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Yeah, the "orange" alert is funny and, sadly, has lots its meaning.
First, are you really comparing a progressive tax system to chattel slavery? The top 5% of American income-earners pay about 50% of the taxes. Yes, that's a minority, but are the "rich" really the "slaves" in the new economy? I find the suggestion preposterous, and even offensive.
Second, are you against cities generally or just those that "choke out nature and community"? Suburban sprawl consumes more land and resources than cities ever did, and these days there is as much rural anonymity as urban. It's a romantic notion, but I fail to see the virtue of doing my own farming, fishing, and forestry, whatever the dresscode.
And third, I think you're right to ask what it is we're doing with our increased health and life expectancy. But what's the lesson to be learned from the 19th Century when people died at half our age, or from parts of Africa where life expectancy is still less than 40 years? Did they really deal with death better or even differently than us?
I'm prone to be contrarian, too (as you can see). Perhaps it's a symptom of our time. I suspect, however, that living free from fear will be made more possible by creativity than criticism. Until then, we live the questions.
First, the analogy with slavery is not perfect… I see these qualities as similarities:
Through the making of laws, the majority can “use” the resources of the “minority” to suit their ends. The Slaves had lots of physical resources and plantation owners “needed” them to get the job done. The “rich” and the slaves share this in common, their resources being taken by the majority because the majority wants it (a la the kind of government they appoint).
The majority behave as though they “own” the minority. There are severe consequences if you do not do as you are told, whether picking cotton, sitting at the front of bus, or paying as much taxes as the majority has requested.
The consequences are also similar. For a slave, his consequences for not picking cotton well may be severe physical abuse. Likewise, tax evasion exacts huge consequences, more than many other actually immoral crimes in our culture. Evading taxes has a greater punishment than even something as dramatic as adultery.
The vocabulary on the taxing of the “rich” today is often associated with “paying their fair share.” This is justice language. However, if you separately asked ten people, they wouldn’t all agree on what “fair” is. This kind of justice talk is similar to how people assumed Africans should be made into slaves… they are colored, and that’s enough reason to say it’s “fair” to use their resources for the other’s ends.
Thankfully, the Civil War and later the Civil Rights Movement showed that to take a larger percentage of resources of a minority group for the sake of the majority is unjust and nasty.
I do think a progressive tax is unjust by its very nature, though it is very pragmatic. However, pragmatics are not the same as justice.
Second, as for urban centers, I agree with you about the suburban areas. No doubt. I include them in the urban areas because, well, they are part of it and created it.
As for anonymity, I’ve lived in urban centers, suburban areas, and small towns (“rural” can often be a misnomer, inciting images of random farms disconnected from small towns). I can testify that it is hard to be anonymous in a small town… even if you never come of your house, everybody knows. I never felt as capable as falling quietly off the earth than I did in Los Angeles. I never felt as though my voice mattered very little, than I did in the big city. And even in trying to make community in large populations, we usually find people who are more like us, our age, our socio-economic class, our profession. In a small town, your choice in community are the diverse people in front of you. As Flannery O’Conner said, if you want to know human nature, live in a town of 500 people.
I certainly am not saying we should all do our own farming. Real community is learning to depend on each other for our needs. What I am saying is that the urban center seems to play hypocrite. I mention the “dress code” to point out that for all the talk about caring for “nature,” many don’t wear clothes that are natural. Rethinking the tie and the high heels are just one way to look at it, though the rapid changes of fashion trends is another.
In addition, many want to be “green,” but then dump their trash in someone else's backyard. As Wendell Berry has said, large cities get their food from Kentucky and sends their trash to Kentucky. They get to use others for their livelihood, teaching children that food comes from groceries and trash goes to the garbage man, leaving many without an understanding of the very ungreen impact the large urban center creates. Many say we need to save the rainforests, without ever visiting one, so they want to save it so that their way of life can be continued (I assume). So the forest is just a tool, not something valuable in itself. Hybrid cars are another issue, growing more popular in urban centers. Few consider that for all the gas there are saving, they’ve used a lot more energy to create a new car than to keep the one they have. From my experience, residents of urban centers often get new cars more often than those in smaller towns.
