I doubt we spend 20% on the poor. But we do have a lot more complicated society than the farm economies of old.
Think of the gleanings the Bible says should be left in the fields for the poor.
When government taxes too much those gleanings go to it and the poor suffer.
For their own good?
Government will take better care of them with the gleanings- despite what’s in scripture?
No, taxes don’t help the poor in any way.
I agree. I'm confident it's well above 30% of our tax dollars.
Using the 2010 budget (link), we see
~16% for unemployment
~13% for medicare
~8% for Medicaid
~2% on Health and Human Services
~1% for Housing and Urban Development... there's 40% right there... and if you think that less than 75% of those budgets go to the poor, you're sadly mistaken.
(I left out the ~19% for Social Security, although we all know that this fund is going to weed out the non-poor in the near future.)
I find it strange that you reject scripture’s recommendation so cavalierly after specifically requesting it.
Perhaps the National Center for Policy Analysis will provide you with a chance to be less profane in support of injuring the economy ‘for the good of the poor!’
“... Using data for the 46-year period from 1950 through 1995, the model finds:
•The tax rate that would have maximized economic growth for the United States is 21 percent of gross domestic product (GDP);
•On the average, the growth-maximizing tax rate is about 20 percent of GDP among developed countries...”
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st215
Increasing taxes above about 20% to ‘help the poor’ creates more poor that need help!
Now, the Bible doesn’t say that is why 20% is recommended, an atheist would claim ‘coincidence’- since, as you said, something written so long ago couldn’t possibly have relevance to our ‘more complicated society than the farm economies of old.’
More data from the paper :
“Prior to the New Deal, taxes were low in the United States. In 1902 federal, state and local taxes were about 6.5 percent of gross national product (GNP).2 By 1929 taxes had climbed to 10.9 percent of GNP. This number rose steadily up to World War II and then sharply thereafter. In 1950 the total tax burden was about 24.1 percent of GNP; a decade later, it was 27.2 percent. Today [1998] taxes take about 31.3 percent of national economic output. “
I cannot fnd a more recent comparison of US taxation to GNP, only to GDP.
