The Kingdom of God, Productivity, and Taxes
The majority of Christians, unfortunately, have bought into the idea of taking the wealth from productive citizens and having it distributed to them. This undermines the value of the creative, innovative and visionary entrepreneurs, resulting in a much weaker economy, as capital is consumed at the expense of economic growth.
For all the excessive taxes levied on those with wealth, it removes the usage of that money for investment and productive endeavors.
In this article we’ll look at why this is wrong according to the Bible, and why we need to resist taxation that is 10 percent or above.
Israel and their demand for a king
Where this started in relationship to God’s people was back when Israel demanded that they wanted a king like the nations around them, essentially rejecting God as their king.
Here’s what Samuel said would happen when it came to pass:
And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day (1 Samuel 8:11–18).
After they were wanted, they still wanted a king. “Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us” (I Samuel 8:19).
What’s important to note about Samuel’s warning is that it referred to 10 percent several times in the passage. That’s significant because it meant the future kings would consider themselves equal to God as far as it related to the tithe. In other words, the prospect of tyranny would expand as the kings consolidated power by skimming of the best of what Israel had to offer in human, animal and financial capital.
They were going to move away from the decentralized practices of the judges, to a permanent centralized government that would increasingly weigh heavy on the people.
One different thing in our present day from those days is, in the past they took the best of the young people to work on behalf of the centralized government. Today, overall, it’s usually the less productive and bureaucratic parasites that work for the government.
Consequences for the productive
The problem in all of this is it takes away capital from those that are productive via heavy taxation, and redistribute it to the greedy whom believe they are owed it.
While this may sound good to some, the issue is it’s being done by the government, which has never been given authority by God to enter into wealth redistribution – especially by force of taxation.
The way to help people is through charities. I believe Christians need to once again raise up and create, support and push for robust charities to meet the needs of those that really are desperate for help.
There are of course many types of charities that would serve far more than the practical needs of people, but I think that is the place to start. There are already many charities that do this, but we need to expand and enlarge upon them, for the purpose of helping people, but also to weaken the idea the state or government is the best source to do this.
Again, every bit of capital that is extracted from productive people, is capital that can’t be used to invest in the types of projects that will products and services that people want and need.
That also means there will be less jobs available to the population because of the reduction in investment capital.
Businesses and taxation
It is also amusing to me to see clueless people talk about how businesses and productive individuals who have created products and services which have brought them wealth, need to pay their “fair” share in taxes; as if those people pay much in taxes, if any at all.
A number of businesses and wealthy people, including President Trump and Amazon, have found ways to limit or legally avoid taxes altogether in certain years. This outrages the left, who believe they are to be the recipients of the capital created by entrepreneurs and businesses.
This is also misunderstood by businesses that either don’t understand, or are guild-manipulated into believing it’s their responsibility to pay more taxes than they have to.
For example, I’ve seen Amazon (AMZN) and Jeff Bezos castigated at times because of the small amount of taxes they’ve paid over the years. As a matter of fact, in the past I’ve read or listened some intelligent commentators, pundits and analysts who believed Amazon was vastly overvalued because of the lack of earnings reported from quarter to quarter. The idea was the business model wasn’t sustainable. They were wrong.
What they failed to take into account was Bezos was reinvesting the excess capital into improving and expanding the business in order to create a moat that would be difficult to penetrate by competitors like Wal-Mart (WMT). It worked. That’s why from quarter to quarter it gave the appearance of extremely weak numbers.
To not invest in the business and pay out more taxes would have been devastating to the company, as it would not have created the separation from its competitors that has made it a company worth far more than a trillion dollars.
The other thing that was underestimated is Bezos was building out his AWS (cloud network) segment, which generated significant revenue and margins. The point is he was investing capital into growth projects beyond the e-commerce business.
The point is all of this was made possible by basically breaking even for a long period of time in order to build out a variety of products and services in various segments of the market that would result in sustainable revenue growth and earnings.
As a result, now Amazon is positioned to vastly develop and improve on a number of products and services that will benefit the human race far more than paying taxes to the state, which wastes the vast majority of the capital it extracts from the productive.
Conclusion
With the establishment of the tithe in the Bible, it’s obvious that any government attempting to take equal or more than that from people is engaging in disobedience, and will, as we’ve seen throughout history, enter into tyranny and increasing totalitarianism at various levels. No state should be allowed to have a tax rate above 9.99 percent, because it suggests it believes it is on equal footing with God.
The role of the state is protection, judgement and justice, nothing else. Anything beyond that is going beyond its God-given mandate. That’s why 9.99 percent in taxes (including all levels of government) is more than enough to handle police, military, and a court system that deals with crime and disagreements among opposing parties.
What this does is release far more investment capital for creative, innovative and productive people to develop more ideas from research that brings about quality products and services that benefit all of us.
That in turn will allow for more capital to be allocated to establishing the kingdom of God on earth. It’s a win/win for all participants in this way of doing business.
In the end, charities will enjoy, in my opinion, an extraordinary resurgence, as quality people enter into the space for the purpose of providing services to those in need, and to provide capital to thousands of different non-profit entities that are suppressed by governments taking so much capital from their citizens that there isn’t much left for giving to creative charities.
We need to sacrifice in order to make this happen. Only by creating great businesses and developing charities that are dynamic, interesting, and effective, will people start to realize it can be done much better by the private sector than the government.
So next time you hear people talking about productive individuals and companies needing to pay their “fair” share of taxes, understand it’s taking away from the capital needed to establish the kingdom of God on earth, investing in research that will lead to breakthroughs in products and services, and the creation of amazing charities that will go far beyond what the government can do.
Christians especially need to support this and undermine the state in these areas, which has long ago move beyond the mandate God gave it in regard to its purpose.
