Structural Imbalance

There is a structural imbalance built into the United States government, and it does involve spending more money than is taken in. Here it is in a nutshell.

For decades, taxes — income taxes, corporate taxes, capital gains, and whatever other fees and revenues are in place to support the general budget of the United States — have been kept artificially low, while the General Fund has borrowed from the surplus produced by workers contributing to their own retirement through the Social Security system.

For decades, that is, the government has borrowed money from the working people of America, to pay its bills, and to hide the true scope of its annual deficits. ALL of the deficit, and then some, has come because of the imbalance between expenditures and revenues outside of the Social Security system. NONE of the deficit is due to the cost of Social Security payments to seniors.

To fix the structural imbalance, therefore, some change must be made to the relationship between money spent on things like defense, transportation, education, interest on the national debt, homeland security, housing, healthcare, and on and on, on the one hand, and taxes on the other: income taxes, corporate taxes, capital gains, etc. Either expenditures must be cut, or revenues raised in these ways, or both.

With Social Security no longer projected to produce an annual surplus, it cannot be relied on going forward to subsidize these other things; but this does not mean that it is insolvent. It has lent out huge amounts of money, and it is time to collect. That just means that more revenue must be raised from income tax, corporate taxes, capital gains, etc., so that all that money borrowed from Social Security over the years can begin to be repaid to the workers as their benefits come due.

[Edit]  One additional point deserves comment.  Every time you hear someone pointing out that “entitlements — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — are the big drivers of the federal deficit”, there is a bit of rhetorical sleight of hand going on.  Yes, IF we roll those three programs into an aggregate, and call the sum “entitlement spending,” then the net effect is a hit on the deficit.  But this is the same trick as was done when Social Security was brought on budget in the 1980s, with the effect of hiding the real size and source of the deficit behind the Social Security surplus.  So, Medicare and Medicaid need a better funding mechanism going forward, without question.  But to roll those two together with Social Security as if it also contributes to the problem, when it decidedly does not, is to perpetuate a deception.

The Stalemate: Escalated (again?)

Amendment XIV,  Section 4 of the US Constitution says, in part:

“The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law…. shall not be questioned.”

A sizable number of members of the House of Representatives having gone on record as committed to never agreeing to an increase in the debt ceiling (an increase required because of already existing public debt, already authorized by law), an argument could be made that these Members, by those statements and by the threat of such a vote, have violated their own oath of office in which they swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.

In the increasingly probable case that we reach the second of August with no agreement and no vote, perhaps that argument will be made by the President of the United States, when he announces an Executive Order directing the Treasury to continue to meet the obligations of this public debt, authorized by law, in keeping with the Constitution. This action has been hinted at, and mostly dismissed as something that need not be considered because it’s unthinkable that a deal will not be done.  But now that this is not only thinkable, but probable, going what is called the “Constitutional route” may be the only responsible option left to the President. It might also be the sort of action that would motivate some people to call for his impeachment.

The irony of that is this:  that  the very people most likely to seek articles of impeachment, including those who would most readily vote for it, would include quite a number whose own loyalty to the Constitution could just as legitimately be called in question, because they have so publicly and insistently violated the Constitution by, loud and long, “questioning the validity” of the public debt of the United states, authorized by law, as established through the action of previous Congresses.

That’s how the stalemate could escalate.  Again.  Is this a great country, or what?

On the widening income gap, and other economic musings

The US economy (indeed, the global economy) seems to be moving in two directions at once. On the one hand, we see Wall Street, big banks, multinational corporations, energy companies, reporting ever-increasing profits as the months go by. On the other hand, that stubborn unemployment rate remains high, creeping down only slowly. Not only that, but wages remain flat, or even on a decline in real dollars for people in many income brackets.
Yes, it’s the old picture of rich getting richer and poor getting poorer, that we’ve heard about ever since we can remember. But what exactly is driving this disparity, these days?

