What Would Jesus Tax?

and — equally important — what wouldn't Jesus tax?

How do we live together, in equality and peace?
What can we learn from the past?

There are Christians who argue for low taxes and that it is the job of churches and other charitable entities to meet the needs of the poor through others' free-will offerings of charity.

There are others who argue that government should collect higher taxes from those who are well-off in order to serve the needs of the poor.

This site argues a third point of view. It is based on the ideas that

• the natural creation belongs rightly to the community as a whole;
• that which the community creates belongs rightly to the community as a whole; and
• that which the individual — or corporation — creates belongs rightly to the individual or corporation.

This point of view can be traced back to Mosaic law.

Jesus grew up learning the details of Jewish law, including the land laws. When he told a questioner to render unto Caesar that which belonged to Caesar, perhaps he was pointing out that the tithe was intended to meet the needs of the local community, and that since Caesar was not a part of that local community, nothing was due him!

A budget is a moral document. We commonly use that phrase with reference to the spending side of the equation, but it applies equally to the revenue side of the budget. How we collect the revenue we need for public purposes is just as important as how we spend it — and if we collected it justly, perhaps we would not need to collect as much in order to achieve the society we desire.

As a society, we seem to be stuck in some tax boxes.

• At the federal level, we seem to be stuck in an income tax box, despite the undesirable attributes of the income tax;.
• At the local level, we seem to be stuck in a property tax box, taxing both land and buildings at the same millage rate;
• At the state level, we seem to be stuck in a sales tax box, imposing taxes on transactions of various kinds

This website will present the position that, even if just taxes alone are insufficient to meet all the needs of government, the foundation of our tax system should be taxes that are based on justice, only supplemented by less-just taxes as needed. Further, this website will present the position that all of our children are entitled to be treated equally, and that, just as revenue collected from the income tax might be spent in a different state from where it was collected, other kinds of taxes might be allocated to needs in other places.

We all depend on air, water and land. Our way of taxing ourselves should take into account both the finiteness and the non-substitutability of these and other natural resources, and should treat their economic value as our common treasure, not the private property of any individual or corporation.

God asks us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, and our tax system should be consistent with that. It is not so much a matter of who we tax, but what we tax.

The question, of course, is about how we are to live together in peace, justice and prosperity. Is extreme and rising prosperity for a small group the same thing as creating the conditions under which we all can prosper? To read some of the media reports, one might think them very similar. And yet to ask the question is to see the answer.

The purpose of government and laws is to allow all of us to live in security and equality. To the extent that some of our laws allow special privileges to one group, and theft from another group, those laws should be changed.

This website is still under construction. That means that

(a) many more documents will be added as time goes on; and
(b) not all the documents listed below are included in the "Themes" indexing system.

But there is enough in that "themes" system already for you to find what you're interested in.

Indexed into the Themes:

Thy Neighbor's Landmark — Frederick Verinder — abridged — table of contents
From Wasteland to Promised Land — Robert Andelson and James Dawsey — synopsis by Lindy Davies
Moses — Apostle of Freedom — Henry George

Online here, relevant, but not yet indexed:

Thou Shalt Not Steal -- Henry George
Thy Kingdom Come -- Henry George
The Earth is the Lord's -- Robert Andelson
True Christianity and My Own Religious Beliefs -- Joseph Fels

"It is the fool who saith in his heart there is no God. But what shall we call the man who tells us that with this sort of a world God bids us be content? It is no mere fiscal reform that I propose; it is a conforming of the most important social adjustments to natural laws."

This website is a younger sibling to WealthandWant.com. Many pages have links to corresponding pages there, which usually provide more articles. Until all those links are active, you might look for those theme names on the Wealthandwant.com Themes Index Page. 1/21/07