Sunday, January 5, 2014

Socialism and American Church Taxation

The perception of socialism in America is amusing as its an extremely myopic view of things.  Socialism in medicine is terrible and likely will kill us all ... unless it's the Veterans Administration which is entirely socialized medicine as then it's ok, support the troops, rah, rah.  The Affordable Care Act is not socialized medicine or anything close to it but Fox News has fun calling it that.  The view goes all over the place with relatively little regard for logic.

One place the view of socialism never goes is the church but it operates at the pleasure of the government and the people due to its tax exemption which thus gives support to the church from the entire community.  The society ends up paying the shortfall by paying the taxes that otherwise would have been paid by the church.  You could drop this straight into the Socialist Handbook without changing a word or adding chocolate.

Thus far I have yet to hear anything from Fox News regarding demands for taxation of the church.  Surely if socialism is a bad thing in medicine then it is also a bad thing in this context and yet Fox News says nothing.  If their principles are to have any value they have to be consistent but they're not.

Even though we here on the real left (as opposed to Democrats who are the jellyfish in the middle) are strongly supportive of socialism, we see no need to continue providing tax relief for the church.  They make bank, have very little overhead, and sending a taste to Uncle Sugar wouldn't do them a bit of harm.  After all most churches are paid off with the original franchise that buys the church and the land.  After that you only need to pay for some monks and some nuns plus keep the electricity paid up.  You've got a lifetime gold mine so it's obvious why they need tax relief.

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