse]

Ryan, I think first we should clarify what we mean by capitalism. I like Rodney Starks definition:

“Capitalism is an economic system wherein privately owned, relatively well organized , and stable firms pursue complex commercial activities with a relatively free (unregulated) market, taking a systematic, long-term approach to investing and reinvesting wealth (directly and indirectly) in productive activities involving a hired workforce, and guided by anticipated and actual returns.”

I think the author probably has a similar definition. I see nothing in this that inherently pits the wealthy against the poor. It is an infrastructure for economic transaction. It amplifies the productiveness, effectiveness and the efficiency of the players involved and the decisions they make…and there is the key. If the players are predominately people with high moral values (concern for the poor, concern for the environment, etc.) the decisions they make in the market place are greatly amplified throughout society. On the other hand if they not virtuous those values are amplified as well.

Can people operating in capitalist societies create horrific social affects? You bet. But to the degree you ramp down the economic system to curb the behavior you often restrain the good that could emerge as well. The goal is maximum economic freedom with high virtue. That is the environment that is most beneficial for the poor. In the quote “…that the rich and poor have an inherent economic conflict of interest…” the operative word for me is “inherent.” Economics is not a zero-sum game.

“The only reason that rich and poor grow wealthy together is because of consciencious action on the part of the citezenry, or action of the Government on its behalf.”

Conscientious acts and Government acts are part of the virtuous society I mentioned but the poor benefit greatly by capitalism. The cost of food, shelter and basic necessities are all less expensive and more available because of the efficiencies in the marketplace. The problem in many developing nations is not capitialism but the absence of basic property rights, no capital markets etc. “Free markets” in such places is merely might makes right not capitialism.

I can’t build a full-blown case here but I big backer of capitalism as defined above.