Rachel Thieves

For decades now, the British state has funded itself with borrowed money. The typical British voter wants the government to spend more cash but collect fewer taxes, a dichotomy uneasily bridged. Although I am sorry that His Majesty’s current government has made certain fiscal decisions which may punish the most productive people and reward the idlest (so business as usual), there will be the inevitable winners and losers. The problem with squeezing the rich and taxing mansions is that the wealthy have a peculiar habit of upping sticks and clearing off, leaving the less wealthy to pick up the tab. And when we want the rich to be taxed, we invariably mean people richer than us.

When I was a mid-ranking teacher a few years ago, earning a little shy of fifty thousand per annum, the Chancellor’s budget might have troubled me. Earning somewhat less than that now (but a perfectly adequate sum before anyone develops extravagant ideas ahead of the next members’ meeting), it barely bothers me. The Daily Telegraph’s online calculator confirms that the change to my fortunes because of the Chancellor’s machinations are zero pounds. If the economy dives as a result, however, then I shall have pieces to pick up, too.

The 2008 Financial Crash demonstrated to me that economists are not scientists or even mathematicians endowed with imagination, but something more akin to Early Modern warlocks chanting around a cauldron while adding eye of newt and toe of frog, intoning and swaying, in the hope that they might concoct some spell called ‘prosperity’- and failing. I do not suppose that elected politicians are any more competent in this regard. In my own, simplistic mind, the state spending less and taxing less is the route to some economic stability if not utopia, but the first of these would ensure I never win public office, and those who have got round to trying it out apparently failed. 'Thatcherism', for example, means extravagant riches to some, and long-term unemployment to others.

Theologians sometimes talk about the ‘economy of God’. This refers to God’s aims and methods of saving people from the corrupted world we inhabit by means of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Heaven’s ‘economy’ is significantly superior to Britain’s, for it is indebted to none and is administered in a place in which even precious gold is mere paving material for the streets. Furthermore, its citizens are given all things freely, for the King has paid their due taxes and outstanding debts, and generously shares His vast sovereign wealth with all who submit to Him. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Second Lord of the Treasury, gives to some and takes from others, but Jesus the Christ gives freely to all who would receive, and then keeps on giving.

He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

-Apostle Paul, Romans 8:32

"The Chancellor of the Exchequer is a man whose duties make him more or less of a taxing machine. He is entrusted with a certain amount of misery which it is his duty to distribute as fairly as he can." 

-Robert Lowe, Chancellor of the Exchequer, to the House of Commons, 11th April 1870