Another problem with administering faith based welfare programs is that many needy people do not ascribe to any particular denomination or congregation and requiring them to find their local parish in order to receive financial help is a logistical nightmare. Not impossible but the search costs for individuals increase greatly as decentralization of the system increases. Search costs cut into earning power.

The biggest problem of all though is that church welfare systems (ours included) don’t offer the kinds of welfare services that needy people so often need. Take my family for example. I’m a student who has a reasonable stipend, and my wife works 30 hours a week so that she can have health insurance and earn enough to buy the necessities. Our children though are uninsured. We can’t afford the insurance offered by either of our employers and private insurance is even worse. We can either keep them uninsured and just take them to the county hospital ER when they’re really sick or we can turn to the state’s insurance program for uninsured children. Because we love our children and want them to be healthy, we choose the latter.

If the church offered a children’s health plan, we’d certainly jump on board, but they do not. I’m not sure about this, but I think that a majority of state welfare costs go to health care programs. This is where a lot our tax dollars are spent – helping needy children and elderly people get the medical care they need.

I suppose the Christian approach to tax policy should start with “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s.” This suggests keeping the Judeo-Christian ethic and tax-oriented social policy analysis separate. However, to the extent one’s ethics inform one’s policy preferences, progressive taxation seems like the right emphasis.

Closer to home, I would note that tithing is regressive, at least in the US where itemizers can deduct charitable contributions. And of course the Mormon superrich pay a much lower percentage of their overall wealth increase if they don’t self-assess on capital gains (whether realized or unrealized). For example, how many California LDS homeowners pay tithing on the dizzying appreciation of their personal residence, or 10% of their eventual gain on sale? I’m guessing not too many.

Thus in actual practice, Mormon tithing policy is something like “the more you make, the less you pay as a percentage of your income.” It’s only lower income non-itemizers who pay a full 10%, and the richer you get the lower the percentage goes. I can’t believe this is unknown to those in the COB (they get excellent finanical advice), and since nothing is done or said to address this inequity, the logical conclusion is they approve of regressive incidence. No squeezing through the eye of the needle stuff here–you can drive a fully-equipped Hummer through our front door.

Dave makes some nice points about the regressive nature of tithing. Having just sold a home, I assumed that we were supposed to pay tithing on the increase. And we did. Perhaps I should move to California and request a refund? ;-)

I personally do not think it is. Our society should strive to protect those who have no means to acquire basic needs (like proper health care) for themselves. That said, can a regressive tax system properly fund state health care systems for the needy? I think the answer is no. Most states that attempt to do this get a lot of funding from the federal government. Without that aid, the state’s are wholly unprepared to administer an adequate health services program. States with excessive tax breaks for the wealthy are essentially free-riding on the progressive tax structure at the federal level.

My main point is that regressive tax structures do not provide adequate resources for the most basic of all welfare services. If this is true, by association, regressive tax structures are uncharitable.

Because of the progressive tax structure in the US, the more a person makes, the greater the difference between what he or she is paid and what he or she actually receives. If a person in New York (where I live) has an income of $200,000 per year (I don’t know if that’s what you mean by “superrich”), they’d be lucky to bring home half that, or $100,000. The (largely) accepted practice of paying tithing on one’s gross income would mean that this person pays $20,000, or %20 of real income. It would take a great number of itemized deductions and untithed capital gains to bring the effective rate of tithing down to %10 or below.

If your point is that wealthy people are more likely to be dishonest in their tithe-paying, that’s beyond the scope of pure economics (which is what I know), but I’m skeptical of that, too. From the wealthy members of the church that I know personally, my personal judgment of their integrity is that it is at least comparable to that of the poorer members. Are there wealthy people who are dishonest in their tithing? Sure. But are there poorer people who do the same thing? You better believe it (I’m quite certain that there are many people in my ward in the Bronx who pay less than a full tithe).

