Christians against the redistribution of wealth and other things I don't get

[mothwentbad]

So... where's the part of the Bible where it says "thou shalt not tax me for working hard" or "blessed are the poor, for they have an extra-special opportunity to work harder", or whatever it is that correlates so strongly with fundamentalism? I'm really confused

Comments

[st_rev]

I think a lot of it emerges from the "render unto Caesar" and the history of church-state separation in the US. There are many variants, but the basic notion is that the state cannot and shouldn't be carrying out Jesus's commands: it's a matter for the church and the individual worshipper. See: tithing.

Alternately: It's not particularly virtuous or Christian for Alice to demand that Bob give money to Cokie and claim credit.

And conservatives, particularly working-class conservatives, do give a hell of a lot more in voluntary charity than liberals do.

I'm not a Christian and don't particularly give a shit, but your discussion is unfair.

[mothwentbad]

Well, there are plenty of secular reasons for the state to want to achieve those aims which happen to be reasonable while coinciding with the teachings of Jesus. And I'd think that if one wanted the poor and so on to be cared for, and if this outcome were what really mattered, then one would welcome government involvement. I don't think that's a "separation of church and state" issue any more than enforcing laws against murder.

I don't give a shit who gets the credit. And I think it's really weird that Christians think it's more important that they be given the opportunity to choose whether they let people people get destitute than preventing destitution systematically.

[st_rev]

Government involvement would only be welcome if you honestly think that Caesar is a) sincere and b) competent to do the work. Lots of churches are composed of sociopaths and suckers, but there are also people who honestly believe, and a genuine, serious, intelligent case to be made, that a) and b) don't hold and Caesar is going to fuck everything up.

Personally, I despise the current welfare system, because I think it interferes horrifically in people's lives, systematically humiliates the worst off, mires people in welfare traps, and pisses away enormous amounts of wealth on useless functionaries and paper. I'd be happy to support a guaranteed minimum income system, though.

[mothwentbad]

GMI sounds good to me. In some form. I'm not against people getting additional money for working harder and all that. Just... you know, the base line should exist and be high enough, and stuff.

Caesar might fuck it up, but supposedly we can make him stop fucking up if we vote/march enough? I don't know, would be nice.

[st_rev]

supposedly we can make him stop fucking up if we vote/march enough?

HA HA HA HA HA GOOD ONE

[mothwentbad]

DRINK

[st_rev]

One implementation that I like is the Negative Income Tax formulation. Everyone gets a base amount of (say) $10,000 a year. No needs test, no lines at the welfare office. Figure out how much it takes to not starve and not sleep under a bridge, peg it to inflation, whatever. Bam: (almost) nobody has to go hungry or sleep under a bridge in this country, ever again.

Then you tax all income and assess it against the $10,000. Flat or progressive, doesn't matter, but you kill all deductions. If your tax is $3,000, the government sends you a check for $10,000 - $3,000 = $7,000. If your tax is $13,000, you owe $3,000. This solves the problem of welfare traps, removes most of the deadwood economic loss involved in filing and processing tax returns (which amounts to about 1% of the fucking total economy), and stops the government from micromanaging people's behavior with bullshit like the mortgage tax credit.

[mothwentbad]

So people earning minimum wage now would suddenly be taking home a lot more than that, pretty much? It would be interesting to see what the end result would be. Would that many more people work more because it's strictly a profit over the baseline, or would that many people work one three weeks per year because fuck it that's why? Or both?

idk, not arguing either way at the moment.

[st_rev]

Read up on 'welfare trap'. Under the current system, the poorest get little or no reward for working unless they do it under the table, because increasing income means you get disqualified (in a discontinuous and maddeningly complex way) for various support programs.

Under a negative income tax system, people would get rewarded proportionately and predictably for any work they did, no matter how little. This is really fucking important.

If we had a blackboard I could sketch the incentive curves involved.

[mothwentbad]

That makes sense. I just don't know if the best of all possible strategies is to universally give everyone 10k for doing nothing. But it's a hell of a lot better than giving them 8k for doing nothing and lowering it to 6.5k if they work 40 hours a week.

[st_rev]

Well, if you want to PREVENT DESTITUTION SYSTEMATICALLY, you're saying you want everyone to have at least 10k (or 6k, or 12k, season to taste) regardless of what they do. The question is how much shit you want to force the worst off to endure in the process. I'd go with 'none', but I'm a HEARTLESS LIBERTARIAN like that.

[mothwentbad]

Well, I'd like them to, by magic, feel like working at least part-time, probably more than that anyway. But ok, sure.

[st_rev]

Current system: you're on welfare. Your (over-the-counter) earnings are effectively taxed at a rate approaching 100%, in the sense that every dollar you earn disqualifies you from about a dollar of benefits. This is what "welfare trap" means--unless you can break out and jump into a full-time job at a decent wage, there is literally no point in doing anything.

NIT/guaranteed basic income system: You get your government check. Beyond that, you are rewarded directly and predictably for every hour you are able to work, however little or however much that is.

Under which system do you think the poor would be more motivated to work?

Now, it's possible the middle class would work less, but that's a different issue.

[mothwentbad]

Yeah, I guess that is probably where the laziness would start to pick up. Might not be the end of the world.

I can't think of any better way to uniformly encourage work.

[fatpie42]

Current system: you're on welfare. Your (over-the-counter) earnings are effectively taxed at a rate approaching 100%, in the sense that every dollar you earn disqualifies you from about a dollar of benefits. This is what "welfare trap" means--unless you can break out and jump into a full-time job at a decent wage, there is literally no point in doing anything.

Maybe things are different in the US. In the UK benefits mean you are barely able to live. Working means you are able to live. I don't even remotely understand how the latter could possibly make you worse off. That's crazy.

[st_rev]

Look at this chart. That's marginal effective tax rate for a family of four in the UK. The first 15k of income is effectively taxed at a far more punitive rate than Richard Branson pays on his billions, because every pound of it is offset by lost benefits.

Graph taken from http://burningourmoney.blogspot.com/2010/06/game-changers.html