Thursday 30 August 2012

Is government God? (Part 5331...)

I notice in the UK press discussion of the idea of a "wealth tax".

The idea is that the rich should have their assets raided, to help the country out of an emergency.

This idea calls for theological and moral analysis. People who have earnt money paid tax on it when they earnt it. The government took what was supposed to be its portion at that point. It will also take a further portion when that money is spent, e.g. in sales taxes.

But government reaching into your pocket and deciding to take money, simply on the grounds that you own it, is a far-reaching idea. It means ultimately that you own nothing, and the state owns everything. If a "wealth tax" is even on the table for discussion, then it means that nothing is your own. Its all only on loan. You are a steward, but the state is the possessor. At any time the all powerful state can claim back exactly as much as it pleases, and re-assign it to other uses as it sees best.

That means that the state is God. Traditionally in British thinking, only God has those kind of rights. The earth is his (Psalm 24:1), and he lends it out to us, as stewards. He can claim it all back, through his providential interventions, or through withdrawing us from the earth, when he pleases. Governments had much more limited rights. They can levy taxes for their legitimate functions; but they do not have an absolutely ownership that allows them to treat what has already been taxed as up-for-grabs again, to take or allow you to continue with as they please, as and when the political winds change.

Secularism pushes out God from the public square. That's its goal. But it's not possible for man to be god-less. Something else has to take God's place. The counterfeit God is the state. The state owns everything. If you own too much land or money, it simply decrees by fiat that it is taking it back from you again. Thought you earned it? Wrong - it was only on loan. If a people won't let God rule it, then they can't escape being ruled; hat's not possible. They will be ruled - but by someone or something far worse. Your judgment is to be ruled, not
mercifully, but by arbitrary despots who do not recognise your ultimate right to possess anything at all. A politician may wake up tomorrow and decide that all you has is now the state's again. When God is no longer God, the result is man's tyranny.

17 comments:

Anthony Smith said...

It sounds like a choice between "the state owns everything" and "the individual owns everything". But surely we should reject both of those?

In the Jubilee legislation, every fifty years the land was to be redistributed to its original owners (or stewards, rather). If an individual had purchased someone else's land with their own hard-earned money, that land was to be taken from them and given back to the family that had it previously. That wasn't because all land belonged to the state (and therefore to the king - remember Naboth's vineyard!). But it was because the land didn't belong to the individual. It belonged to God.

It's quite possible for individuals - through proper legal processes - to gain possession of the land of whole countries, of rivers, of the atmosphere, of all sorts of things. But we need some way of redistributing those possessions - not because the state owns everything, but because God owns everything, and therefore the individual has no absolute claim to anything. And yes, it will probably be the state that is used as the instrument to redistribute the wealth that God has entrusted to humanity as a whole. But that doesn't mean the state owns any of that wealth, any more that the state needs to assert ownership of people in order to put them in prison, for example.

David Anderson said...

I think that quibbling about the nuance of the word "ownership" is beside the point. If the state has the right to redistribute your assets as and when it sees best, then they belong to the state and not to you... whether you choose to label it as "ownership" or "a purple artichoke" makes no practical difference.

The holy land under the Old Covenant did belong in a special way to God - but there's no Biblical indication that land ownership since the coming of Christ is to be viewed in the same way as the holy land or governed by the same laws... but even if it were, the Jubilee laws, being laws to *prevent* redistribution and make the land remain within its original clan, are the very opposite of a redistribution scheme. Again, what has a known scheme whereby land will return to its original owner at a known date (and hence can be factored into the price, and indeed were, as the Bible tells us) got to do with a state of affairs where a politician can wake up tomorrow and decide to pass a new wealth tax to re-appropriate whatever he sees fit... or wake up tomorrow and decide not to, depending on how he feels?

The proper analogy would not be with putting someone in prison, but with slavery. Putting someone in prison is not a the state claiming a right to 'redistribute' your person; it is performing it's God-given responsibility to apply justice. Where in the Bible is the state given a right or responsibility to redistribute wealth?

The sphere of sovereignty is the important thing. My original post made the point that God is the owner of all things. The question at hand is, to whom did he distribute the right and responsibility to stewardship? The Jubilee laws are no help here, being fundamentally a scheme to *prevent* land moving around (until the Messiah came amongst his chosen nation), rather than to encourage it.

