Do you honestly believe what you’re saying? Before I believe any city’s annual financial report I want to know what firm they hired to generated the report, what are their political connections, who did they give political donations too and how much, who’s sleeping with who, who’s related to who, what political favors were promised and what did the report cost the tax payers.

In 2011, is was about $450 million.

WL

I believe it was the sociologist Max Weber who accurately described government as coercion. Coercion, if one means the public defense, prosecution of force and fraud against others, is typically considered legitimate. The whole question of taxation, and government in general, is what is a legitimate tax?

In my experience in the military and working for many levels of local government in various capacities, I have found that California has evolved into the business of taxation for luxury public goods. I do not believe this to be a necessary and legitimate function of government. Therefore I define it oppressive.

Where I live in a city of 150,000 in California, the city had two thirds of a billion in reserves in 2008 and wanted a new 8% Utility User’s Tax on telephone usage. I signed the ballot argument and opposed the tax — but lost. What did the city do with those taxes? They went out and used eminent domain to buy a former YWCA building for historic preservation, bought 30 acres of open space to enhance the views and values of nearby hillside homes, and built an urgent care center to augment the hospital emergency room.

The former YWCA building is now going to be developed in a redevelopment project. Now that California has killed redevelopment agencies the proposed re-development of the YWCA will not take property taxes from the public schools. Redevelopment was a luxury public good that just deprived schools of funding. Can I use the word “oppressive?” You be the judge.

The purchase of open space was only the use of government powers to prevent new housing stock from being built to assist the NIMBY’s – “Not In My Back Yarders.” I’m a trained real estate appraiser. The way the market works to make housing affordable is people with existing housing move up into better and/or larger housing and buy new dwellings. First time buyers come along and buy the houses those people moved out of. It is called neighborhood filtration. It is new housing at the top of the market that makes affordable housing at the bottom of the market. So taking land that could have been developed for new housing deprives first time buyers of affordable housing stock. Affordable housing is older, obsolescent in older neighborhoods. Should government coercion be used to intimidate landowners to sell their land for open space at a fraction of its developed value? In my mind buying open space to enhance nearby home values is oppressive and furthers no public good. And it breeds a society that is antithetic to religious values – the same sort of political collusion that was perhaps going on in a rural society in the First Century that oppressed farmers and led to the foreclosure of their land.

The building of an urgent care center seems on the surface to further a better public good. But within eyesight of the urgent care center is a brand new medical office park with vacant buildings. Why not let the private market build an urgent care center? And if there is no market for a private urgent care center why is government doing it?

So above I have given you three real world examples of what I am talking about – not anti-government or anti-tax ideology. I could provide many other examples.

The reason that California has an unemployment problem is not so much state policies but local ones. Taking land for open space deprives construction workers of jobs. Historical preservation just keeps a higher and better market use of the land from being realized and shorts the government of taxes while begging for subsidies to make such projects economically feasible. An urgent care center for which there may not be a private market once gain just takes funding away from more necessary functions of government — schools, public roads, the justice system, and the so-called “first responders.” These are all luxury public goods. But they deprive the local economy of private jobs and a tax base. Even the State impartial Legislative Analyst in California has concluded that redevelopment is unnecessary and results in no added value over private development.

If in a capitalistic society jobs are a moral imperative then depriving the private sector of jobs and the local community of a larger tax base is questionable if also oppressive. But government has evolved into selling itself as a Good Samaritan. Those with religious values should have some social tension with government and “be not conformed to this world.” They should respect government at least as a necessary evil but put checks on it as the American form of government intended. Here in California the single solution sought to cure all ills is just to abandon any limits on taxation or government coercion and fully fund government. But history doesn’t prove that a fully funded government solves anything – think of all the examples in WWII era. The trains ran on time in Mussolini’s Italy. But was that a moral society? Rapid and revolutionary change should be avoided wherever possible is history is any guide.

I hope this answers some of your questions.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my comment.

To be fair, I must admit this is the first time I’ve ready anything you’ve written, so I don’t have all of the proper context. I just stumbled across the article through realclearreligion.org.

I agree that oppressive taxes are not a good thing. But isn’t oppressive tax a bit of a subjective term? Some people will argue that any tax is inherently oppressive while others will argue that paying 90% of one’s income is not oppressive. So, who makes the distinction? In our society, it’s the voters. So, I don’t want to discourage anyone from voting their conscience and I hope that Christians are voting in accordance to their scriptural understandings.

So, to say that Jesus was against oppressive taxes may be true, most people are in opposed to oppressions overall. But there doesn’t seem to be anything in the gospels that paint Jesus as anti-tax of any kind, oppressive or otherwise. The epistles don’t either. Everything in the New Testament points to rejoicing in oppression of all kind and obeying the government unconditionally, unless it tells you to sin. Certainly there is room for argument in there as far as what constitutes making a person sin (does taxes paying for abortion mean the taxpayer is paying for murder? I don’t know.)

So, should we allow the government to oppress people? Well, that’s a tough question because we live under a very different government style than the first century Roman Empire. We have the chance to have a say in how our government runs. So, certainly we should engage in that and try to make laws that fit our understanding of morality. But what I see as more important is to accept the outcome, whatever that may be, and obey the government that God has put into place. Our government allows us to criticize our leaders, but to adhere to Biblical mandate, we must do that respectfully.

—

“It was the Romans who were threatened by religious prophets who were opposed to taxes wasn’t it?”

The Romans weren’t threatened by religious prophets per se, but they were threatened by anyone who questioned their governmental authority. But it was the religious leaders who wanted Jesus dead. They were threatened by his religious authority. That’s written throughout the gospels. The Roman government allowed their occupied subjects to maintain their own legal systems, but they didn’t allow them to execute anyone. Only the Romans could execute people. So, to have Jesus executed, the Jewish religious leaders had to find a reason to make the Romans want to execute him. So, they painted him as opposing Roman authority.

Perhaps that sounds anti-Jewish, but it’s based on what’s written throughout the New Testament, which was mostly written by Jews.

—

“Did you speak up with any moral or religious opposition to this at the time? If not why?”

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by this. I wasn’t a big fan of the government stepping in to secure the failing banks, but it was for economic reasons. If banks make bad loans, let them fail. If the banks had failed, all of the people they’d made bad loans to would be free-and-clear on their houses, as I understand it. But there was a lot of blame on the lenders and the borrowers, so I don’t really feel comfortable making blanket moral statements about the whole thing.

-steve

I mean, there is no shame at all just admitting that you should have NEVER tried for that fat gov pension and just repudiating it right now. There ARE ways to turn the funds over to charity right now! Or at last making an irrevocable instrument to do same.

In this way Wayne you’d be putting your money were your mouth is. Ya know? I mean you write a whole lot all around the edges of the impropriety of taking any of this PENSION money at all.

Think about it Wayne— your stories would have a lot of power behind them to all of us knowing you gave the money back.

Maybe John Moorlock would read a story and do the right thing by turning in his fat pension and obscene car allowance??

I would be sooooooo impressed.

Thoughts?

Ted