While trickle-down tax policies may be of dubious merit even on purely economic grounds, they are totally bankrupt spiritually. Trickle-down economics exalts human gods who are called “makers” and (job) “creators,” and offers them tax cuts the way ancient societies offered sacrifices and gifts to their gods, believing those gods would bring them prosperity.
Above all this human foolishness is the eternal Creator God, the true source of all prosperity, who says: “Give your food to the hungry and care for the homeless.” If you do, “You will be like a garden that has plenty of water or like a stream that never runs dry. You will rebuild those houses left in ruins for years; you will be known as a builder and repairer of city walls and streets.” Isaiah 58:10, 11b-12. How’s that for an infrastructure plan?
God’s wisdom is oriented toward the poor and upends the human order, making those who are last first and those who are first last. Matthew 20:16. The trickle-down wisdom of the human “maker”-gods is oriented toward the rich (themselves) and keeps the human order of things: those who are first benefit first and most; those who are last benefit last, if at all.
The Bible says God “has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away with empty hands.” Luke 1:53. The GOP tax plan, and trickle-down economics in general, would place America on an exactly opposite path. Nevertheless, I fully expect someone would piously say, “God bless America.”
I pray that America will turn away from the false wisdom of trickle-down economics, and align itself with God’s wisdom, so that God actually can bless us.
Dean Werner
Edmonds
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