You shall not steal. ~ Exodus 20:15
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house...or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s. ~ Exodus 20:17
President Obama’s entire approach to economics and class warfare is predicated on a blatant violation of both the 8th and 10th commandments.
The 10th commandment prohibits coveting anything that belongs to one’s neighbor. And yet the president’s greedy hands veritably tremble with anticipation of getting his hands on the money of the wealthy so he can redistribute it to the objects of his misguided affection. And, not coincidentally, buy their votes in the process.
So while the president blasts the wealthy for their greed, it turns out that he’s the greedy one, greedier by far than the targets of his vilification.
And the mechanism the president uses to redistribute the wealth he covets is not the compassion and charity Jesus taught but the raw use of government coercion through confiscatory taxes.
In every single one of his State of the Union speeches - including last night’s - the president has threatened to increase the burden on the most productive Americans we have, the Americans who are already paying far more than their “fair share.” The top one percent of wage earners in America pay 40% of all taxes, the top 10% pay 70% of all taxes, the top 20% pay 93% of all taxes and the top 40% of wage earners pay 106% of all taxes, because the folks in the bottom 60% get money back they didn’t even pay in.
Now I’m all for everybody paying their “fair share.” Since the top one percent of wage earners control approximately 20% of the nation’s wealth, their fair share of the tax burden should be about 20%. Instead, it is twice that. I say we get the wealthy to pay their fair share by cutting their taxes in half. (I say this as a card-carrying member of the middle class.)
The use of government force to plunder wealth generators is a violation of the 8th commandment which prohibits taking something that does not rightfully belong to you. Just because it’s done under the color of law does not make it right. As the French economist Frederic Bastiat said more than 150 years ago, government-imposed wealth redistribution is nothing more than legalized plunder.
If I hold up a neighbor at gunpoint so I can give his money to somebody else, that’s armed robbery. When the government does it under threat of arrest and incarceration, it’s the same thing. Just because the government is doing it does not make it one whit less immoral and wrong.
Now to be sure, sincerely devoted followers of Jesus Christ believe in the redistribution of wealth just as much as Obama does. But we believe it is to be voluntary, as Jesus taught. His commands about being generous to the poor were not given to government, they were given to us.
When God imposed a tax on ancient Israel, it was a flat tax. Ten percent for everybody. Everybody paid their fair share. The wealthy paid more, because 10% of a lot is more than 10% of a little. But it was absolutely fair and equitable.
Maybe God knew what he was talking about. He certainly knows more about such things than President Obama.
