Here’s a sketch of America’s economic prospects. Essentially, we’re seeing the consequences of 50 plus years of near libertarian tax rates and socialist benefits. Federal taxes were 17.8 percent of GNP in 1960. By 2007 they had risen less than one percent to 18.5 percent. However, there was a great deal of fraud and abuse hidden in both figures.

Meanwhile, the proportion of federal spending going to transfer payments to individuals, mainly Medicare, Social Security, and welfare rose from 26 percent in 1960 to 66 percent in 2010. (Military spending dropped from 52 percent in 1960 to today’s 20 percent.)

The federal government borrows more than 40 percent of outlays with no end of this profligacy in sight. We’re addicted to deficits. On our current course there will come a time when we run out of other peoples’ money.

Should that happen, today’s sorry economy will be rosy in comparison. America lacks the moral ballast and sufficiency that maintained the general civility and public order that enabled our parents and grandparents to endure the Great Depression. We are well advised to address the malady.

The first step in dealing with addiction is to acknowledge the fundamental problem. Here it is: politicians promising transfers drive the political economy of America. Naturally, when decisions are made in the political arena, political calculus, not justice, determines results.

Fortunately, a few of our cultural leaders, public intellectuals, and churchmen and women are speaking out. This is a hopeful sign of progress. I’m paying particular attention to comments by seminary professors and influential clergy simply because five years ago FREE began a series of economic seminars for them.

A sermon delivered in early December by Reverend Dave McConnell of Bozeman’s United Methodist Church illustrates this political economy of plunder. With Dave’s permission a few of his themes follow.

“[A]t the time of Jesus, the dispossessed were dispossessed largely because the Roman Empire ... needed a lot of soldiers in order to keep the peace, and they couldn’t afford to pay the soldiers enough to keep the soldiers in the army. So, they had [an elegant] pension plan.... It involved giving land away to soldiers who were retiring. That’s the good part. The bad part is there’s no unoccupied land to give to them, and so they’ll steal the land from the poor peasants to give to the retiring soldiers, and the way they ... steal the land is by raising taxes. [They] raise the taxes so high that the poor peasants can’t pay, so they have to give up the land, so the Roman Empire gets the land, and they can give it away to their soldiers as a pension project. This is why the people are dispossessed.”

“What we know about God in the Old Testament is largely that he has a blessed rage for justice, that Yahweh is the living God that notices the poor, and who demands that even Kings follow the law and protect the poor. This was an original idea with the Hebrews—that Kings don’t just get to make the laws, they have to keep the laws, and the laws ultimately come from God, not from Kings.”

“[P]eople in Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, are being criticized because ... Congressmen can get insider information from what [they] hear in a hearing and sell or buy stock and make a large amount of money....  Any other profession, stockbrokers, ministers, schoolteachers, anybody else who takes advantage of insider knowledge, loses their money and often gets thrown in jail. But it’s not against the law if you’re a Congressperson because Congress gets to write the laws.”

This is a small sample from a profound and moving 3,000-word sermon focused on our duty to help the poor. There is a great deal of scholarly evidence supporting Rev. McConnell’s observations. I am hopeful that more cultural leaders will share his wisdom and insights.