On the corporate side, there’s a particular indicator that tells the story, summarized in one word: Productivity. There is a positive relationship between rising productivity and rising profitability. But what is productivity, and what drives it? Productivity is a measure of how much economic activity is associated with a given amount of labor: basically, production per man-hour. The more work you can get done with fewer people, the higher your productivity.
This in turn is driven by improvements in technology: miniaturization, automation, robotics, and other economies of scale that comes with the improvements we see constantly happening in the Information Age; or as we could more accurately call it, the Communication Age. By and large, these increases in productivity feed the bottom line and contribute to profits.
Now, here’s the nub: conventional wisdom (from a certain corner of the political landscape) has it that once you have more profits, you have more capacity to hire people, and thus create jobs. But in this economy, actual people working (labor) is looked at as a liability for a company, a cost, a drag on the bottom line; so the tendency is to pocket those profits, rather than hire more people or even pay those more-productive people a better wage.
Thus we see that there are two divergent means of wealth creation in this economy, the old and the new.
Under the old expectation, one could expect to work hard, save some money, increase the wages earned with time and experience, build up a nest egg, and eventually retire with a house and a small pension, based on some of those savings wisely invested (including what was invested into something called Social Security, an insurance program that paid benefits to those (un)fortunate enough to outlive their capacity to earn a wage).
On the other hand there is that wealth creation which comes with owning the means of production. Investors, bankers, large corporations. (Most small business owners are more in the same category as the wage-earners, since their income is dependent on their own ability to put time, sweat, and effort into success.) And what do we see? An increasing disparity between these two categories, because an increase in productivity means that fewer people have been hired, or people who used to do a certain amount of work are no longer needed and have thus become unemployed.
In the political climate of today, however, these large organizations are called “job creators.” Problem is, they do everything possible to create wealth without creating jobs, and are increasingly successful at that. More wealth derived from better technology and resulting higher productivity will not, for the most part, create more jobs, just more profits. And for corporations with the means to do so, the smart way to create jobs, if jobs are needed, is to do so somewhere where the wages are as low as can be, the people are expendable, and there are no pesky regulations involving the health, safety, or secure future of the workers. All those things are, after all, a drag on the bottom line, representing lower productivity, lower profits. Thus these “job creators” are neither inclined to create jobs, nor inclined to look out for the best interests of the workers they do hire. There is no inherent mechanism in the system to slow or reverse the widening of this gap.
The elephant in the room, of course, is that those whose wealth depends on the disparity spoken of above are the source of most of the money supporting the ruling class, the political elite. I’m hearing that in some states there is a move to completely deregulate corporate political donations while at the same time seeking to outlaw political contributions from labor unions.
But now I must mention another glaring aspect of today’s global economy: the fact that it runs on debt. What should be done about that?
Now, in this society, a lot of lip service gets paid to our religious heritage and biblical principles (though more actual obeisance is done to Adam Smith, Ayn Rand and Niccolo Machiavelli, so it seems to me). So let me leave preachin’ and go to meddlin’, for a minute, by pointing out a sadly neglected biblical principal, which has two parts.
Part One — God consistently indicates a desire for all people to enjoy the blessings of life, including wealth, envisioning a time when everyone shall “sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and none shall make him afraid.” In the instruction given to Israel through Moses, he lays out a multi-layered enforcement mechanism for this vision, with the goal that “there shall be no poor among you”:  (1) the periodic cancellation of debts (every seven years; see Deuteronomy 15); (2) the provision for the poor and the alien to glean the leftovers of the harvest on other people’s land; and (3) inclusion of these at feasts in every household as a part of the periodic celebration of the nation’s freedom. And (4) the year of Jubilee, once every fifty years, when those who had sold their own ancestral land to pay off debts were to get it back from the creditors, free and clear.
These provisions for periodic, systematic, repeated corrections are given precisely because of the natural workings of unrestrained human economic activity which assure that “the poor shall never cease out of the land.” That particular saying, beloved of those who think this is an excuse to do nothing, is in fact quite the opposite, as it is immediately followed by: “therefore you shall be openhanded to your brother, to your poor, and to your needy, in your land.”
Part Two is the clear indication that the moral quality of a government and a judgment about whether that government deserved to continue to exist depended in large measure on how well it upheld the kinds of things envisioned in Part One (see Psalm 82:  “Defend the poor and fatherless; do justice to the afflicted and needy.  Deliver the poor and needy:  rid them out of the hand of the wicked“).
I’ve written elsewhere about how our modern bankruptcy laws are a poor shadow of a remnant of a memory of the provision for the cancellation of all debts. Likewise we could say that the now-almost-never-heeded antitrust laws which used to bear some weight in the United States were founded on a biblical vision that valued the thinking behind the words of the prophet (Isaiah 5:8) who said: “Woe to those who add house to house and field to field!” In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that the structure of the progressive income tax, from which in recent years we have disastrously retreated, was devised precisely because, once upon a time, the immorality of the excessive wealth of a few at the expense of the many was understood to derive from basic Christian principles, rooted in both Old and New Testaments. Id like for those who yearn for the day that we return to biblical values and principles to uphold with me the need for providing for the least among us through regulation of commerce, employment and economic activity, as those biblical principles enjoin.
Those who create wealth out of debt (pretty much the way our entire financial structure works) seem to me to be enacting an unfortunate parody of the image in which we all were made, by creating something out of nothing. Only, really, less than nothing, since the actual multi-trillions of dollars worth of wealth involved in instruments like credit default swaps is created from future wages yet to be earned by millions of mortgage holders. And there is the real root of that global financial crisis. The same entities who profit from those instruments contribute to a mentality that, generally speaking, considers an honest day’s labor a cost and a liability, and increased wages an economic evil. Where are the prophets?