Anthony Smith said...

I'm not defending the recent proposals, but only the principle that no individual can claim absolute ownership of anything, any more than the state can make such claims. Everything belongs to God, and if there is injustice in the way that God's gifts have been distributed, then the state may well be acting within its remit to address that.

The question then is, Is the distribution of wealth ever a matter of justice? You seem to be following the principle of procedural justice - that, as long as just procedures have been followed, whatever the outcome is, that outcome is necessarily a just outcome.

I don't think the biblical concept of justice lines up so neatly with procedural justice. Or at least, if it does, that needs to be argued and not just assumed. We need to consider whether the biblical view of justice has any connection with ideas of distributive justice. I think it does, and the Jubilee laws have some bearing on that.

Also, to apply your argument consistently: what right does the state have to a portion of my income? If I decorate your house, what right does the state have to claim a percentage of the money you give me in exchange for my labour? If a wealth tax is a claim to ownership of my property, then income tax is a claim to ownership of my labour, which comes much closer, in my view, to the state claiming ownership of me as a person (i.e., slavery).

David Anderson said...

"Jubilee laws have some bearing on that" - that sounds a bit like trying to hint at an argument, but not presenting one! What bearing do the Jubilee laws have on establishing a right of the state to redistribute wealth? The Jubilee laws were given to prevent land moving between clans, so that nobody's name would be wiped out within God's chosen nation before the Messiah came. To move from *that* aim to a general position of "modern nation states have the God-given power to take an individual's possessions and re-assign them simply on the grounds that the said individual has too many possessions" needs a bit more than a suggestion of a bearing! The Jubilee laws did not apply within cities - dwellings there were transferred irrevocably. It's quite a stretch to suggest that there was some kind of general redistributive aim embedded somewhere in there.

I think the burden of proof is on the person asserting that a general redistribution of wealth is a function of justice, rather than on the one denying it. That takes us back to the point of the original post. The state, as a steward, has powers delegated by God. There can be no simple assertion that the state has been given a de-facto (whatever label you apply to it) ownership of all assets within its territory until some other theory is proved to the contrary. Rather, we must search in Scripture for where such a grant was made. You suggest that it is somehow included in a correct concept of justice, and that the Jubilee laws illustrate that. But the Jubilee laws illustrate no such thing - unless, to repeat the example, justice is different inside cities as compared to outside them.

The state has a right to raise taxes to fulfill its duties, as shown in Romans 13. Scripture shows us examples within the nation of Israel of poll taxes and of taxes strictly proportionate to economic gain. Those who favour other ideas (e.g. progressive taxes, which rise on an escalator) have the burden of proof on them, not the other way round.

David Anderson said...

P.S. I'm in favour of universal wealth. I just believe that under a Biblical world-view, that comes around through universal discipleship, not through state tyranny. Until there is universal honesty and diligence, attempts to equalise outcomes must necessarily be tyrannous, because they cannot but fail to distinguish between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor. As someone living and working in the third world, that's no mere theoretical issue as it is for bourgouise (ha ha! I don't mean you, of course...) intellectuals in the first world...

David Anderson said...

A just taxation system, as one necessary component, must allow the rules of the game to be known ahead of time, and not subject to arbitrary change. As another, they must not be rigged so that the state eventually owns everything.

This rules out a system where the state can, if it wishes to be godly, publish a set of income and spending taxes, and then later change the rules to claim your possessions as well - as per the proposals being discussed. It also rules out in general wealth taxes, because their effect is to progressively turn over everything you have to the state and not allow anyone to live off their past earnings (it forces everyone to be a worker - it's no coincedence that the ideas you're promoting are most closely associated with Karl Marx). Such laws in effect imply that the state has total ownership, and cannot break the command "you shall not steal". Is that where you want to end up? Changing the labels doesn't change the outcome.

Anthony Smith said...

David - thanks for the comments. If your main point of contention is the arbitrary nature of the proposed wealth taxes, then I'd agree with you. Also, I'd agree that universal (and approximately equal) wealth is what we should be aspiring towards - every man under his vine and under his fig tree.

