My high school civics teacher Mr. Holland got into a heap of trouble for asking this question, but it led me to think long and hard about what I believed as a Christian and as an American. Some of us assume that capitalism is the only economic system the Almighty likes, while other associate socialism with sanctity. One reader of this newsletter asked recently if the MICAH anti-hunger campaign (Mobilized Interfaith Coalition Against Hunger) was “pushing for bigger government and higher taxes?”

Jesus, like the founders of so many other faiths, taught that nations will be judged on the basis of how we treat those who are most vulnerable, but he did not lay out a particular approach that good people had to take to show compassion for the least of his brothers and sisters. Most conservatives favor individual acts of charity; most liberals believe that government should promote greater social equality. Personally, I favor limited government in many ways - and want government to stop promoting inequality. Does this make me conservative or radical? Probably a bit of both.

One of Goodhue's Laws states that “Every solution creates a new problem,” and as someone observed at one of our personal finance seminars, I think Rich Murphy, “Nearly every complex problem has a very simple solution—unfortunately, it is usually dead wrong.” The doctrine of sin, which holds both that each of us is intended to be an original blessing to this world but also that the world is screwed up, tends to support a notion the economist Kenneth Boulding called his Law of Unintended Consequences: government actions generally hurt the people they claim to help. Government is supposed to promote justice, for example, but is seldom just itself. Government could lift the poor out of poverty but generally redistributes wealth from the working poor, who pay the highest rate of taxes, to the wealthy who benefit the most from subsidies, government contracts, and regulations that serve special interests. Those who claim to believe in limited government often create kleptocracies and bloated deficits.

As Paul Tonna, the former Presiding Officer of the Suffolk Legislature, told MICAH leaders at our April 28 conference at Adelphi University, it doesn’t have to be this way. Public service can be an arena in which we act on our most cherished beliefs and discover how to live more faithfully, but this only happens when we demand that public servants actually serve the public good.

Reasonable people may differ as to what economic system best achieves the common good. Holy Writ is pretty much silent on this matter. Personally, I believe that free markets and private enterprise are the most efficient way to produce goods and services, but not so good at distributing them fairly, particularly when we do not compete on a level playing field. The Rev. William Sloan Coffin Jr. observed that we want to believe that a society built on ruthless competition is benign to losers. What’s worse, the game is rigged from the start.

Some of us benefited from prenatal care, good nutrition, and well-funded schools, but others grew up with fetal alcohol syndrome or inadequate health care or lousy schools or all of the above. Those who live in Roosevelt or Hempstead pay higher property taxes than neighboring communities, but their kids’ schools receive less funding. I received “legacy” preference when I applied to Stanford because my older sister was already a senior there (thanks, Carol!) and this undoubtedly has opened many doors ever since. “Legacies” admitted to the Ivy League have significant lower high school grades, in fact, than those who receive Affirmative Action preference. Some of us were born with two-strikes against us; others were born on third base and thought we hit a triple.

Politicians often act as if they are bestowing largess on the poor, but local, state, and federal government generally perpetuates inequality. Federal farm subsidies tend to go to huge agribusiness, for example, not family farms. Subsidized grain-to-ethanol conversion drives up the price of food for poor consumers while using more petroleum than it saves. Renters cannot deduct the property taxes they pay in their rent bill each month but homeowners can. Both state and federal government have reduced taxes paid by the rich in recent years and increased the burden that falls on the poor. Clergy pay double the Social Security tax nearly everyone else pays but do not collect greater benefits. Social Security is a great system in many ways, but it systematically transfers money from black Americans to white Americans, simply because white folks live longer. Who gets government contracts? Who really benefits from most regulation? Not the working poor.

In many ways, the libertarians are right: we have too much government on Long Island. When I was a young pastor in Hawaii, we had essentially a single school district for the entire state. This fostered both equality and efficiency: everyone was taxed at the same rate regardless of where they lived, schools in poor neighborhoods received as much funding as those in well-off communities, and teachers could transfer from one school to another without losing salary. On Long Island, by contrast, we have more than 1,100 local taxing (and spending) districts, causing both inefficiency and inequality: those who pay the highest tax rates send their kids to schools that receive the least tax revenue. And we end up with garbage districts that do not collect garbage themselves, sewer districts that do not own a sewage plant, and school districts that try to keep students out of their communities so that someone else will pay to educate them. No wonder our taxes are so high.

Where we need government intervention into the economy, it is largely to correct what government at some other level has loused things up. We need local, state, and federal government to promote affordable housing precisely because government has so often made housing unaffordable. We need government to encourage “smart growth” with walkable neighborhoods and mass transit because it has inadvertently promoted stupid growth. No doubt thinking they were doing what voters wanted, our elected leaders have made it easier to build McMansions scattered across the landscape than reasonably-sized homes close to stores, the train station, and the library. Why should a town on the North Fork make it difficult for a farmer to build decent housing for the families of his long-time employees? Why create barriers in Manhasset if a mother wants to live with her grown children? New York State would not need to pass legislation that provides incentives for workforce housing and requires “inclusionary zoning” if local government had not abused its powers so often.

Government’s role, I believe is to level the playing field and salve the wounds of those already injured by inequality. In answer to Mr. Holland’s question, it is theoretically possible for this to happen under democratic capitalism, decentralized socialism, or many other economic systems. What is important is that we, the people, demand that our elected representatives foster equality of opportunity.

Paul Tonna proposed at Adelphi that we put a referendum on the ballot, one that could go a long way toward creating a more just, compassionate Long Island: let’s require local government to ensure than no child goes hungry. When we guarantee this sort of equality, we will go a long way toward becoming the beloved community that Jesus and the prophets envisioned.

Shalom/Salaam/Shanti/Pax,
Tom

A WORD OR TWO OF THANKS
Sara C. Weiss, Director of Development