Third, as for death, yes, I think people understood death much better in older days. They lived with it. It wasn’t quarantined to sterile hospitals. People in community knew when people died, and they saw dead bodies frequently. They also held a view that humans had souls to be formed in this life, while in “modern” times, we’ve sidestepped the soul in our public discourse and made the body of larger importance (thanks to the rise of philosophical naturalism in the university). In addition, they understood that death was a catalyst toward living a better life. The modern writer, Scott Peck, insists that we must understand what we’ve long neglected in the modern world that own mortality prompts us to use our lives smarter to make real contribution. But when we’re always promised remedies against illness and death, we psychologically behave like we don’t need to prepare for it, hence wasting more time doing our own thing, consuming, staring at the television, not creating, not thinking about how to make the world more alive. I work with people like this all the time and they often consider thinking more deeply about human meaning as a hobby for monks and poets but laughable for the popular culture.
And lastly, I understand your difference between creativity and criticism. I’m sorry if I came across as more critical, though I believe if I ever do criticism well, it’s only because creativity allowed me to imaginatively examine my surroundings. In addition, I spend most of my time helping others creatively, traveling, speaking, writing (tedious work, rewarding at times). Yet because I’m taxed higher than most, I cannot use my resources to their full potential to maximize helping people have better lives. I’d like to build a retreat center as a haven for thoughtful, creative people to consider how to make the world a better place. But the govt takes a lot of those resources… and I’m back at the beginning.
On the cities vs. small towns issue, although large cities generate a lot of garbage and may encourage consumerism more than small towns, I have to wonder if the net impact on the environment, on a per capita basis, is still lower in cities. Small towns don't have the efficiencies of scale afforded to cities for the distribution of utilities and goods, nor they benefit from mass transit, denser urban planning, or, often, recycling programs. City dwellers own fewer cars (1.8 vs. 2.2 per household), drive fewer miles (7,000 annually), and their homes are ~20% more energy efficient. A study out of Iowa State showed that rural households spend a proportionately larger share of their income on vehicles and gasoline (as well as health care, drugs, and tobacco). So, I don't think we can assume that small town life is greener just because it's closer to field and forest.
On the progressive-tax-is-slavery issue, I still find the comparison unhelpful. You state that the Civil War and Civil Rights Movement showed that "to take a larger percentage of resources of a minority group for the sake of the majority is unjust". Really? It seems to me that the great lesson is that it's unjust to treat people differently on the basis of their RACE, and Civil Rights legilation has expanded this to include several additional categories of difference on which it is illegal to discriminate. Perhaps you think it unjust, but "income" is not one of these protected classes.
And a progressive tax seems to me to be quite biblical: "to whom much is given, much is expected." I think people with higher income levels bear a greater responsibility for the community (or alternatively, those with lower incomes bear less communal responsibility). As Mr. Obama has been saying, I am my brother's keeper.
I've worked for financial institutions in both the US and Canada, and I can tell you that Americans complain far more about paying taxes than do Canadians, who actually pay more. It seems to me that a person's attitude toward paying taxes is related less to the amount their paying than to their understanding of their personal responsibility, to sense of contributing to the common good. There's something very "early church" about this.
Enough for now, except to say thanks again, Dale. You have accomplished your purpose -- you have provoked some thought! Thank you!
I'm also finding ways to use alternative energy, like wood and solar in my small town which I didn't have the space and resources to do in the larger city I lived in. And we have excellent trash and recycling services, as well as a local landfill which always alerts us to the consequences of our disposal...
I guess sometimes people in both large populations and small fit outside the scope of the generalities.
I understand that slavery and civil rights were based on race, but I don't see how the dignity of a human being stops with his skin color and does not also include the fruit of his labor and skills. Though our legal system may not categorize the fruit of labor as part of the dignity of humans, that doesn't mean the legal system is right.