Lessons in Openness and Leadership

If the sad saga of Anthony Weiner — or even of the release of Sarah Palin’s emails, or, to take it further, the activities of Wikileaks, tells us anything useful, quite apart from the volatility of the public attention-span and the inconsistency of displays of political moral indignation, it is this:

There is no such thing as privacy.  Take it as given that the most embarrassing thing you ever posted will show up, somewhere, some time. In this way the Internet fulfills the prophetic word spoken by Jesus:  “There is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hid that will not be known.” Scripture talks of a coming day of judgment when “the secrets of men’s hearts are revealed” …  but for those of us who long for that day of revealing, why should we wish for this aspect of it to be delayed?

Only God, of course, “searches the heart” and thus knows all secrets; including their contexts, the motivations, the extenuating circumstances (if any), the reasons why; all of those things that make for endless blabber when somebody famously gets caught.

And only in the sight of God, who fortunately is inclined toward mercy, can we stand ready to be judged with total honesty, making no excuses. For this we have the example of the Biblical King David, who made his confession (after he was caught), took some severe consequences (though he kept his job) and continued to show himself a man after God’s own heart, precisely because he did not persist in his wrongdoing, and made no excuse for it.  It was no doubt, his own painful experience that empowered him to say, “Whoever covers his sins shall not prosper; but whoever confesses and forsakes them shall find mercy.”  Confessing is a near-term action, and a painful thing to witness, as we all know from the past couple of weeks; forsaking, now that is a lifelong, ongoing project.  And while mercy comes from God, and is enjoined upon those who trust him (….”and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love mercy,” etc), it is a rare and elusive thing when it comes to public and political opinion.

Verse of the Month — February 2011

Truth

So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another.

Ephesians 4:25

Vermont Is Gearing Up to Strike a Major Blow to Corporate Personhood, Ban It Statewide | | AlterNet

Apologies to my international friends for digressing into a  purely American issue.  I think it does have worldwide impact, all the same.

From AlterNet:

In Vermont, state senator Virginia Lyons earlier today presented an anti-corporate personhood resolution for passage in the Vermont legislature. The resolution, the first of its kind, proposes “an amendment to the United States Constitution … which provides that corporations are not persons under the laws of the United States.” Sources in the state house say it has a good chance of passing. This same body of lawmakers, after all, once voted to impeach George W. Bush, and is known for its anti-corporate legislation. Last year the Vermont senate became the first state legislature to weigh in on the future of a nuclear power plant, voting to shut down a poison-leeching plant run by Entergy Inc. Lyons’ Senate voted 26-4 to do it, demonstrating the level of political will of the state’s politicians to stand up to corporate power.

The language in the Lyons resolution is unabashed. “The profits and institutional survival of large corporations are often in direct conflict with the essential needs and rights of human beings,” it states, noting that corporations “have used their so-called rights to successfully seek the judicial reversal of democratically enacted laws.”

Thus the unfolding of the obvious: “democratically elected governments” are rendered “ineffective in protecting their citizens against corporate harm to the environment, health, workers, independent business, and local and regional economies.” The resolution goes on to note that “large corporations own most of America’s mass media and employ those media to loudly express the corporate political agenda and to convince Americans that the primary role of human beings is that of consumer rather than sovereign citizens with democratic rights and responsibilities.”