I do think that a gross inequality of wealth is a matter of justice. Just imagine a rich land-owner owning the whole of Kenya, and demanding ridiculously high rents for people living there. Or the soy bean industry in Argentina, which I was reading about recently (in "Creation in Crisis", ed. White), where a foreign investor buys the land, boots everyone out, and makes huge profits. I hope I don't need to argue that this kind of thing is profoundly unjust. Only an absolute commitment to the inalienable right to personal property could make someone think that sort of inequality is perfectly fair, and I don't see that kind of commitment anywhere in the Scriptures. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it.

Of course, the best course of action to deal with gross inequality is not always obvious, and certainly shouldn't be arbitrary. Too much of the inequality transcends the nation state anyway, which makes things pretty complicated.

The Jubilee laws seem to be about much more than preventing someone's name from being wiped out. A family name could be preserved perfectly well as a family of slaves. Or they could be given the right to remain as paying tenants on someone else's land, to ensure they are able to grow their own food. Nor do I see the principles as merely temporary - as if the advent of the Messiah inaugurated the great free-for-all, where you could buy as much land as you like and God won't mind at all. Instead, it's not the grand anti-Jubilee that the Messiah brings, but the grand Jubilee - Lk 4:18-19 - with not bad news for the poor, because now the rich are able to extract wealth from them without limit, but good news to the poor. Yes, good news because the age of universal discipleship has been inaugurated. But that universal discipleship will involve a discipleship of the nations, including the way nation states deal with injustices such as extreme poverty and extreme wealth.

David Anderson said...

I disagree with all wealth taxes on principle. A wealth tax implies state ownership. The laws of mathematics mean that any wealth tax's long-term effect is to forbid anyone to own above a certain amount of wealth. The labourer is worthy of his hire, and if someone through honest toil and wisdom etc. accumulates more and more and more, then it's only envy that says "that's not fair". Note - that's not an argument for unbridled capitalism. "Love your neighbour as yourself" is a law of God, and I think justify competition laws.

The key is eschatology. Marxists don't believe in the power of the gospel, so they hope in the power of the state to do the work for them. That can't work, because sin is a fundamental fact. Some people will be stupid, lazy and dishonest, and will drag down their families and communities You can only equalise the outcomes if you try to ignore both sin and its knock-on effects - not a recipe for success, because sin is the fundamental reason for trouble in creation. Until the gospel brings universal discipleship, all we can hope for is equality of opportunity, and allow sinners to fall and the godly to progress. Those who don't believe in the power of the gospel to transform the nations fall back on the state as their solution, and we end up with nobody knowing if tomorrow a minister will wake up and decide to change all the rules of the game. That's a tyranny - and it's absolutely inevitable because of the failure to deal with the issue of sin.

> Or the soy bean industry in Argentina, which I was reading about recently (in "Creation in Crisis", ed. White), where a foreign investor buys the land, boots everyone out, and makes huge profits. I hope I don't need to argue that this kind of thing is profoundly unjust.

I think you do! Who did he buy the land from? Were they happy with the price? If not, why did they sell it to him? Why did they not themselves make huge profits? What's unjust about investing your money and making huge profits from your investment? That kind of talk sounds rather more like rampant envy than desire for justice.

David Anderson said...

I disagree with all wealth taxes on principle. A wealth tax implies state ownership. The laws of mathematics mean that any wealth tax's long-term effect is to forbid anyone to own above a certain amount of wealth. The labourer is worthy of his hire, and if someone through honest toil and wisdom etc. accumulates more and more and more, then it's only envy that says "that's not fair". Note - that's not an argument for unbridled capitalism. "Love your neighbour as yourself" is a law of God, and I think justify competition laws.

The key is eschatology. Marxists don't believe in the power of the gospel, so they hope in the power of the state to do the work for them. That can't work, because sin is a fundamental fact. Some people will be stupid, lazy and dishonest, and will drag down their families and communities You can only equalise the outcomes if you try to ignore both sin and its knock-on effects - not a recipe for success, because sin is the fundamental reason for trouble in creation. Until the gospel brings universal discipleship, all we can hope for is equality of opportunity, and allow sinners to fall and the godly to progress. Those who don't believe in the power of the gospel to transform the nations fall back on the state as their solution, and we end up with nobody knowing if tomorrow a minister will wake up and decide to change all the rules of the game. That's a tyranny - and it's absolutely inevitable because of the failure to deal with the issue of sin.