That doesn't mean either that I'm against people who make more from contributing more. I don't think living in American should be a set fee, like an admission to a movie, regardless of income. Instead if everybody had to pay $.20 for every $1 they earn, that would be just (even if you excluded those under $50k from paying at all). But progressive tax doesn't work that way. Progressive tax not only requires higher wage people to pay more money than poor (which is just), but it also requires a much higher percentage (which, on my view, is unjust). I'm all for "to whom much is given, much is expected." I believe that's what my view supports because I don't believe in the "set fee." A progressive tax would rearrange the verse to say "to whom much is given, much much more will be arbitrarily expected exponentially." As I said before, progressive tax may be pragmatic, but I don't think it's just. We can both use Jesus' words to justify our view, but we need more than that. We need a solid case that it is just to tax an incrementally higher percentage (not just higher dollar amounts) to people who make more money. I would love to read an article showing how that is more ethical than a broad standard tax percentage.
I'm looking forward to the day that, if we believe wealth distribution is just, that we also distribute diplomas to everyone as well. You may be smart, but you still have to tear up your Harvard degree and distribute the little pieces to the less smart. We have to let everyone have whatever jobs they want, regardless of their qualifications. We do this with taxing people who have money, but not with other fruit of our labor and skills. That's inconsistent from I see on a justice perspective.
I agree we should be our brother's keeper. I don't know anyone who disagrees with this. It is only about how it is done and done most efficiently. On the progressive tax system, I cannot help my brother as much as I'd like because someone in govt claims to know my brother better than I do. Obamal, in using Cain's words is assuming that people who make money do not want to help others; so the govt has to force them to cough it up. However, the people with money do not think the govt uses the money as well as they do for the charitable work they are doing. So they think the bother's keeper line lacks motivation as I knew few people who think you shouldn't help others.
Thanks for the Canadian perspective. I've a friend who is a professor in Canada and he says he pays about the same in taxes when all is said and done, only the GST and VAT are brutal and make up for the lower income tax he pays. But he could be a special case. I can understand why Candians complain less than Americans... it's in our blood. Many of us descended from pioneers who sought out higher ideals of human endeavor. Some of that tradition is still with us, freeing ourselves from tyranny. My Canadian friends joke that their culture is much different. They'd rather be passive and wait out the tyrants so they can eventually gain independence. That sentiment alone is enough to see how Americans desire to be more empowered to pursue new frontiers than many of our North American siblings... but I digress.
The example of the "early church" has, I believe, two large problems as an analogy: 1) in the narrative of the Jerusalem church we are told what happened, NOT what ought to have happened. There is little indication that other churches acted the same way in pooling all their resources. In addition, this pooling of resources may be the reason Paul later had to take an offering for the Jerusalem church. They didn't work by good economics and needed a bail out. 2) The govt is not a church. I would much rather be using my resources (after I paid a fair tax) to support local causes and local needs that are right under my nose. The govt doesn't know my bother that needs help. I have a personal touch. The govt does not. I have real relationships with people; the govt does not. I have the Spirit of God leading me, the govt does not. I cannot see how it is Biblical to hand over our resources to the govt and, at the same time, disempowering the resources of the Spirit-led local church reaching local needs. So the "early church" example doesn't work on a govt model as much as it does on the model that I'm proposing: make taxes fair so that we better minister to local brothers and sister in need. This is what, I believe, creates more American freedom, promotes human dignity through responsibility, and most efficiently cares for the needy on the local level. I believe more than ever that you cannot create a better human world by disempowering humans through big govt and big business, which are impersonal entities pushing a brave new world.
But all this could boil down to a deeper philosophical assumption about human pursuits and values.
Tell Ralph "hello" for me! :)
Lutheran: http://archive.elca.org/jle/article.asp?k=751
Evangelical: http://tiny.cc/IKvcc and http://tiny.cc/9ExAm
Methodist: http://tiny.cc/AnCSj
Roman Catholic: http://www.osjspm.org/economic_justice_for_all....
It's a good question, I think -- what is tax equality? You open the door, I think, when you grant that justice does not require "equal tax amount." You insist, however, on "equal tax rate." The progressive tax is based instead on the argument that justice requires an "equal tax burden." The article above by Chuck Collins makes an interesting biblical case.