Denouncing this situation as an “intolerable societal reality,” the document concludes that the “only way” toward a solution is the amendment of the Constitution “to define persons as human beings.”

My comment:

I have long argued that the bizarre logic which says that “speech”= advertising and “free”= bought with money (such that speech is only free if you can pay for it) distorts and corrupts the meaning of the First Amendment beyond recognition.  That line of thinking, combined with the implicit recognition of the government-chartered, legal-fiction entities known as corporations as “persons,” lies at the root of the egregious, narrowly split (5-4) decision by the Supreme Court to overturn restrictions on political campaign spending by corporations, even while limitations and strict reporting requirements on political campaign contributions by individuals remain in place.   I sense a bit of pride that the state I grew up in is on track to be the first to address this head on.

It is just as immoral for a non-human, fictional entity which has no soul to be given all the privileges afforded to actual human beings, as it once was for some living, breathing human beings to be counted — according to the US Constitution — as three-fifths of a person, or for half the population to be denied participation in our political process.   Both of these injustices, formerly built into the American system, were addressed and corrected with Constitutional amendments. This one can be, as well. That’s how “we the people” can continue to “form a more perfect union.”

“Is God Violent?”

In the January 2011 issue of Sojourners magazine is an article by Brian McLaren which deserves a wide and thoughtful readership.  Readers of this blog will perhaps recognize some themes, as I have posted here and elsewhere about my own thought processes about the practical implications of taking the Way of Jesus seriously and reading the Bible through a red-letters-first filter. (Everyone who reads the Bible reads through some filter or other, whether secular, doctrinal, political, analytical, historical, devotional, or something else; I choose to begin with Jesus, of whom scripture itself testifies that he is the beginning and the end).

McLaren admits,

I remember the first time I heard of something called pacifism: My response was that it sounded terribly impractical and dangerous.

but in this piece outlines how he has come, through his discipleship to Jesus, to recognize something that (in my view) everyone who claims too be a follower (student, disciple, imitator)  of Jesus sooner or later will have to come to grips with, in terms of what approach to take with respect to human conflict:

And the staggering reality is that Jesus didn’t kill anybody — something that can’t be said about Abraham, Moses, David, Paul, or Mohammed (no disrespect intended to any of them). He didn’t hit anybody. He didn’t hate anybody. He practiced as he preached: Reconciliation, not retaliation. Kindness, not cruelty. A willingness to be violated, not violation. Creative conflict transformation through love, not decisive conflict termination through superior weapons.

Since the purpose of this piece is evidently to stimulate further discourse within Christian circles about this matter, my purpose here is not just to regurgitate his views, but to build on them, perhaps, by expounding some thoughts of my own.  I have a bit of an advantage over McLaren, maybe, in that I grew up in a family where pacifism was not a bad word, where I knew that I had two uncles (my mother’s brother and my mother’s sister’s husband), who did alternative service as conscientious objectors during World War II.   I thought about going that route during Vietnam, but did not see my way clear to do that, not because I had no objection to the war, but because I did not at that time have a way to honestly say that I could base that objection on religious faith.  My faith came later, and it was only later that I also came to understand that the radical position my two uncles took was actually the generally accepted stance of the Christian movement during its first two or three hundred years of existence.  That is, until Augustine introduced something we call the Just War Theory.

These days nobody much argues that Augustine’s theory, when brought into service, can successfully justify most modern conflicts.  The weapons are too deadly, the politics too murky, the responses too disproportionate, to pass muster by the standards he articulated.  But we moderns tend to take some sort of comfort in thinking that, in the dimness of antiquity, a respected Christian leader propounded what was then a novel way to justify institutionalized violence.  But over time, as I have thought about this, I realized what, I think, others more famous than myself are now struggling with. Namely:  the argument starts somewhere other than Jesus.

Verse of the Month — October 2010

It’s Not About Us

For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.

— II Corinthians 4:5

Thinking about politics; a debate with myself

Last November I decided that what I wanted to do was write 500 words a day for a year. I did pretty well the week after Thanksgiving and the first few days of December. Kind of fell off the wagon then until January; made exactly two entries that month, one on the first of February, and here I am heading into mid-April, starting over. Not a good track record so far, and this is a confession. Okay.

