Some time ago I figured out a way for churches to get a general idea of whether or not their congregations are tithing congregations. I think I mentioned that already in some post or other. We have pretty good numbers on what the average income level is across the United States, and it is fairly easy to find the average income level for your community or county. Take the number of member households and the church’s annual budget, and calculate what the “average income” is for your households on the assumption that everybody is tithing. If it comes in way under, as though all your households earn 10K a year, then either the folks are not tithing or everybody has a cousin with Wyclif Bible Translators. When I was in this process of discovering that our congregation is in fact a tithing congregation — which pleased me a great deal, great folks — I also discovered, according to my source, that the average income level in the United States is around 35K. That last item is datum number one.
Datum number two came when I thought I wanted to use that info in something else I was working on, and so I called an accountant friend to ask him what a family with a couple of dependents earning 35K would generally pay in taxes. The point I thought I might be able to make is that all the current socialist soak-the-rich rhetoric was all just a ploy, and that everybody was pretty much getting soaked. But no, it turns out that the soak-the-rich approach is a fairly honest representation of the facts. The average income level of 35K would get money back from the government. Huh, thought I, and the point I was going to make went by the wayside.
Datum number three. I ran across this info the other day on Dale Courtney’s website. And though I already knew that something like this was the case, I was flabbergasted at the extent of it. The politics of envy really have been institutionalized in our midst. These numbers are stunning.
The top one percent of our income earners generate almost 40% of the government’s tax revenues. That would be from people earning $388,806 or more. The top 5% ($153,542 and up) carry 60% of the load. The top ten percent ($108,904 and over) generate 71% of the government’s revenue. The top twenty-five percent ($64,702 and up) write the checks for 86% of the revenue. The top 50% ($31,987) generate 97% of all government tax revenue. Note this gentleman used a different average income than did I earlier (32 v. 35), but they are still in the same ballpark. Below 32K produces almost 3% of the revenues.
The guy on the corner with the hot dog wagon was having a special on hot dogs, one dollar a dog, and a hundred of us guys at the company decided to go there for lunch. But one of us, let’s call him Phil, has the nicest truck, so we decided to make him buy forty of the hot dogs. And Phil, Hank, Fred, Bob and Larry live on the nicest side of town — who do they think they are? — so we took a vote and thought that between them they ought to spring for 60 of the hot dogs. Hoity jerks. And they had five friends who kind of live over that way, and so the ten of them together should buy seventy of the hot dogs. Then there were fifteen other guys who live where we do, but they are sort of thinking that someday they might want to move over there with all those greedy people, so we made them chip in too — twenty five of the hundred wound up buying 86 of the hot dogs. Only fair. The next twenty five after that seem like regular guys, but for some reason they were acting weird in the conscience about the whole thing, so we took a vote and made them buy 11 hot dogs. Just to keep everything on the up and up. Because we want to pull our weight, the fifty rest of us chipped in and bought 3.
We are having an election for the chairman of the committee for company parties next month, and one of the candidates is actually talking about giving Phil and his friends a break. That’s it . . . tax breaks for the wealthiest. Ain’t it the way?
Now I know there are a number of variables that I have not mentioned here, but the basic outline of what is happening is simply outrageous. The outrage is not on the actual lifestyles of those who are paying all the taxes because they are still generally doing better materially than anyone in the history of the world has. The outrage is against God’s law. The outrage is the institutionalization of envy. This explains, incidentally, why taxation can be so unjust on the face and yet no tax revolt. Those who are being ripped off this way are way outnumbered, and they have a lot of residual income that they would have to risk in a fight, and they wouldn’t have the sympathy of anybody. Poor buddy is struggling with his yacht payments. I mean, these aren’t exactly peasants hiding their last coin from the Sheriff of Nottingham. But stealing remains stealing even if the thief thinks that the other fellow has way too much. God defines stealing and our envious carping does not.
If the reply is that it is unjust even to be in that 1% and that if anyone is there he therefore deserves to be soaked, the response should be that fines of that magnitude ought not to be levied without a trial. Prove it.