In any event, I find it more "empowering", personally, to consider my tax contribution as one way in which I participate in my community's common goals. In a participatory democracy, "government" is just another way of saying "us."
Thanks, again, Dale. Looking forward to your next posts!
I read every article. Thanks very much for sending those. It helps shine a light into what assumptions are being played out in the progressive tax initiative and how some Christians think it is mandated by Scripture.
The wealth gap mentioned of the last 50 years that has become a concern has been one that grew in a progressive tax era. Maybe, just maybe, progressive tax is not the way to help the poor but an excuse for politicians to disempower private citizens… just maybe. This thought came to me through reading the articles and puzzling over why the status quo doesn’t work but keeps being enforced with fear language.
Lutheran article: “While some economists and many public officials and citizens believe that a flat tax will help all citizens by encouraging more investment, Christian ethics is more concerned with distributive justice than allocational efficiency, instrumentalism, or utilitarianism.” Is that what Christian ethics are about? Since on my view, there is no real demarcation in Jewish culture from the Old Testament to the New, it is easy to assume that cryptic remarks in the New Testament are to be interpreted apart from the Old. It’s the larger picture that counts and the larger picture does not believe wealth entails using humans as utilitarian nor does it denounce wealthy people but rather cautions them. It also cautions the poor to take responsibility for themselves.
The Jewish Jesus did not promote monetary distribution. I do think he believed the poor should not be paying taxes (widow's story). Jesus' statement that it is difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom was not an argument that the rich need to be robbed. He could not be condemning the rich because his own forebears where rich and were given wealth by God himself. Deut 8 says God provides people the ability to be wealthy. Abraham and Solomon being two such examples. To force people to give in order save their soul only opens up a bunch of other potential sins that are provoked on the weaker brother, including envy and malice. I say “weaker” because I’m assuming that a weak person is not generous and so must have their money extracted forcefully. The Christian ethic is multi-faceted and includes a changed heart not one compelled out of fear.
Lutheran article again: “Although a Christian could fulfill these obligations through private charity, Hamill argues that governmental compulsion is necessary because 'most people, due to the human tendency towards greed, would never pay their share voluntarily.'" This is ad hoc too. How do we know people won’t give? And why do we assume that the public is more greedy than the government and those elbowing for greater power in it? People give plenty these days, in addition to what they give to the IRS. In fact, it is through this kind of generosity outside of taxes to organizations that we’ve had so much increased awareness and enthusiasm toward social justice in recent years (because, apparently, the govt isn’t doing a good enough job though they’ve hiked taxes to extraordinary levels in the past). I’m saddened that not only does the current administration want to raise income taxes, but he wants to tax the money given to charitable organizations too. How is this social justice and promoting generosity?
There’s a deeper assumption going on about people that must be the difference between different sides of the debate. And until we nail down those assumptions, much of the rest of the talk about taxation and it’s purposes become less fruitful.
Most of the articles hardly touch on MY view as to why our tax system is unjust (Collins makes uncharibable blanket remarks about conservative Christians and people wanting to nuzzle up to the wealthy). Collins fails to give the reader causal connections that our current budget deficits are a result of tax breaks, including that our tax system is why our governments are in budget crisis (not to mention unjust behavior on the part of the banks, which has nothing to do with the tax system). It does not mention studies (and this is something Obama was questioned on in the Democratic Primary) that the government actually makes more money to help the poor when capital gains tax is lower. Obama wanted 28% at the time (and has since backed down to 20%) and the commentator said, if your government will make less money to fund your programs, why do you still insist on raising taxes? Obama had no clear answer.
