A Factory Closes

Times are tough. A town raises its property taxes to gin up much needed revenue. Within its borders, a factory closes, stating that the taxes it will owe will be more than it can afford to pay given the expenses it already incurs in normal operation.

No one wins. The town is out its property tax income. The business has lost a center of production. And a hundred employees are now out of work.

Sound familiar?

Democrats will lay the blame on the business that ran the factory. You’ll hear lots about the “evils of capitalism” and “greed.”

Republicans will lay the blame on the town. You’ll hear lots about “big government” and “out of control taxation and spending.”

You know what? Both sides are right, and both sides are wrong.*

Never forget: nine out of ten Democrats and nine out of ten Republicans don’t care about you. They just don’t. In the two or three months prior to their re-election election they make a charade of caring. But what they really care for is power. That’s a given, okay? It’s inarguable – it’s the nature of the beast, and the beast is politics.

But just because it’s that way doesn’t mean we can’t influence things a bit.

Getting back to the big picture, it seems to me that neither fettered socialism nor unfettered laissez-faire capitalism is the optimal solution to the problem. What could be? How about this? If I was conspiracy-minded, I might believe that efforts were made to keep it under wraps, since the idea of it has been around for a century or so. I myself have never heard about it until two years ago.

A reminder for those of us who follow Christ: We are to be Christians first and foremost, then conservatives or liberals, and only then Republicans or Democrats.


* For the record, I happen to think one side is a little bit righter than the other.