Friday, March 12, 2010

Keystone Goes Nationwide

To those of you kind souls who listened to the radio show, thank you.

I wanted to share just one brief part of my experience. Mr. Medved was very pleasant personally. On the radio he repeated used the tactic of putting words in my mouth. What he said was so overblown that I found it kind of funny.

Something like, “We’ll be right back with Rev. Rich Gamble who believes that men with clubs should take the lunch money of school children to pay for pointless government programs.” (he never said that, that’s just my overblown version of his shtick). And then he would cut to commercial.

The problem was that some of the authors of the angry emails I received heard only Mr. Medved’s version of me and didn’t hear my words at all.

The biggest thing that seems to reverberate about the inner ears of the irate e-mailers is my desire to use force to take their money and give it to the government. Even though I thought was pretty clear that opposed all forms of domination (I used that word just for you guys)and violence.

When did tax policy become equated with force?

I would have loved to have had the time to delve into that issue more. Do these folks think that taxes should be voluntary? That brings to mind a very interesting world.

• Firemen collecting donations in their boots at street corners, not for hungry kids but for their salaries and health insurance payments. Or maybe they would just ask for payment in advance from people whose houses were blazing.
• The Marines could start baking cookies and go into competition with the girl scouts to pay for their uniforms and Humvees.
• Maybe we could get more donations using plaques, “this aircraft carrier was donated by your friends at Foxy News”
• Coin operated stop lights. It only goes green if you pay a dollar.
• We could have toll sidewalks, and streets.
• Policemen would have to hand out tickets and hope for tips to pay their salaries.
• Prisons could send you a picture each month of the prisoner you sponsored to help pay to keep behind bars.

The Christian Community in Acts voluntarily shared their possessions with those who had needs. They did not assess taxes. No force was needed because people freely gave. It was a model of compassion; not government, but it was a vision of what an alternative world not based on the me-and-mine-first thinking of the Domination System.

Certainly we should give all we can to set an example. But what happens when people do not freely give enough to ensure that there are homes enough and food enough and health care and education for all in a world ruled by the logic of domination? Should we as Christians advocate for taxes to support programs for the poor? Or should we shrug in the direction of great need wring our hands and say that we wouldn’t want anyone to be penalized for not paying a share to support people in need?

As I understand the call of our faith, the first mandate is deal with the needs of those in the greatest need first. Taxes should not be levied against people of very limited means (which is the problem with a sales tax) but for those in our nation who can afford it, taxes are a way to provide for the real needs of those who can't afford it. Another call of our faith then is to struggle with our elected officials to prioritize human needs in the budgets of our governments.

Taxes should also be used to save the wealthy from their addiction to wealth. The Bible has a lot to say about the wealthy being on the wrong side of God's justice. And the prophets have a lot to say about the coming destruction of nations which allow great wealth and great poverty to co-exist.

Concentrations of wealth eventually turn democracies into tyrannies. It is good social policy to tax wealthy people and corporations and share that wealth with those who are in need. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis said: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

Taxation will be a big issue in the next year or so, as our state wrestles with a regressive and revenue limiting tax structure.

Stay tuned.

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