One of the things that has occupied my attention during this time is the semi-serious question of whether or not to get into politics. Over the last few years a number of sincere, well-meaning people have tried to talk me into running for elective office. When I have complained about this confidingly to other friends, the response I get is much less on the line of a sympathetic dismissal of the idea, and more often a serious discussion of the pros and cons, emphasis on the pros. I’m near enough to a megalomaniac all by myself, so it doesn’t take much of this sort of thing to get me started. So over the last couple of months I’ve actually given a bit of serious thought as to whether to run, this year, in a primary and, if successful, a general election for public office at the county level.

Problem with this is, I’m a preacher, and one who has been admonished more than once with a repetition of the famous words: “If a man be called to preach, let him not stoop to be a king”. As a preacher of the Gospel, I’ve already got a pretty important job, and as such also quite enough standing in the community to suffice for most people.

Thing is, I’m not most people.

Then there’s the whole separation of church and state thing, and the fact that given the polarized and polarizing state of current political discourse, the whole process of being a public figure in that way might collide rather sharply with the way in which I have become accustomed to being a public figure. And then there’s the liberal/conservative label matrix. I should say a few things about that.

Politically, I’m a liberal, and have registered as a Democrat in every election since 1992. That year I found to my dismay that I could not, registered as an Independent, vote in the presidential primary in the state of New York. In penance for that shortfall, I made the first political donation of my life, to then-candidate Jerry Brown of California. I can’t remember if I sent him $15 or $25. In any case, I’m a political liberal in large measure as a result of being a particular brand of theological conservative. Issues like the dignity and equality of women and men and of all races (ethnoi), the responsibility of government (that meant kings, in the Old Testament; but it means “we the people” in our peculiar system) to care for the poor, the widow, the orphan and the alien, loom large for me in my reading of scripture; as does an unwavering commitment to nonviolence, which it seems to me is inseparable from the most radical teachings of Jesus.

I take my theological conservatism directly from a tradition that is fed by several streams: there is the Lutheran (salvation by faith, sola scriptori), the Wesleyan/Holiness, and the Anabaptist, and to a lesser extent by the wider Evangelical/Fundamentalist tradition (whose heroes are less Luther and Wesley and more Calvin and Zwingli). Mostly though, and in keeping with each of these traditions, I get it from the Bible itself, and my own reading and experiencing of the words, stories, teachings found in it. I’m a Jesus person. I take the words in red very seriously, and try to get others to do so as well.

It was the Anabaptists, by and large, who bequeathed to subsequent generations on both sides of the Atlantic the notion of separation of church and state. No such separation existed in 16th-century Europe, and as a result these folks, who thought that one becomes a Christian by deciding to follow Jesus, and thus joins a church by deciding to associate with others of like mind, were persecuted harshly by Catholics and Protestants alike, who all thought you were a (certain brand of) Christian because you lived in a land governed by a (particular brand of) Christian ruler. The idea that a church is a voluntary association of responsible adults, and not co-extensive with the state, was very much an Anabaptist idea. Because of this idea they baptized adults, most of whom had already been baptized once as infants; hence the name, Anabaptists, or Rebaptizers.  Because this procedure was seen as subversive, unpatriotic, and other nasty things, some of the leaders of this movement were, fittingly enough, executed by drowning. Many others of these folks, to escape such persecution, ultimately came to these shores, and rubbed elbows with Protestants who had come to escape the Catholics, or (as in Maryland) Catholics who came to escape the Protestants. While all of the 13 original states had established churches of one kind or another, the founding fathers were wise enough to remember what had happened in Christian Europe over the issue of whose religion should prevail (hint: 30 years’ war; look it up), and decided that there would be no argument about that issue on the federal level, enshrining in the first amendment a prohibition on establishing an official Federal religion. This idea of non-state-sponsored churches gained official acceptance slowly and erratically, starting with Rhode Island (not Massachusetts) and Pennsylvania (not Maryland or Virginia).

All that said, I also agree with something I have heard more than once from my Congressman, Steny Hoyer: “I believe in the separation of church and state; but I do not believe in separating the values my faith has taught me from the decisions I make in public or private life.” (This may not be a verbatim quote, but I have heard words very much like this from him at least twice this year as he spoke to constituents).

