The Samaritan's Dilemma and universal basic income

 In Luke chapter ten, Jesus responded to the question, who is my neighbor, with the story of the Good Samaritan. The story condemns a priest and Levite for refusing to help the wounded man while praising the Samaritan, whom Jews despised, for providing medical help and paying for him to stay at an inn while he recovered. 

The parable ends well. But the economist and Nobel Laureate James Buchanan wanted to know the rest of the story. He asked, what if the victim refused to leave the inn? What if he decided to stay at the inn forever and let the Samaritan support him? After all, the Samaritan had given the inn keeper money to pay for the victim's room and board and told the inn keeper that if that amount didn't pay all of the expenses, the Samaritan would repay him when he passed by the next time. 

Jesus said nothing about that possibility because in his day there was no need to fear people would give too much to the poor. They didn't give enough. And the leaders stole what little the poor had left. Jesus didn't exaggerate when he said the high priest had turned the temple into a den of thieves. 

Still, Christians in the early church began to face the problem of charity abuse. When Peter had the church in Acts chose deacons, it was supporting mostly widows. In 2 Thessalonians 3, Paul warned that the church should refuse to feed idle men who could work. And Paul left strict instructions for the church on how to care for widows. “But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God” (1 Timothy 5:4). Apparently, widows and lazy men had been abusing the church's generosity.

USAID violates Biblical principles of government

Some Christian organizations lament the death of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Should they? What Biblical principles might apply? 

Let's assume the agency only kept poor children from starving, as the left claims, and ignore the charges of abuse and waste brought against it by Republicans. In the last article, I wrote about how tariffs will hurt the poor. So, shouldn't I support USAID? No. 

Sell everything and give to the poor

Jesus told the rich young ruler in Mark 10 to sell everything he had and give it to the poor. In Luke 12, he encouraged his disciples to sell their things and give to the poor. In Mark 12, Jesus told his disciples that the poor widow who tossed two copper coins into the temple treasury had given more that all the rich people because she gave everything she had, appearing to commend the widow and align with the teaching that we should give everything we have to the poor. 

Trump's tariffs will hurt the poor

 

Immediately after his inauguration, President Trump said he would impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico on February 1. He has repeated that he loves the word tariffs. "To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff. And it’s my favorite word. It needs a public relations firm to help it."

Does the Bible say anything about tariffs? Not explicitly. But it has references from which we can extrapolate principles. Jacob imported wheat from Egypt during the famine in Genesis 42. Solomon imported cedar and cypress lumber and gold from Tyre for building the temple in Jerusalem in I Kings 5. He bought horses from Egypt in I Kings 22. And in I Kings 9, the wisest king ever built ships to conduct international trade, imports and exports. 

California fires show danger of government owned land

Americans are searching for a scapegoat for the most devastating fires in California history. Republicans blame Democrat politicians and bureaucrats and DEI. Democrats finger climate change. But the real problem is government owned land. Government owned land is the most polluted, burned and abused land in the country. 

Weyerhaeuser and other corporations that grow trees for paper and lumber own tens of thousands of acres across the U.S. without headlining the news because of fires ravaging their forests. The Nature Conservancy, an environmental group, privately owns over 100,000 acres in a dozen preserves that rarely have major fires. Almost all the horrific fires in the West take place in national forests and state parks. 

Murder of CEO reveals idolatry and covetousness in the US

The recent murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City reveals a dark side to culture in the US. Many people are cheering, according to USA Today:

"The Midtown Manhattan killing tapped a groundswell of public anger over an industry the public often only knows through impersonal delays and denials to needed health care, said Wendell Potter, a former CIGNA executive who became a whistleblower against the health insurance industry.

"'I've been hearing for years now from people who have been so frustrated because of denials or delays of care, and this was an opportunity for people to vent and to take out their anger against someone who just became known to them all of a sudden,' Potter said."

Such threats against health insurance company executives are common in the US according to some reports. Why isn't there similar anger against bureaucrats in socialists countries where waiting periods for treatment and denials are far greater?

If medical care in the US is so awful, why do people from other countries fly here for treatment? Google for "medical tourism." Millions of Canadians and Europeans travel to the US for medical care their nation health insurance plans refuse to pay. No Americans go to Canada or Europe for medical care. 

Canadians are very happy with their socialist system of healthcare. The closest thing Brits have to a religion is its National Health Service. Yes, it has problems. No one suggests changing it and the only proposed solutions that people will approve is more tax infusions to keep it alive. With longer waiting periods and higher denial rates, why aren't Canadians and Brits murdering the bureaucrats who run their systems?

Was the Jerusalem Church in Acts Socialist?

 

Did the first church in Jerusalem practice socialism? Acts 2:44, 45 reads, "Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need." After reading that, a good friend said, "That sounds like socialism to me!" Was it? 

That's a difficult question to answer thanks to socialists who continually redefine words so that they win any argument by definition. Today, any concern for the poor is called socialist. By that definition, the first Jerusalem church was socialist. But must we accept the socialist definition? What are socialism and capitalism really? Who has the authority to define them?

The honest thing to do is to go back to the people who launched those systems. I do that here for capitalism. I haven't done that for socialism, so let me give a brief history of it. The first depiction of socialism appeared in Plato's Republic, which was inspired by Sparta. Plato required that the state own all property and the children. The state employed nannies who raised all children so that parents couldn't know who there children were and give them advantages over others. A philosopher would be the absolute monarch.