Not all Democrats have bought into the modern currency craze that the national debt, currently $ 68,400 per citizen or $ 183,000 per taxpayer, doesn’t matter. To appease them, President Biden proposes raising taxes to pay for some of his compulsive spending.
He wants to raise the top marginal rate of income tax to 39.6% from 37% and almost double capital gains taxes to 39.6% for people making more than $ 1 million. President Trump had lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and Biden wants to raise it to 28%. Finally, Biden wants to raise taxes on gasoline, the most regressive of all taxes.
Corporations rarely pay for such tax increases because they pass the costs on to consumers as higher prices, but to speak of sticking it to large corporations is beautiful music to the ears of Social Democrats, who avoid learning economics at all costs. In the real world, where the rest of us must live, people pay the most taxes.
Biden’s tax increases will impoverish average Americans, but Democrats hope overspending will make up for it. They will do more harm to the working poor because the government has created many tax shelters for the rich to hide their wealth from the clutches of Uncle Sam. And they will harm small businesses more than large corporations that Americans love to hate, and thereby increase the power of cartels in all industries.
President Trump lowered corporate taxes because the American rate was higher than that of other industrialized countries, and that made American manufacturers unable to compete in many markets. Biden’s raise will push more overseas jobs to avoid high tax rates in the US Overall, higher corporate taxes will mean less investment in US companies, slower job growth, and more salary increases. low. That is introductory economics.
The economics of overspending and tax increases is too complex for most Americans to understand, as most never take an introductory economics class or read an economics book. So let’s look at the moral aspect of taxes as the pious theologians at the University of Salamanca, Spain, did during the Reformation. Before examining taxes, they had to determine the purpose of the government. Today, people respond by saying that the government is supposed to do whatever it takes for the common good. But the Salamancan theologians did not see it that way.
Theologians see the beginning of human rule in the Bible when God told Noah in Genesis 9: 6, “Whoever sheds human blood, by man his blood will be shed, because in the image of God he made man.” The following statement in the Bible about government occurs when God created the nation of Israel and did not give it a human king or legislature, leaving it only courts for governmental institutions. God played the role of king by giving Israel his laws, 613, most of which pertained to temple ceremonies.
The courts decided only civil laws, most of which concerned property, bonded labor, and violence. Given the absolute monarchies that existed at that time, the government of Israel radically limited itself to punishing wrongdoers. God was very angry with Israel for demanding a human king and warned them of the tyranny that human kings would inflict on them. Read 1 Samuel 8. God allowed a human king as punishment for Israel’s rebellion.
In the New Testament, the apostle Paul told Roman Christians in chapter 13 that the role of government authorities is to punish wrongdoers: “They are servants of God, agents of wrath to punish the wrongdoer … That is also why you pay taxes … The authors of the Constitution of the United States created a federal government that they tried to limit to punishing evildoers and national defense.
After discerning that the role of the government is to punish criminals who violate the rights to life, liberty and property of others, the theologians of Salamanca determined that the state has the authority to collect taxes for that purpose and no other. If the state raised more than was necessary for that limited function, it was committing theft and violating the commandment, “You shall not steal.”
Most of what the federal government does with tax revenue is to transfer money from the rich to the middle class and the working poor, clearly not in the biblical mandate to punish wrongdoers or legal under the Constitution. What does spending on infrastructure have to do with punishing wrongdoers?
Furthermore, theologians for centuries have insisted that the government should treat all citizens equally, since the authorities are agents of God who treats all people equally. So, until the 20th century, most Americans considered “progressive” taxation, or taxing the rich more than others, to be immoral. Then socialism became popular and Americans forgot about morality.
By worshiping their idol of social justice, or socialism, Americans have created a very unjust government in the way it taxes the people. Biden’s overspending is not just an economic disaster, it is also immoral because it violates the state’s requirement to treat citizens equally and adds to the theft of citizens that the government has committed for more than a century.