The articles also assume, from what I can tell, that “in principle” progressive tax is good to help the poor and that none of the poor had opportunity to be unpoor through their own effort and community. I can imagine a system where the poor are indeed taken care of and the needs of our fellow Americans are met… and in that same system, people, both poor and rich, take responsibility for themselves and in that system, the government can also spend well within its budget and keeps large corporations from abusing citizens. So the need to keep hiking taxes would be moot because the essentials would be taken care of and laws would be enforced. Our economic melt-down did not come from lower taxes (from what I can tell), but from immoral acts and lack of oversight that our government is supposed to be watching out for all of us. But they didn’t. And so to fix the mess, they want to extract more from us. And to pay for the wars, they want to extract more from us. And to cover the ponzi scheme that is Social Security, they want to extract more from us. And that is where most of the “in principle” points fail. I believe my view of taxes would more than adequately meet the social justice issues. But I cannot be so naïve to think that a social justice argument is enough for the government to progressively tax its people. Much of my money is not going toward social justice. As Ana Pascal (a nicely philosophical name), who only pays 78% of her taxes, says to the IRS auditor in Stranger than Fiction: “Listen, I'm a big supporter of fixing potholes and erecting swing sets and building shelters. I am *more* than happy to pay those taxes. I'm just not such a big fan of the percentage that the government uses for national defense, corporate bailouts, and campaign discretionary funds. So, I didn't pay those taxes. I think I sent a letter to that effect with my return.” This is not social justice. Which means a progressive tax actually creates a bigger issue of allowing government to have more power than it can handle, allowing it’s poor decisions to effect way too many people, creating more social injustice, assuming I’m incapable of handling my financial resources to reach my real local needs. So when it comes to justice, I’m unsure if any “principle” in Scripture can be mined out to justify some tax policy that encompasses today’s state of affairs. If anything, there may be some proverbs that speak the opposite about the culpability giving power to the irresponsible.
Education is hurting in California, for example, because the education system is very poor. Not because of lack of funds but because of lack of quality. A bad teacher gets tenured in just two years. You cannot create good education this way and expect people to be glad to give money into a monster of a system that celebrates and entrenches mediocrity.
The Collins’ articles mostly decried problems in state and local taxes, both of which I agree. I’m not for everyone paying taxes. Taxation must be nuanced based on a certain standard of living, but taxes should not grow progressively after that limit as it starts looking unjust (just as unjust as politicians voting for lobbyist agendas or for helping their friend’s companies of which they are on the board, etc). I think, however, that the rate should be the same once income reaches a certain threshold. Then the govt should budget based on that rather than taxing me based on their budget. A nation should only be allowed to spend only what it can receive and provide the financial welfare of others based on its economic growth. If it cannot provide for others out of its own coffers, that is where the "community" of "us" should be (and acting long before government does anyway).
I am for a consumption tax, not like Canada’s GST/VAT which is more hard hitting on the poor than even our local and state taxes, but I am not for taxing essential items like food, fuel, automobiles under a certain dollar amount, medicine, etc… When I lived in CA, the progressive income tax was brutal when added to the federal tax. Since I had to pay those kinds of taxes, I would have liked to see them reversed: The larger check going to CA and the smaller to the Feds, since local money can help local people and give more local influence over the money that is taxed. When the money goes to Washington, far fewer have a voice and those voices get concentrated with a larger degree of lobbyists. Spreading out the wealth to the states rather than to the feds would make lobbying more difficult and would involve less power-brokering and more local help.
I’m not an economist yet I know what makes an economy grow is multi-faceted. The more money people make the more the government gets. The more people are taxed, the less they can use money to make it grow. If I had a property to sell and if the capital gains rate is too high for me to make a smart financial sale, I’ll hold onto it until someone lowers the rate. In that situation, the higher tax rate yields no more revenue to the government because it discourages transactions. Not to mention, it is because of saving and leveraging and putting my sweat into it that I would be able to buy the property to begin with, renovate it, repair it, make it a space where people who haven’t saved can have a home to live in that is nice and clean. This is providing for the poor as well, which is much better than most government housing I’ve seen. In addition, if I have to pay higher taxes which would lower my cash flow, I’d be forced to raise the rents to cover the added expenses which put the burden again on the residents, undoing the very thing that government claims to be alleviating. Plus, the more I can invest, the more I have to give away later in life to help tomorrow’s poor instead of becoming one of them (I thought Bush got it right to enact tax incentives for people who want to save for retirement, thus allowing more govt money go to the real needy rather than the govt making the elderly become part of the burden). This may not be everyone’s world. I’ll grant that. But that’s the practical world I see. If the govt made exceptions to only tax the Scrooges of the world while the generous continue to be effective on their provisions of others, that may be a different story. But in a system as large and behemoth as ours and a nation as large as ours, I’ll continue to see the injustice unless I see some real, effective change that goes outside both party lines.
