Reddit reviews Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD

Christianity reconciling itself with great wealth predates Capitalism by 1400 years. Between 350 and 550 AD Christianity went from being a critic of wealth to falling all over itself in it's rapacious quest for gold.

Peter Brown, who's pretty much the greatest scholar of late antiquity to have ever lived, wrote a magesterial work on the subject:

https://www.amazon.com/Through-Eye-Needle-Christianity-350-550/dp/0691161771

> You guys rule

: D

> hatred for increased taxes.

Well, I for one care considerably less about net revenue than how that revenue is extracted. I'm fine -- well, less not fine than I would be otherwise -- if the government extracts another $200 billion in revenue so long as it transitions the whole tax system to a consumption base, or raises it via a carbon tax.

> free improvements to quality of life

> I understand in a large society, it's not logical to want to hoard every penny for myself then demand the government give me everything I want for free.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. Pretty much the only departments of government I would countenance expanding right now would be defense and state (possibly education or transportation, depending on how federalist we are). Nothing is really "free," such that, even if you're not directly paying the taxes to finance it, the incentive effects -- particularly if we're talking higher corporate taxes -- of somebody else paying those taxes is going to effect you in the form of lower wages or higher prices. It's a careful calculus, therefore, when we must way the value of social programs.

Personally I'm not really in the business of asking the government to give me, or anyone else, free stuff. I would of course support certain improvements to the welfare system, some of them rather expensive: I'd quite like to see the Earned Income Tax Credit expanded, the Child Tax Credit made fully refundable, TANF turned into a full-blown unemployment insurance program, and comprehensive jobs-training programs established, but all this is a drop in the bucket compared to the real drag on federal deficits. The real problem is entitlements: without reform, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are set to incur $210 trillion in unfunded liabilities over the next seventy-five years.

If we can privatize Social Security, and look at alternative methods of healthcare delivery, we can achieve many of the same welfare goals as current programs with a great deal less long-run expenditure. A Universal Catastrophic coverage program or universal premium support, for instance, would drastically lower long-run costs, with just about the same budget impact today as current practices. Ultimately when it comes to healthcare, the greatest issue is in delivery policy, and how regulations effect pricing.

My real problem is marginal phaseout rates that can create welfare cliffs that prevent people from working. I'm more than willing to trade higher social assistance spending for entitlements privatization, and higher net tax revenues for reduced penalties on investment and lower long-run outlays.That most of my policy prescriptions tend to involve cuts in taxation, spending, and deficits is a preference, but not a hard rule.

(But don't worry, my real anti-government side comes out when we start talking housing and trade regulations).

> Christianity

I'm thoroughly agnostic, so I don't have to worry about that. I do, however, view Christianity as a wonderful force for social cohesion, such that government should incorporate those portions of Christian moral teaching which foster civil society, but not involve itself in imposing religious doctrines on its people. We do, after all, have a First Amendment, and as other posters have pointed out, it's not exactly charity if someone's forcing you to do it.

On a completely unrelated note, Peter Brown's Through the Eye of the Needle is absolutely fantastic if you're interested in the early development of Christian doctrine on wealth (or Late Roman stuff generally).