Who Does Caesar’s Money Belong To?

This article ties off the loose ends of the last two articles about taxes. In A Penny Saved… I looked at the tax implications of acquisitional consumerism versus apparent poverty, and noted that the more money we use, the more it costs us to use it. There are costs associated with acquiring the money through work or chance, spending the money, and even possessing the thing purchased. These costs show up in two predominant ways: taxes, and credit interest. In Paying Taxes… I showed that for most people, funding the government is no worse than funding their own entertainments, and for many, it is easier to let the government decide what to do with their money than to try to put it to good use themselves or choose a worthwhile organization to fund with it. This article goes more to the nature of money and its ownership. Many people have observed that money doesn’t grow on trees (the Golgafrinchans notwithstanding).

“Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” Matthew 22:21 (Mark 12:17, Luke 20:25).

These verses get a wide variety of interpretations. The Pharisees were trying to trap Yashuah by asking him if they should pay taxes to Rome. If he said “yes,” it was as good as admitting that he was not the savior they were expecting. If he said “no,” then he could be prosecuted as a tax resistor. He answered by asking for a coin, and further asking whose image was on the coin. When they said “Caesar’s,” he responded as above, to give Caesar what is his, and to give to God what is his. At one end of the spectrum, this passage is interpreted to recommend unconditional obedience to the state, God’s needs notwithstanding. At the other end, is unconditional obedience to God, the state’s needs notwithstanding. All other interpretations fall somewhere in the middle.

I believe, for whatever it is worth, that this is a passage about the nature of money and who owns it. The passage does not directly address the issue of whether we should obey the government in anything else or not. John Locke believed that when we apply our labor to an object, we take ownership of the object to some degree. A rock by the side of the road doesn’t belong to anyone, but if you draw a smiley face on it, it becomes your rock. Similarly, if the nation or the bank takes certain metals and makes them into coins and puts inscriptions on the coins, or if it prints declarations of value on otherwise worthless pieces of paper, those things ultimately belong to the person or company that made them. Typically it is the government of a nation that is responsible for this. Less typically, small communities or even businesses print their own money in the form of gift certificates or script that can only be used within the community or business. Whoever prints the money, owns it. If you use it, you use it on the owner’s terms. When governments collect taxes, they typically prefer to collect money and not things like beans, rice, or textiles. When they collect money, they are essentially collecting their fee for letting you use the money which they printed or minted in the first place. If you don’t have any money because you didn’t acquire any and didn’t use any, then you don’t owe the fee. Banks do the same thing with their currencies (paper checks and plastic cards). If you want to use the bank’s checks, you have to pay for them. If you want to use the bank’s plastic card, you have to pay fees to use it. If it’s a debit card with no fees on your end, that is because the businesses that you spend money at are paying the fees instead when they use their merchant services.

So paying fees and taxes to use different kinds of money is simply the price you tacitly agree to when you want to use money. If you don’t want to pay taxes or fees, don’t use money. If you want to use money, then don’t complain about taxes or fees. That’s just the deal. You didn’t print or mint the money. Someone else did, and wants compensated for it. This has nothing to do with obeying or not obeying the government (or the bank). It’s simply the cost of using a resource that someone else created. This is different than if the government or king wants to take the food crops that you’ve grown which the king had no hand in producing.

“And Samuel told all the words of the LORD unto the people that asked of him a king. And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day. Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us;” 1 Samuel 8:10-19

That was a different form of contract. Basically the people contracted a feudalistic relationship and set up a feudalistic form of government. It seemed like a good idea at the time. This passage describes in detail a system of taxation that the king would pursue. It is different in form from most of the taxation in the United States today. We still face the possibility of military conscription. But in general, most of our taxes result from making money transactions.

Finally, I don’t want to scare anyone away from the money economy or pronounce doom upon it. These ideas are only put forth in order that the reader can make a more informed decision about what role money will play in the reader’s life, and what the cost will be. I believe that if we create real value for each other and society at large, and if we are shrewd, the universe will compensate us for our efforts. We reap according to what we sow. (If we are tailors, we sew what we rip.) Whether we want to take that compensation in the form of money, or barter, or leisure, is an intensely personal decision.