> Or the soy bean industry in Argentina, which I was reading about recently (in "Creation in Crisis", ed. White), where a foreign investor buys the land, boots everyone out, and makes huge profits. I hope I don't need to argue that this kind of thing is profoundly unjust.

I think you do! Who did he buy the land from? Were they happy with the price? If not, why did they sell it to him? Why did they not themselves make the profits? What's unjust about investing your money and making huge profits from your investment? That kind of talk sounds rather more like rampant envy than desire for justice. I'd not have the courage to invest as an entrepreneur. I've read that most business ventures fail. Those that succeed provide livelihoods for workers. I don't feel the need to argue that those who took the risks have been unjust if they also reap the rewards.

Anthony Smith said...

"and I think justify competition laws" - That sounds a bit like hinting at an argument! If someone through honest toil and wisdom etc. builds up a monopoly, then it is only envy that says "that's not fair". Right?

"Until the gospel brings universal discipleship, all we can hope for is equality of opportunity, and allow sinners to fall and the godly to progress."

Equality of opportunity is impossible if there is gross inequality of wealth, so we can't even hope for that, according to your view of things!

And just to clarify - you are equally vehemently opposed to taxation in proportion to income, as income tax implies state ownership of labour, right?

David Anderson said...

"If someone through honest toil and wisdom etc. builds up a monopoly" - that's begging the question.

"Equality of opportunity is impossible if there is gross inequality of wealth, so we can't even hope for that, according to your view of things!" - I was not talking about arbitrary opportunity, e.g. the equal opportunity to invest in Mayfair real estate, or that kind of thing.

"And just to clarify - you are equally vehemently opposed to taxation in proportion to income, as income tax implies state ownership of labour, right?" - you're totally missing the argument being made. Even on this particular point I stated the opposite in an earlier comment.

Anthony Smith said...

"If someone through honest toil and wisdom etc. builds up a monopoly" - that's begging the question.

I don't agree - why can't a monopoly be built up through honest toil and wisdom?

"Equality of opportunity is impossible if there is gross inequality of wealth, so we can't even hope for that, according to your view of things!" - I was not talking about arbitrary opportunity, e.g. the equal opportunity to invest in Mayfair real estate, or that kind of thing.

What kind of opportunity are you thinking of? If a class of land-owners have worked hard through honest toil and end up owning the whole planet, then what opportunity do the serfs have?

"And just to clarify - you are equally vehemently opposed to taxation in proportion to income, as income tax implies state ownership of labour, right?" - you're totally missing the argument being made. Even on this particular point I stated the opposite in an earlier comment.

Apologies - you did say that. What I don't understand is how income tax is not a claim to state ownership of labour, whereas wealth tax is a claim to state ownership of property. That seems inconsistent. If a tax on X is a claim to ownership of X, then that works equally for X being "income" or X being "wealth". (Incidentally - the taxes I think you are referring to in the Bible look more like corporation taxes than income taxes, as they tax the fruit of the land, not the fruit of labour. If I till the land for you, and you pay me money for my labour but keep the harvest from the land, the tithes etc. are due to be paid by you, not by me. As such, I'm not aware of anything equivalent to income tax in the Bible.)

David Anderson said...

Begging the question - you're right, let me withdraw that line. I don't think I've a problem though with my earlier line. I wasn't advocating unbridled capitalism. Equality of opportunity and love to neighbour provide a justification for regulating monopolies. If I can trade honestly and wisely to get a large market share, I should not engage in tactics that prevent my neighbour doing the same. There's no need for forcible redistribution as long as my neighbour can work as hard and wisely as me to rise up too.

I think the second question only has its force within the world-view of Marxist class warfare. By definition, the world's land is owned by the world's land owners. You can become a land owner by trading in some other area of life until you can persuade a land owner that your money would be worth more to him than his land.

> What I don't understand is how income tax is not a claim to state ownership of labour, whereas wealth tax is a claim to state ownership of property.

That's why I say you're missing the whole point of the post. There is a real distinction between the power to levy limited taxes, and the claim to levy unlimited taxes. The first is a Biblical grant from God; the second is the view that government is God. Wealth taxes logically and inherently are a claim to unlimited powers of taxation. After taxing your wealth this year, I come back again and tax it again next year... and the next, and the next. The law of compounding means that eventually I tax everything and leave you only with rounding errors. If the state has the power to apply wealth taxes, then the state ultimately owns all you have, and is only permitting you to keep some of it for a few more years at its leisure.

