All You Need Is Gov: A Response to Obama's "Biblical" Economics
The State has a way of swallowing up competitors. And not just because it can outspend or legally forbid competition. Government has a monopolizing tendency because once it takes responsibility, no one else feels responsible.
At the National Prayer Breakfast on February 2, President Barack Obama explained that his economic policies—highly progressive taxes, greater welfare entitlements, deficit spending—reflect his "biblical" values. A few excerpts via Politico:
“for me as a Christian, [the rich paying more in taxes] coincides with Jesus’s teaching that ‘for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,’”
“When I talk about our financial institutions playing by the same rules as folks on Main Street, when I talk about making sure insurance companies aren’t discriminating against those who are already sick... I do so because I genuinely believe it will make the economy stronger for everybody, but I also do it because I know far too many neighbors in our country have been hurt and treated unfairly over the last few years. And I believe in God’s command to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’”
“I talk about shared responsibility … because I genuinely believe in a time when many folks are struggling, at a time we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income, or young people with student loans, or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone,”
There is no doubt about the Bible's emphasis on love, grace, hope and charity—particularly in the New Testament—but it is not some bureaucratic, disembodied kind of charity. Loving "thy neighbor" is about voluntary relationships, not government mandates. And suggesting that "to whom much is given, much shall be required" (Luke 12:48) is somehow related to material wealth and taxes is a far stretch. How can one reconcile such a peculiar interpretation with the Parable of the Talents, which says the exact opposite: "whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them"?
The supposed Biblical support for government redistributionist economic policies is weak. And while I believe that the President wants to help struggling Americans, his convictions do not translate to either effective or morally superior outcomes. Indeed, his misguided approach is suffocating the economy and adding to the struggles of those he desires to help.
Practical Problems
Top-down economic solutions are rarely effective. First, economic incentives often work counterintuitively as the complexity of markets creates a "domino" effect on other conditions, sometimes for the worse. For example, minimum wages sound good prima facia, but they make it more difficult for low-wage workers to find employment at all. Some of them end up supported by government or charities instead of getting experience and personal dignity working for their own paycheck—even if it isn't much. And, of course, we saw how much sub-prime mortgage programs helped out. Adjusting economic outcomes is not a simple pull of a lever, though politicians often speak this way.
Market complexity leads to the second point: For a centralized management of everyone's "needs," we would have to calculate exact preferences and quantities for every person, family and community at every sequential moment. The fascist and communist economies of the twentieth century collapsed because this fundamental requisite is impossible. We live in a world of unlimited wants and limited goods, meaning that somehow resources must be allocated to their best uses. Free market economies work because these decisions are made by millions of people every second, at the most direct and personal level.
Moral Problems
If a policy is ineffective or makes conditions worse, we clearly cannot claim any moral achievement, but there are other concerns. First, substituting taxes for charity is like switching apples for oranges. The taking of one's property to relieve someone else's discomfort has significant implications for how we view property rights in the first place. Do such rights exist, as the Declaration of Independence says? If so, do they come from God? The right to one's property is sacred because it is tied to our natural responsibilities as decision makers and stewards of our resources. Like the parable, God grants us gifts and talents, and it is up to us to make them produce fruit and share it voluntarily as we are moved to do so.
But let us assume that taking property through the vehicle of pseudo-democratic legislation is fair game in certain conditions (after all, I may be tempted to steal if it meant I could save someone's life). It is then necessary to ask whether there is any point at which this justification is lost. I might steal to save a life, but would I steal to satisfy a less urgent need, like cleaner water or minor medical care? What about healthy food, exercise and education? We are currently doing all of these. But at what point do we say "no," and insist that individuals take responsibility for their advancement and comfort? That is the question up for debate.
I cannot conceive of what tax rate Jesus Christ himself would be calling for. There is, of course, the standard 10 percent tithe, but would he raise that to 50 or 75 on wealthier Christians? He is not silent on the issue—when asked his thoughts on taxation his reply was to "give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." It turns out, Jesus is not concerned with tax rates; he is concerned with that which is God's—our hearts, where government cannot go. In God's design, helping one's neighbor is perhaps more a matter of personal sacrifice than welfare assistance. The miracle is not that someone is a degree more comfortable, but that someone gave of himself or herself willingly.