Now my Anabaptist forebears tended to prefer to withdraw from politics into separate societies of their own. Certain of my Holiness forebears, likewise, would warn me not to risk my sanctified soul with such worldly pursuits. As a non-confrontational sort of fellow, I would be departing from my own comfort zone if I were to buck both those traditions and start speaking out on political issues. Trouble is, I do find, in that meddlesome document, the Bible, plenty of examples of prophets and apostles, and, yes, our Lord himself, being quite vocal on the issues of the day.

There are some issues I am interested in. Housing, jobs, responsible budgeting, education, long range planning that balances environmental preservation with the provision of services and infrastructure that meet human needs. I’ve worked on some of these issues already.

It’s not like I don’t have plenty to do. I’m just thinking, that’s all. Just thinking. I’ll let you know.

Addendum, added 5/20/10:

Here’s where I let you know. This internal debate having reached its conclusion, one of me seems to have won by a narrow margin, and the conflicting pundits in my head are drafting their respective columns arguing whether the decision to proceed represents a bold step or a foolish venture.  I’m ignoring them both, for now, while considering that they both may be right.  What actually happened was that I went on a previously scheduled three-day spiritual retreat in mid-May, thinking that by the end of that I’d have gained some clarity; which I did not, if by clarity is meant “now I know what God wants me to do with this.”  I did, however, come away with a calmness and clearness of mind which allowed me to notice that I was equally undisturbed by either prospect.  The curious and surprising fact that the thought of entering the political process at this late date in my life did not scare the willies out of me was just enough of a nudge that it tipped the scale in that direction.  It was my decision, and the consequences to me, my family, my community are my responsibility.  Isn’t that what we are spiritually called to do, grow up, make actual decisions, and become responsible for our own decisions?  So…. I filed.

Economic Principles: Gleanings from Genesis

Update/Edit on 3/10/10:  I have made a few changes to the text below, having done a more careful review of the relevant material.  The basic points, however, are merely further illustrated.

First in a series.

The first human occupation was gardening. Humankind came into a world that was ready to feed him from its abundance: the fruit of any tree. His assignment was: care for the garden where you have been placed.

God planted that Garden.

Thus, in that first instance, Humanity’s assignment was to be fruitful; his work was secondary. That all changed, however, with the Fall.

In the beginning, in the time of innocence, it was understood that all that was needed for human existence was provided by the Creator. Afterward, when the fellowship with God was broken because of sin, and a state of spiritual death descended upon the human race, the first consequence of this was a curse on the very ground, and the requirement of work: “Cursed is the ground because of you. Thorns and thistles it will bring forth for you, and in the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread.” Separation from God meant separation from the abundance that had been part of the natural order of things. Soon after that came division of labor, and following hard upon this was the first murder, a fratricide, the beginning of violence on the earth.

The violence increased generation after generation until the time of the Flood, and is cited in scripture as the reason that act of judgment on humanity came about. All of this was the consequence of a departure from God.

The story of the tower of Babel can be seen as a parable involving the consequences of excessive technological advancement: people becoming so good at what they do, each in their own technical field, that they become unable to communicate with one another, or, perhaps worse, increasingly uninterested in doing so; thus, the very enterprise that was to bring them together becomes the occasion for their becoming scattered over the face of the earth. One reading, at least, which makes this story into a cautionary tale about corporate arrogance, and the pursuit of achievement without regard to the spiritual center. Just a thought.

The patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) were nomadic chieftains, herding sheep and cattle and goats. Key to the understanding of their survival is hospitality, both given and received. Both Abraham and Isaac dealt with Philistine chieftains who carried the title Abi-Melech (Father of Kings, or perhaps, My Father is a King) and in those dealings had to learn how to accept hospitality by conducting themselves honestly and with integrity in the presence of their hosts. Abraham showed hospitality to the angel of the Lord, and received in the process the promise of a son and heir. By contrast, the great sin of Sodom was its refusal to provide hospitality to strangers. Abraham’s relative, Lot, was shown to be righteous because he brought those strangers under the protection of his roof. The proper conduct of guests and hosts gets more divinely-inspired ink with the story of Abraham’s servant, sent to find a wife for his son Isaac, highlighted by the exchange of gifts; and again when the outline of that same story is repeated, with variation and much greater detail, with Jacob coming into the home of his uncle Laban. This is the first indication of someone agreeing to work for someone else in exchange for payment of a wage. It may be significant that it was essentially a dispute over these wages, and the terms of that agreement, which occasioned the falling-out between Jacob and Laban, two schemers who were well suited for each other.

