The Wilsons are two of the nicest, most generous, most caring people I’ve ever met—under the right circumstances. Both had difficult—bordering on traumatic—childhoods. Yet, through a lot of hard work—and brilliance in learning about and investing in the stock market—they’ve become multi-millionaires.
Despite their financial wealth, they live a lifestyle most would consider modest. Their middle-class home in a middle-class neighborhood has no swimming pool or private gymnasium. Their garage houses two relatively new—but not ostentatious—cars. They don’t host lavish parties for wealthy friends. They’re the same quiet, unassuming couple they were when they had to take a Greyhound bus to their honeymoon destination because they were too poor to buy a car.
Family Uber Alles
They could spend more extravagantly on themselves, but—true to their long history—they’ve been saving most of their fortune to pass along to their children and grandchildren. And that’s why they detest President Biden. He is, they claim, trying to take away much of the money they worked so hard to earn and that they want to leave to their family members. Biden wants to give their hard-earned money to people who just want handouts, they believe.
They voted for Donald Trump, twice. And if Trump gains the Republican nomination in 2024, I’m sure they’ll vote for him again, even if he’s behind bars, convicted of multiple crimes. Trump has their vote not because they believe he is—as so many white evangelicals do—God’s chosen instrument to rid the nation of godless liberals. He has their vote because he is not Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden…because he is not a Democrat. Trump has their vote because his policies favor the wealthy—which they are now—over those struggling to pay their monthly bills.
If any of those struggling to pay those monthly bills were their family members, the Wilsons would quickly and happily share with them and go out of their way to help them climb out of their poverty. In such a situation, the Wilson's view would be that life has dealt that down-on-his-luck nephew or grandchild an unfair hand. So, sure, they’ll help. I suspect the Wilsons would unhesitatingly even give their lives for any of their family members. For them, family is paramount.
Not Our Problem
And there’s the issue. The more the government takes from them to help the poor who are not their family members, the less the Wilsons have remaining to pass on to their progeny. That nonfamily member pushing a pilfered shopping cart holding his entire life’s possessions, or the woman shivering under the overpass, trying to survive another night, is as easy to ignore as a cardboard cutout. The Wilsons can’t personally bail every poor person out of poverty, so they’ve chosen to focus only on their family members. Let the family members of those other struggling folks help them.
But, of course, not every person in poverty has a wealthy relative who can or will help him or her. So, without government assistance—and as we ignore their existence—many of those cardboard cutouts wash away in the torrents of misfortune or blow away in the winds of adversity. And we never hear about them. But we should hear about them. We should care.
The Least of These
Ironically, this generous couple—and millions of Americans like them—are faithful church-going Christians. But like most of those millions of church-going Christians, the Wilsons rarely read their Bibles. And when they do read them, rather than doing so with open minds, they tend to read them with preconceived notions that guide their takeaways. “The poor you will always have with you” becomes an excuse to ignore those in need rather than—when read in context—a call to pay attention to Jesus before His imminent death.
These filtered Bible-reading habits make it easy to ignore the Bible’s scores of calls to be aware of and tend to the poor and needy. “But,” some folks such as the Wilsons argue, “the Bible tells us to give to the poor, not to give to the government so it can give to the poor.”
Perhaps the Bible does not specifically call for citizens to support government-based welfare programs, but it does repeatedly call for its followers to give to the poor, as mentioned above, and it also tells its followers to submit to the government, including paying taxes (see Matthew 22:17-29; Romans 13:5-7; 1 Peter 2:13-16). Add those two sets of commands together and you have a tax system aimed at helping the poor.
How Much is Enough?
How much wealthier citizens should contribute to the poor through taxes is a point worth considering. According to a report cited in Oxfam America, America’s richest do not pay their fair share in taxes: “According to a 2021 White House study, the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the US paid an average federal individual tax rate of just 8.2 percent. For comparison, the average American taxpayer in the same year paid 13 percent.”
But that statistic refers to the nation’s wealthiest. What about mere millionaires, like the Wilsons? If their annual income exceeds $400,000 then, yes, their tax rate will rise from 37 percent under current law to the pre-Tax Cuts and Jobs Act level of 39.6 percent. Sure, more than one-third seems like a tough tax burden. But it really is relative. Let’s consider how this tax arrangement plays out for moderately wealthy folks like the Wilsons.
For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that the Wilson’s annual income is $500,000. And also for the sake of simplicity, let’s round off that 39.6 percent tax rate to 40 percent. That would mean that $200,000 of the Wilson’s half-million income would go to taxes, leaving them with $300,000 income for the year.
The average after-tax household income in America in 2021 was $65,345. That means that if the Wilson’s annual income is $500,000, then, even after factoring in for taxes, they are left with more than four and a half times more income than the average household. Since most folks think in terms of monthly payments, let’s divide each of those numbers by 12. The average household has $5,445 to cover its monthly bills, while the Wilsons would have $25,000 to cover those bills. If $25,000 per month is not enough, why isn’t it?
It’s also especially important to remember that poverty programs aren’t usually aimed at average Americans with a $65,000 annual income; they’re aimed at the truly poor, at those whose income is so low that it offsets the abundant income of the rich and the mega-wealthy in establishing the national averages noted here.
In 2021, 37.9 percent of Americans had an annual income level below the official poverty line of $27,479. That means that the Wilsons had an annual income 18 times more than that of the 38 percent of Americans who live in poverty. Even their after-tax income was 11 times greater than the gross income of those below the poverty line. And it still isn’t enough.
Twenty-five thousand dollars per month isn’t enough because it’s human nature to always want more. To that, I’d remind the nation’s church-going Wilsons of these words from King Solomon: “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless.” - Ecclesiastes 5:10.
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