The IRS is no substitute for a generous soul, but the more we place social welfare on the shoulders of the state, the more we abdicate one of our most sacred responsibilities. The church no longer builds hospitals and libraries because we have a government for that. To accept the idea that the state is the proper conduit for the welfare of our friends, family and neighbors is to materialize Christian giving and send it to the same fate. It is practically, morally and theologically unsound.
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Nice piece, Wesley. I offered my own thoughts here: http://remnantculture.com/?p=4136
You know, Mr. Grant, I thought this was an excellent article. Then, up in the right hand corner, I saw a tab for the AEI - American Enterprise Institute, which is a neoconservative think tank. I believe Newt Gingrich is a member. Neoconservatives generally are big believers in the welfare state.
Maria,
Thank you for your—at least partial—compliment. I will let an official representative from AEI address the rest of your comment if they so choose. To be clear, this site is intended to encourage thoughtful discussion on morality and free enterprise, not to articulate a set of talking points. In other words, AEI does not tell me what positions to take—I write from my own conviction.
My compliment to you was sincere and a full - not partial. I posted this on my Facebook page. I'm not sure what your personal political leanings are, but you should write on a blog that isn't sponsored by the AEI or other such group. You can't be claiming "values" and writing about Biblical views on government and taxes, and yet associate with those (no matter how loosely) who agree with the interventionist policies of the left and neoconservatives. :)
We are talking about the rich and corporations paying their fair share, NOT welfare. I agree with Obama, that the rich and corporations should be paying their fair share, not LESS taxes than the middle or lower class. Why do they always have to twist what he says against him?
I think welfare should be two years, then those on it will have time to train, get a job, etc. It will discourage those that have babies just to be on welfare. But I agree, we should provide healthcare, especially to children, that do not have coverage.
Sarah,
There are two problems with the "fair share" rhetoric. First, fairness is entirely subjective. One could argue that fair taxes would be the same percent for everyone, or that income taxes themselves are not fair—they were unconstitutional until 1913. Do you think it's fair that those in the top 5% income bracket pay over half of our total tax revenue?
Second, there is a lot of misleading information. For example, people like Mitt Romney and Warren Buffett only pay around 15% because most of their income is from capital gains, which are taxed at a lower rate than income taxes. This is because returns on investments have already been taxed, so to tax them a second time at all is both unfair and unwise insofar as it discourages investment. BTW, these guys do not represent average rich people.
What worries me most about your comment, however, is that you seem to be establishing a notion of what people deserve—our obligations to them—without first thinking through whether they have a right to them, or whether the rights of others must be breached to provide them. I mean, why not 4 years of welfare so they can go to college? Or perhaps a new automobile so they have reliable transportation?
It is NOT true that the Bible is weak on whether people should be taxed to help the poor. Leviticus specifically states that 10% of everyone's income every three years should be used to help poor people. Furthermore a person must leave the corners of their fields unharvested and not pick up sheaves that fall from other pickers (could be about a fifth of what is harvested) so the poor can go behind and glean. In addition real estate property rights are not respected if it means that doing so means that people will always stay poor. Land cannot be permanently bought but must be returned to the original owner after seven years in most cases. Also usury is prohibited. Sounds like the Bible was envisioning a much more equalitarian society to me and mandating taxes and regulations to accomplish it.
With regard to voluntary giving something like 90% of voluntary giving in this country goes to institutions mainly to support churches, NOT the poor. When Herbert Hoover suggested that banks be charitable and forgive unpaid loans rather than foreclose on houses and farms as a way to help limit government involvement, the private sector banks refused. Marvin Olasky did a study about the funding of charities historically in this country. He found that most depended even in the eighteenth century on government earmarks and grants to institutions and organizations --in the mid twentieth century we made this more systematic through entitlement programs but government almost always provided most of the support of the poor , either directly or indirectly in this country.
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