Apart from all this giving and receiving of gifts and other displays of hospitality, and the wheeling and dealing of Laban and Jacob, there are exactly three a small handful of money transactions mentioned in the earlier chapters of Genesis. General mention is made, concerning Abraham’s wealth, of slaves who were “born in his house” and also those “bought with money.” There is Abraham’s purchase of a burial-plot from a Hittite, the first real estate deal recorded in the Bible; there is Abraham’s payment of tithes to the priest-king Melchizedek. We also see Jacob’s promise of a tithe to God.  And much later, there is first mention of the purchase of a plot of ground by Jacob from the people of Shechem —something that, unlike the burial-plot of Abraham is never again mentioned in Scripture, and seems to be abandoned after the relationship with that group goes sour — and later the sale of Joseph by his brothers to traveling merchants on their way to Egypt. All of these money transactions, I should note, are cross-cultural, involving persons from different national or ethnic backgrounds. ((The same could be said of David’s purchase, much later, of the land on which the Temple was ultimately to be built; he bought it from a Jebusite, one of the original Canaanite inhabitants of the land.))

Now we come to Egypt. Joseph, the unwanted brother, sold into slavery at the age of seventeen, soon gets in enough trouble because of his integrity that he spends much of the next thirteen years in prison. While there he nurtures his faith; and when the time is right, a thirty-year-old Joseph becomes advisor to Pharaoh king of Egypt, who has had a series of disturbing dreams. Joseph not only interprets those dreams, he informs the king that they are gifts from God to forewarn of future events, and accordingly provides advice about how to prepare for those events. Thus the first mention of taxes is a divinely-given bit of wisdom, and to his credit Pharaoh not only takes the advice Joseph offers, but recognizes this wisdom as God-given, and makes Joseph administrator of the program, because in him is the Spirit of the holy God. To be fair, this was not quite what we would call an income tax. It was a production tax; a produce tax, to be precise, and the point of it was to provide for storage of surpluses during years of surplus, so that when the time of shortage arrived, resources would be available to meet ongoing needs.

Since this is the first extended foray into the field of economics, let’s take a closer look at the plan. Surpluses were expected for seven years, and deficits for seven years thereafter. During the years of surplus, a hefty tax (20%) was imposed on production, and those proceeds were set aside. Since the production was in commodities, that is, grain, this meant large storage facilities. Now, apparently, in the first instance this tax was subject to a sunset provision at the end of the years of surplus; however, thereafter, the stored food was sold on the open market, in such a way as to make sure everyone had access to it. Presumably, not everyone ran out of money on the same day, but at the point when someone did run out of money, a new arrangement was made: those still receiving grain, without payment, first mortgaged their lands to the government in lieu of payment; and when this defaulted, they then entered into an agreement, an i.o.u., as it were, whereby they promised to resume payment of the 20% tax as soon as their production ramped up again. All of this was done on free-market principles, not enforced by military action or any such thing. It was voluntary action on the part of all concerned. That the end result was that Pharaoh ended up owning all the real estate and collecting the 20% in perpetuity, now effectively as rent, could easily be seen as divine reward for his obedience to the wise advice Joseph gave him in the beginning. If his successors abused that blessing, creating hardship for the people who had benefited from this arrangement: well, that was an issue for another day. No particular economic arrangement fits all circumstance, but there was one clear benefit to this arrangement when it was made. No one starved.

There are many parts to the Joseph cycle, which takes up a good third of the book of Genesis; but let me boil it down to the punch line, which occurs in the last chapter. “You intended evil,” (Joseph says to his brothers) “but God meant it for good, to save many people alive, as it is this day.” Joseph, former slave, unjustly treated as he was by his brothers, his former employer who unjustly threw him into prison, and the entire Egyptian society, which showed him anything but hospitality for thirteen years. looks beyond the evil intent and selfish motives of the players, and explains why God has raised him up to be the economic “czar” (sorry, couldn’t resist throwing in that word) of all Egypt: God’s purpose is to preserve life. That’s what economy is all about.

By the way, our word “economy” comes from the Greek word which is often translated “household”. The purpose of an economy is for the people who take part in it to be able to live together comfortably. Let’s not forget that.