As I am reading the Bible to one of my children, I read the following passage from the Book of Genesis, passages 47:23-47:26-
Then Joseph said to the people, 'See, I have bought you and your land for Pharaoh. Here is grain. Go and sow the land. And when you harvest it, a fifth of everything you get belongs to Pharaoh. Keep four parts for yourselves to be used for next year's seed, and as food for yourselves and for your households and little ones.
'You have saved our lives' they said. 'We will gladly be serfs of the Pharaoh.'
So Joseph made it a law throughout the land of Egypt- and it is still the law- that Pharaoh should have as his tax twenty percent of all the crops except those produced on the land owned by the temples.
I may be wrong in my interpretation of this, and I am not a trained Biblical scholar, but it seems to me that the deal was that the government would feed them in exchange for a 20% tax and slavery. A couple things come to mind- really, all questions that I leave unanswered here.
First, 20% taxes are very low compared to what we pay now days. Is 20% taxes, complete welfare, and slavery comparable at all to 40% taxes, no welfare, but no slavery? What is going to happen when we do have a total welfare state- how far behind is slavery after that? Wait, is the Pharaoh the good guy or the bad guy for centrally planning the economy, lording over us, and taxing us so?
Lastly, is this the vision that our Founding Fathers had for our nation? Is this the vision that our grandparents had? Our great-grandparents? Is it me, or has something gone wrong, and instead of low taxes and freedom, we now live in a state of high taxes and increasing tyranny? Is this really the best way to do things?
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar