God and Country
by PHIL JONES
Among the mechanisms God proposed for ancient Israel, to lead them in an upward spiral of increasing well-being (called “shalom”), are two ideas the United States has never tried. Perhaps the time has come. One is the Sabbatical year, and the other is the Year of Jubilee.
The Sabbatical year comes once every seven years. In the Sabbatical year, all personal debts are cancelled. It is forbidden to charge interest on personal loans. This discourages consumer debt, by curbing the incentive to make loans. Our country is buried under a mountain of public and private debt, because of an easy-credit consumer society built after the Great Depression, in the name of prosperity. If we instituted the Sabbatical year, private indebtedness would be drastically reduced, very quickly.
The Year of Jubilee comes every 50 years. In the Year of Jubilee, each person was restored to his ancestral home. Thus, no matter how badly you and your family fared, you would be given a fresh start every 50 years. And no matter how well you and your family fared, every 50 years you would have to give up properties you had acquired, and return to your own starting point. Every 50 years, everybody would be set equal to each other, not just in theory, but in economic fact. The poor would always have hope. The rich would always have humility. There would still be incentive to prosper, but it would not be the cut-throat free-for-all it is today. Greed would be curbed. Power would be based on leadership, and not on mere wealth.
In our society, we have no ancestral home to go back to. So in America, a Year of Jubilee would mean calculating the average household income, levying a one-time 100% tax on all income in excess of that amount, with a one-time rebate of all those funds to those making less than the average. For that one year, everybody makes the same amount of money. And since the Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, has declared corporations to be individuals, they would be included in the Year of Jubilee. Real property would not be redistributed, but the sharp drop in income for some and the sharp rise for others would mean that the wealthy would have to sell some of their assets, which would be bought by the less wealthy, effecting redistribution of real property as well.
OK, so Wall Street had a field day at our expense. We are impoverished and scrambling for mere survival, while the people who did this are richer than ever. Wouldn’t a Year of Jubilee go good, right about now?
Of course, this idea will never fly here in America. Even ancient Israel stopped observing the Year of Jubilee after a few centuries. The rich and powerful hate the idea, because it requires them to sacrifice for the greater good. They would marshall a public relations campaign to denounce such an idea as Communism, class warfare, theft, any shameless label they can think up. And their millions of dupes and ditto heads would believe them. But the Year of Jubilee is none of those things. It is not class warfare, but unification, through peaceful periodic class leveling. It is not theft, but sharing. It does not drive us apart, but reminds us in a tangible way that we are all in this together. Communism was officially atheistic, whereas the Year of Jubilee is the expressed will of God.
Not that that matters. There was one who walked this earth once, who was completely obedient to God, and was, to all intents and purposes, God in human form. The rich and powerful found his truth and goodness so threatening, they killed him.
