On being one ' s brother's keeper and tax cuts

THE Government has recently published figures on who has gained most under the tax cuts since 1979. You will remember That in both the 1979 and 1983 election the Tories gave clear commitments to reduce the burden of taxation, and particularly for those on top incomes.
Nobody could accuse them of not keeping their word. Since 1979 the richest 200,000 taxpayers have had their collective income tax bill reduced by £1.7 billion. This averages out in the region of £7,770 per taxpayer. The richest five per cent of the population, numbering little over one million people, has gained tax reductions totalling £2.9 billion or £2,760 per tax unit.
The poorest taxpayers in our community number 9.8 million people. Since 1979 their collective tax burden has been reduced by £1.3 billion or something like £120 per taxpayer.
Crucial issues — both moral and economic — stem from this information. Let's consider the economic arguments first.
In both general elections, but particularly the one in 1979, the Conservatives set out very clearly what they intended to do. In what I say, therefore, I am not in any way accusing them of being dishonest. Nothing could be further from the truth. A crucial part of their economic strategy centred on the issue of creating greater incentives. Then, though less so now, all the emphasis was on creating incentives for those at the top of the pile. The belief was that only if the most gifted and highest paid (it was assumed they go together) could be motivated sufficiently was there any chance of raising substantially Britain's economic performance. Only after the new wealth had been created, so it was argued, could the nation afford to increase its welfare provision.
These figures on who got what from £8.1 billion tax cuts since 1979 show that the Government has more than carried out its election pledge on this issue. Britain has been made a much more unequal society in an effort to build what is called an "incentives society". The only trouble with this strategy is that it doesn't seem to have worked.
The Government naturally makes great play on the growth in the British economy since 1981. That's a fair point. But the Conservatives took power in 1979. If the increase in the national income is measured over the whole period of their stewardship the record doesn't look that impressive.
More important than the economic considerations are the moral issues raised by this strategy. It was R H Rawney who commented that when a liner sinks, and the people take to the life-rafts, there is no lime for first and second class passengers. In other words, our moral principles are more, rather than less important in times of economic crisis.
The difficulty of using the New Testament as a guide to today's action is that the stories there are told in a society which is so superficially different from our own. It is therefore incumbent on us not to pick the odd piece of text which may support our latest prejudice, but try and look at the general drift of the arguments being developed there. Also we have to remember that most of the Gospel stories are inviting us to become a certain sort of character. They do not give us a check list of what to do and what not to do.
The parable of the talents has to be considered along with all the other aspects of Jesus's teaching. The weight of this teaching is on our need to divest ourselves of that income which is surplus to our immediate needs. The teaching on wealth is even stricter than that on income.
We are told of the dangers of wealth and how our obsession over possessions prevents us from entering the Kingdom. Indeed, this teaching so upsets us that all too many Bible commentaries try and water it down and make it more palatable to modern man.
There is, therefore a strong Biblical tradition opposing the belief that morality can only come into its own when we have all got healthy bank balances. How you run an economy which emphasises the central teaching of the New Testament, rather than negates it, is something which is yet to be realised.
An emphasis on fellowship and on sharing, and on being one's brother's keeper, stands in stark contrast to the importance attached over the last two centuries to self-assertiveness and acquisitiveness.