The point at the end of the day is that it’s a fine balance in the science of economics on how to tax. The large point, I would hope, in the promotion of government financial assistance to the poor is NOT to focus on making the wealthy less wealthy (politics of envy). I’d like to see government focus on getting as much as possible fairly, stretching every dollar as far as possible for the needy, while not burdening its people. High taxes do not stimulate financial growth. In addition, and this makes the reply on topic with the blog post, is that I do not appreciate all the FEAR talk going on in Washington today telling us to act rashly and quickly to hurry the bills through voting (the same tactic as car salesmen) in order to make our problems go away. It’s the fear that is deeply unsettling and we’ve seen that rashness played out pitifully this year already with poorly thought bailout programs and regulations.
Instead of calling humans “consumers,” and instead of encouraging humans to spend to stimulate economic growth, I’d like to see classes in high school, as mandatory as sex education, taught on financial responsibility, saving, delayed gratification, and how to create capital wealth that helps others. I think we’d see the poor less poor, and the financial gap between wealthy and poor less dramatically altered. But it will take responsibility on the part of everyone to act justly and be generous, to depend on each other to take care of our needs, not just treating the rich as coffers of free money, using them as a minority class to pick on in the name of paying “their fair share.” All in all, I don’t see “us” reaching our community’s common goals with progressive tax, but simply degrading humans while non-human entities like fed and corporations continue to grow. And I guess, if I did see us reaching our common goals, I wouldn’t be alerted to how much money our government tends to flush on the backs of hard working Americans.
edit: I think this speaks also to our current psychology of fear in American and wanting a savior to put everything right: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?st...... interestingly, in the article, it speaks toward the GOP, while I think it goes both ways. We give our humanity, our resources, our responsibility, our mystery for the promise of security.
And this is somewhat random but it kept playing through my mind as I read your post... I think it is amazing the extent that God validates human enterprise. Christian's often fantasize about the simplicity of life in the Garden of Eden, yet what escaped my observation for so long was that the story of redemption culminates in a city - the new Jerusalem. After one of my professors pointed this out, I can't help but walk/drive around downtown LA and think about the fact that there is something intrinsically good and beautiful about it, even though it is so so incredibly fallen and our efforts at all human endeavors are flawed. I can't wait for God to redeem the city and to see it the way it is supposed to be.
So... just a bunch of in-process thoughts I'd thought I'd throw out there... sorry if they are a little random.
I've also heard theologians say that we started in a garden and will end in a city... I took that view for a while, but now believe this may be adding too much commentary on the Scripture. I do think cities are important as they pool resources and allow a wider variety of gifts to be used, including the arts (though many writers I respect are writing from rural places... I think of people like Annie Dillard and Wendell Berry and Flannery O'Conner). I read recently that Solomon's Jerusalem, at its height, had a population of 50,000 people. Today that's consider a small town. In the ancient world, it was a metropolis. I think 50,000 is more manageable and allow the citizens to contribute more. If I used the analogy of a small church vs. a large church, I've seen in my travels that the larger the church the more passive a larger percentage of the population becomes. A smaller church calls for every hand on deck because each is more responsible to carry the weight.
I also see that at the end of the Story, it isn't just a New Jerusalem, but a whole New Earth. That's a lot of territory in which to make gardens and dwell in small community under the kingship emanating from Jerusalem. Lord, hasten that day!...
It is unfortunate that people see "compassion" usually only in terms of paying taxes to the govt. I heard an interview from a Syracuse professor about three years ago (on KFI) where he said that conservatives out-give non-conservatives by a large percentage, even though conservatives are often considered less compassionate in the political public discourse. I found that fascinating and depressing at the same time that often the most generous as name-called as being less so. Meanwhile, the radio host (libertarian, I believe) admitted he considered his tax money to be his compassionate charity and thus gave very little to charity. I think many are in his camp.