Ned Kelly said...

I agree with David. In any society, part of the social contract is for all people to contribute to the upkeep of that society. There are three primary issues to my mind: (1) in which activities should governments be involved; (2) how much does government involvement breed dependency and a sense of entitlement; and (3) should a government be allowed to double dip on taxation and effectively set limits on personal wealth.
Too often, governments ignore the moral implications of taxation, moving the duty of care from the individual to the State. There is a great deal of social commentary today that says we are now responsible for everyone but ourselves. Society has moved from individual responsibility to a culture of entitlement, exemplified in some countries where litigation is encouraged over the most trivial incident, and people can seek compensation for injuries sustained while committing a crime. This may seem far from the point of taxation, but it is not.
It goes back to point (1). When governments pander to minorities and accept responsibility for every individual need, tax receipts must rise. The government is fearful of increasing the rate of broad based taxes so it targets the most obvious - the rich. This shifts the concept of taxation from the basic social contract to redistribution of wealth based on which cause the government chooses to support. There are cases, such as emergencies, when a legitimate case could be made. In Australia we have the flood levy to assist those who were devastated by recent floods (probably good). We still have the Ansett levy to recover losses of a failed airline (not good). If governments were more rigorous and conservative in defining their roles, identifying legitimate activities, and upholding the need for personal responsibility, many taxation issues would disappear. This is an issue of both wisdom and morality. I entirely support some redistribution of wealth to rescue the poor and needy, but am entirely against middle class welfare so that all can play soccer or wear Nike shoes.

Ned Kelly said...

As for point (3), double dipping by governments is immoral and injudicious. In Australia, we pay taxes on some already taxed items. As David says, as long as this behaviour is allowed, there are no constraints on governments to prevent them targeting the rich on a whim. We should recognise that there are similarly no constraints on targeting the poor on a whim. Government dependency on taxation also leads to hypocrisy such as we see in the tobacco, alcohol, and gambling industries. Politicians bleat about health and moral issues, but at the same time are in bondage to the tax receipts. Sadly, those receipts, particularly from tobacco, alcohol, and poker machines are often from the poor not the rich. This goes to David’s point about the deserving versus the undeserving poor, which also extends to the middle class and the rich. When people reach retirement age, the size of their nest egg is often dependent on life choices rather than just opportunity and income. I once applied for the first home owner’s grant but was refused because I had save my deposit too quickly. How? I had relocated to a remote mining construction site and worked 12 hrs a day, six days a week. I have been retrenched from jobs on a number of occasions, but each time I was prepared to relocate to where work was available, both interstate and overseas. My point is that when governments are allowed to double dip, they take no account of how wealth was acquired, or more particularly, squandered. Death duties are, to my mind, the most immoral tax of all.
Taxation double dipping is immoral because it can penalise those who have worked and saved hardest, and denied themselves, and reward those who have squandered both income and opportunity. It is also injudicious because it takes no account of the social implications of personal responsibility and welfare dependency. I will leave the two of you to debate the Scriptural justifications.

Anthony Smith said...

David - final comment, as you've put up with me quite enough already! I think I'm beginning to understand what you are saying - income tax is limited to income, so it can't take away all that a person has (except that if all of their income is taken away, they'll eventually have nothing left), whereas wealth taxes can (more easily) deprive a person of everything they have.

What I don't understand now is why you don't object on the same principle to a poll tax? A poll tax is a tax on wealth, because it doesn't take income into account. It's also a wealth tax that can hand over all of a person's possessions to the state. If all that a person possesses is two mites, and the poll tax is set at two mites per person, then the state has claimed ownership of all that the person has to live off. A poll tax is a wealth tax, with a very simple formula to calculate the amount of tax due per person.

I quite agree with you that a government's power should be limited. But I don't think that translates simply into power to raise this kind of tax but not that kind of tax. All kinds of tax can be applied in an oppressive and unjust way. And there are examples of wealth taxes that are not oppressive and unjust, such as the biblical poll tax(es).

David Anderson said...

Defined that way, any compulsory tax whatsoever would fit the definition of a wealth tax. That makes all discussion of different kinds of taxes ultimately meaningless. The Biblical poll tax was upon males of working age, and set at a level that all could reasonably be expected to pay.