I’ve been having some fun this summer preaching about topics that don’t usually get talked about in polite society, or in churches much either, for that matter.  I hope you’ve been having fun, too.

The idea grew from the seed of the sermon topic that Linda Banez Kay asked me to preach about when she was the highest bidder for the item I put up for auction at the church’s service auction fundraiser last fall.  I offered to write a sermon on any topic.  Linda requested a sermon on death.

I appreciated Linda’s urging to address a topic that touches on spiritual issues of mortality and legacy, appropriate for a worship service, but is also one of those big, uncomfortable topics that we don’t talk enough about.

And in thinking about writing a sermon on death, I wondered to myself, what other topics are there, like death, that we don’t talk enough about, but maybe we should?  What other topics form the big defining boundaries of our human life but are both too big, and too intimate, to talk about comfortably?  When they come up we laugh about them nervously, and mostly we hope they won’t come up when we’re just trying to have a pleasant evening with our friends, or a peaceful dinner with our family, or an inspirational morning at church?

I came up with a series of five to fill the summer months: politics, religion, sex, death last Sunday, and finally, the topic for today:  taxes.

Here’s a great idea.  On the last weekend of your summer holiday, on the hottest day of the year, let’s get up early and go to church, so we can sit in an uncomfortable chair in a room with no air conditioning, to hear a sermon about taxes.

Sounds fun, right?

Here’s what I want to say about taxes.

I don’t want to talk about whether your taxes are too high or low, or what the top marginal rate should be.  I’m not going to talk about the corporate tax rate or whether Donald Trump actually pays any taxes.

What I want to talk about is how we fund our public programs.  How do we “build the common good” as we sang in our opening hymn.  Not how we collect taxes, or even what we spend taxes on, but how we spend our taxes.

What I’m specifically interested in is the debate we are having right now, nationally, about several programs, like health care or higher education, perennial issues like social security and welfare, and local issues like homelessness and housing, where we have identified a human need and are engaged in a political and moral discussion about how to meet those needs.

Generally there are two ways for the government to help us meet a human need.  One is to address the need like a “right” by creating a public program guaranteed by the government and free to all.  The other is to address the need like a “charity” where we expect most people to satisfy the need for themselves, and the government steps in to assist the rest.

Both the “rights” model and the “charity” model intend to fully address the human need.  Each has their advantages and disadvantages.  Neither approach is always 100% successful in meeting the need.  So the question for any general human need we identify is, what’s the best strategy, in this case, in this political, economic, and social environment, and so on, to address this need now?  Is this human need best met as a right, or as a charity?

The model of a public program constituted as a “right” can be illustrated by the public grade school system.  The government guarantees a free public education for every American grades K-12. Children of rich or poor families can all attend the same public schools for free. 

Public streets, roads and highways are the same.  Freeways are free in California because they are built and maintained by tax revenue, whether you’re driving a Subaru or an Uber, or your driver is driving you.

Social Security is also managed like a “right”.  There are some qualifications that define the program, but everyone who qualifies receives the benefit, rich and poor the same.

The charity model for managing government programs is for the government to provide assistance for some, but not for others, based on need.  Healthcare, under Obamacare has been this way.

All Americans are required to have health insurance.  About half of Americans get health coverage through their jobs.  The other half is about evenly split between those who buy individual private insurance, retirees on Medicare, and the most needy Americans on Medicaid.  And then there’s about 5% who receive healthcare through military benefits.

If you don’t qualify for Medicaid and you still can’t afford health coverage through a private insurer, Obamacare provides subsidies.  This is where the “charity” aspect comes in.  The Obamacare subsidy might cover the entire cost of your private health insurance, or a portion.  But, if you can afford to pay for your own health coverage you are expected to pay for it from your own pocket.

So notice, then, how health coverage funding in the United States is different from public school funding.

Everyone is entitled to a free public school education K-12.  No one asks you whether you can afford it, or how much you can afford. Public school education is a right.

With health coverage, though, some people get it for free, most people pay a little of the cost.  Some people pay all the cost.  The standard is that you pay for healthcare yourself and about two thirds of us do, directly or as a job benefit.  But if you can’t afford healthcare the government will help you out, like a charity.

If you can afford a private school education for your children you can choose to pay for it.  But anyone, even the wealthiest are eligible for a free public school education.  For health care, though, subsidies are only available to those who can’t afford health coverage on their own.  You have to prove you need it, before the government steps in.  

Most of our welfare programs are set up the same way, as charities.  The government will assist you if you need it, for healthcare, for housing, for food, for general income.  And the more assistance you need the more generous the help.  But most people are expected to buy their own healthcare, housing, and food.

That makes sense, right?  We help the people that need the help, and we let the people who don’t need help take care of themselves.

But why then, do we treat K-12 public school education differently? 

Why are rich families able to send their kids to public school without paying any cost, when they could easily afford to pay?  Why do we require all kinds of means testing to carefully parse out government assistance for healthcare, housing and food, but our public schools are open to everyone?

It’s a strange question, isn’t it?

Now notice how this issue is being discussed in some of the policy proposals being raised by the Democratic Presidential candidates.

Andrew Yang’s signature issue is something called universal basic income.  He calls it a “Freedom Dividend.”  He proposes that every US citizen over the age of 18 would receive $1,000 a month, $12,000 a year, directly from the US government.  No strings attached. You can read more about Andrew Yang’s idea on his website.  But notice that his proposal is $1,000 for everyone, for you, for me, for the homeless person living on the freeway embankment.  $1,000 a month for Jeff Bezos.  $1,000 a month for Andrew Yang.