As for the question of welfare services and health care, you seem to assume that if the government exits this activity, a void will be created and will persist. My belief is that charitable institutions (not just our Church, but many churches and other charities) would fill the void. Moreover, I think they might do a better job of it than the government traditionally has done. Not perfect, but better.

Furthermore, I think that most of the incentive problems that plague state run welfare systems also plague Church welfare. The problem, as I see it, is that we have an ex post moral duty to respond to poverty with charity, but this ex post response creates all sorts of moral hazards that can have really bad ex ante incentive effects. As near as I can tell, this is an inescapable problem. For example, I have worked with a family on Church welfare where the parent used the supplemental income provided by the church to (sort of) pay for living expenses for her and her children, and then took her own income to increase purchases of drugs. The result was the church charity did nothing to raise the standard of living of the family and instead acted as a subsidy for drug use. This is precisely the sort of dysfunction that led to “The End of Welfare as We Know It.” I am not saying that it is the kind of dysfunction that justifies indifference. I am just saying that moral hazard remains, regardless of who provides the service.

Keep in mind, I’m not arguing for universalized health care; my argument only applies to health care for the needy.

Two quick points. One, I hate to think about tithing in terms of taxation, because of course it IS regressive: 10% is proportionately a much more painful sacrifice for someone trying to pay a food bill on $25,000 a year than for someone who makes $100k+ a year and is thinking that they ought to get a bigger boat. Far better to treat it as a covenant, essentially unrelated to the “works” of the church. Two, Hamill’s article actually had great impact on a recent debate in the state of Alabama, during which a conservative Republican governor used Christian arguments much like hers to promote a reform in the state’s tax code. It was a brave and noble effort, and went down in flames. The American Prospect had a good article the role of Hamill’s argument in the debate here (http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/08/wilkinson-f-08-28.html); I blogged a bit on the referendum and the aftermath here (http://philosophenweg.blogspot.com/2003_09_01_philosophenweg_archive.html#106252301777459900) and here (http://philosophenweg.blogspot.com/2003_09_01_philosophenweg_archive.html#106321538461052867). The comments by Gregg Easterbrook whom I link to are, I think, particularly interesting.

We discussed passages from the Pentatuach discussing the finacing of the construction of the tabranacle. Each person was required to donate a fixed sum. Of course, this is even MORE regressive than tithing. The professor pointed out that the regressivity of this method had troubled the rabbi’s and they had saved the text by arguing that equal contributions meant that all Israel could claim equal ownership in the project. The purpose of the regressive, poll-tax approach was thus to prevent the rich from claiming a greater interest in the Tabranacle.

When I say that tithing is not regressive, I simply mean that as income increases, I’m not sure that percentage of income paid as tithing decreases. It may or may not be “proportionately a much more painful sacrifice for someone trying to pay a food bill on $25,000 a year than for someone who makes $100k+ a year and is thinking that they ought to get a bigger boat” (depending an a host of other variables). But that’s a different issue. If someone could somehow find a way to give everyone an equally burdensome rate, I’m certain they would win the Nobel Prize.

When economists talk about progressive/regressive/flat tax (or tithing) rates, they are only referring to the rates. A sales tax on food, for example, is regressive because rich and poor people spend similar absolute amounts of money on food, and as such poor people are taxed on a greater proportion of their income.

It’s conceivable that Christianity requires people earning X dollars per year to donate Y percent of their income to the poor. It’s inconceivable that Christianity urges us to use the threat of force against those who fail to do so. The state puts people who don’t pay their assigned taxes in jail.

And her response to Christ in Matthew 25 is to say, “Don’t blame me, I voted for policies that would have forced the rich to pay for bureaucratic programs that would have fed you”!?

Hamill’s socialist argument masquerading in Christian language is the same claptrap that J. Reuben Clark and Heber Grant warned us about.

No moral imperative within Christianity justifies using force to get others to give to the poor. If Hammill were simultaneously advocating a voluntary tax system, her idea would have merit.

But she’s not, and it doesn’t.