Who Butters Your Bread?

Who Butters Your Bread?

(Posted July 15, 2009)

Private & Home Educators of California
Roy Hanson, Jr. - Director
PO Box 730 • Lincoln, CA 95648-0730 • (916) 786-3523 • FAX (916) 415-9470

contact@pheofca.org

(This article is available at www.pheofca.org for your use.)

What gets bigger the more you take from it? As a kid, this was one of my favorite riddles. The correct answer, of course, is “a hole.” The more you take out of a hole, the bigger it gets. However, there is another answer to this riddle — one that seems to elude many people today.

A large majority of the voters in the United States think that lower taxes would have the most immediate positive impact on them and their families. Many think that government at all levels is far too big, taking away our freedoms and destroying the concept of personal responsibility.

Paradoxically, large numbers of people who claim to want smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom continue to clamor for their “fair share” in a plethora of government-subsidized programs. Each individual who chooses to participate in a government-funded program creates a two-fold demand on the government. First, they create a need for money to pay for the goods or services they would receive. Second, they create a need for more bureaucrats to administer the programs that are supposed to provide those goods and services. The more benefits we receive from government, the bigger it will become, the further it will encroach on our freedoms, and the more money it will need.

But, the government does not have money. All governments get their money by taking it from the people. And there are a variety of ways the government gets this money: income taxes, sales taxes, gas tax, utilities and phone taxes, excise taxes, property taxes, payroll taxes, corporate taxes, license fees, fines, etc. Every single worker in America works from January through May just to meet the government’s voracious appetite for money. In fact, the government’s biggest job has become the redistribution of our money through government entitlement programs. One report notes that the cost of these entitlement programs is actually growing faster than the economy. This means that Americans are wanting “their share” of everyone else’s wages almost faster than those wages can be earned.

Frederic Bastiat, in his booklet The Law, makes this point: “Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources...” “ But it is also true that man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder.” You and your children should read this short book.

When the laws are changed to allow the government to plunder its citizens, eventually everyone will strive to obtain his share of the -plunder (e.g. his share of the taxes). And this change of the law into an instrument of plunder creates a contradiction between morality and the law. This will cause a breakdown in morality in favor of the law. Especially when the law favors man’s natural inclinations toward selfishness, greed, and irresponsibility.

For example, God’s moral principles say not to steal, but to work with your own hands at that which is good in order to voluntarily give to others who have a need (Ex. 20:15; Eph. 4:28). Each person has a right to the fruit of his own labor as well as a personal responsibility before God to properly handle and dispose of the fruit of his labor. This is the essence of personal responsibility, stewardship, and the promotion of voluntary charity and justice.

In contrast, some of man’s legislated laws allow one person to receive the fruit of another person’s labor which is stolen by means of the government’s program of legalized plunder. This is done under the guise of a perverted sense of justice. Civil government’s God-ordained jurisdiction of authority primarily consists of “being a terror to evil doers.” This essentially means prohibiting, stopping, and punishing criminal behavior against its citizens. Taxes, which are allowed by law for purposes beyond this limited civil government jurisdiction, are essentially forcible seizure of another person’s property. However, according to Scripture, we are still required to pay these levied taxes.

The law then makes this plundered money available in the form of government-subsidized programs to provide goods and services to people who may or may not have worked to earn any part of that money. This is the essence of dependency as opposed to responsibility, and the promotion of so-called fairness as opposed to justice. It is the engine of statism in its many forms, such as economic fascism and socialism. Some have claimed that it is compassionate and charitable to have government to help others. True compassionate charity and help from God’s point of view must always be voluntary on the part of the individual doing the giving. Payment of taxes is, by law, non-voluntary and coerced.

Participation in a government-subsidized program (at least when there is a choice not to participate) contributes to a violation of the eighth commandment. It also creates a demand for the government to continue and even increase its plunder.

If we truly want lower taxes and less government involvement in our lives, we must do more than ask our elected officials to do something. They hear our voices, but they see our actions - give me, take care of me, meet my needs, solve my problems, build me a bigger and better safety net.

And for those who say we are just getting some of our money back, there are many problems. To name just a few:

(1) Only a very small percentage of people receiving government program benefits (such as government education) are getting only what they put in -- especially when considering their share of the cost of legitimate government services (such as the military, law enforcement, judicial and criminal justice system) from which they already benefit.

(2) Once the government receives your money from taxation, by law and from God’s point of view, it is no longer your money. That is unless you overpaid your taxes and then you get a refund.

(3) The government must collect several dollars to support the bureaucracy necessary for each dollar redistributed to an individual.

(4) The ends never justify the means. More than good motives are needed. The means as well as the ends must have God’s approval.

We must choose to not ask for the government’s help whenever we have the opportunity to make that choice. When we shoulder our personal responsibilities, rather than expecting the government to come to our rescue, we take a positive step toward lower taxes, smaller government and increased freedom.

(Permission given to duplicate unaltered & complete.)

Private and Home Educators of California
a program of
Family Protection Ministries

Family Protection Ministries
P.O. Box 730
Lincoln, CA 95648
contact@pheofca.org