Andrew Yang’s universal basic income plan is like public school education, available to all, whether you need it or not.  He treats a basic income as a “right.”  No questions asked.

Bernie Sanders’s healthcare plan means to do the same thing with our health care system:  to convert the current charity arrangement under Obamacare to a right.  His idea is to expand Medicare until it is the only system paying for health care in America.  It’s a single-payer plan.  Health care providers would remain private as they are now, not employed by the government.  But the private health insurance system would disappear.  No Kaiser.  No Blue Shield.   The monthly premiums and co-pays and deductibles that currently pay for private healthcare would be replaced by taxes.

Like public school education, rich or poor would have access to the same healthcare.  You can buy more or different, if you can, and you care to, but the basic system is available to all.  A right.

Currently college level education depends almost entirely on a person’s ability to pay.  There is very little public assistance available to attend college if you can’t afford it.  Student loans have to be repaid, eventually, from your own pocket.  Some candidates want to make college more affordable by creating a charity system, creating more generous government grants and scholarships. Others candidates have been talking higher education as a right with tuition-free public colleges and universities.  College education would become a right the same way we now think of K-12 education.  Again, the wealthiest could buy more or different private college, if they want, but they could also send their kids to free college, and save their own money for whatever else it is that rich people spend their money on.

But doesn’t it make sense that we should only provide government assistance to people who actually need the assistance?  And wouldn’t you rather our government spend your tax dollars in the places it would do the most good?

Sure college is expensive and most Americans could use some help paying for it.  But there are Americans who can afford college without our help.  Why should we, through our taxes, pay for their college?  To establish higher education as a right, wouldn’t the government be spending money it doesn’t need to spend for people who don’t need it, and therefore re-directing money from programs and people that really do need the money?

But if we’re really committed to the idea that government benefits should only go to the people that most need them, then we have to ask is the charity model we use for welfare and public housing and food stamps, and general relief programs really the model that we want?

If you set up a welfare program with a means test, limiting the benefit only to those people who really need the help, then you immediately start having debates about what constitutes need.  If the program starts to get a little expensive, it’s always easy to just raise the eligibility line a little and drop a few folks out of the program.  If you’re basically going to take money from my pocket, says the average taxpayer, and give it to someone else, then the question of who needs help quickly becomes a debate about who deserves help.  And the people that don’t deserve help, guess what, tend to be the people who don’t look like me, or speak my language, or worship like me, or I judge not to have the same work ethic I have. 

If those human needs aren’t understood, or managed, as a “right” then it’s a little easier to tolerate folks who slip through the system and end up sleeping on the street or going hungry.

So why don’t we treat every human need as a right?

Well first, our sense of what defines a right must apply universally to all human persons.  Rights, properly constituted, ought to be basic and broad.  Everyone needs housing.  Everyone needs food.

Everyone needs an education.  But does everyone need a college education?  Are there no paths to lives of meaning and jobs of dignity that aren’t available through a high school education and maybe a technical or professional school or apprenticeship program?  If only college educated persons are valued in our society, maybe it’s out social values that need to be addressed, not our college funding program.

And “rights” approaches to government programs have their drawbacks and dangers just as charity approaches do.

It is at least inefficient if not unjust for the government to spend public money giving a benefit like education or healthcare to rich folks who don’t need it.  It would seem ludicrous to give Bill Gates or Warren Buffet housing assistance or food assistance but food and housing are clearly human rights.  And the danger of providing a free public benefit and then leaving money in the hands of the rich is that the rich will likely then simply create a separate private system for themselves as they already do with private schools in communities where they deem the local public school insufficient.  We have public transportation buses and trains for the poor and private cars and helicopters for the rich.  Do we really also want to create a society where we have public hospitals for the poor and private hospitals for the rich?

On the other hand charity systems are constantly vulnerable to budget cuts and cancelations.  Charity programs smooth over the injustices in an economic system by easing the suffering just enough that they also, then, serve to perpetuate the system that causes the suffering.  But the charity housing systems leaves thousands living in the street.  And the charity food program leaves thousands hungry.  And the charity Obamacare system leaves 28 million Americans still without health coverage, because, like any charity program it’s vulnerable to the bad faith and abuses imposed by those who disagree with its goals.

What I wanted to give you today was not a sense that every human need should be named as a right and addressed by a government program that recognizes the need as a right.  I certainly don’t want you to go away thinking that charity is a dirty word.  Charity is a theological virtue and commanded of each of us as spiritual beings.  Private charity programs are worthy of your support through money and time.  And government programs organized as charities are an efficient way to direct public resources to the places of greater need.

So the take away for today, I hope will be, to recognize that there are two general means by which human needs are met by human governments.  The question to ask, when you hear a politician or a political candidate proposing a program to address a need is, “Are they creating a right or a charity?  And which approach is proper for this particular need, in this particular situation?

“Our world is one world:  its ways of wealth affect us all:  the way we spend, the way we share, who are the rich or poor, who stand or fall?”

I’ve always read the words of Olympia Brown that we used as our Opening Words as a statement about pacifism.  I see now, her words are also a statement about economic justice.  She says, “Every nation must learn that the people of all nations are children of God, and must share the wealth of the world.”  And then she says, “You may say this is impracticable, far away, can never be accomplished, but it is the work we are appointed to do.”