Stephen Moore takes on the silly claim by Governor Riley of Alabama that Jesus would want him to raise taxes to help the poor.

One wonders whether Jesus would believe that there is a limit as to how much taxes someone should have to pay. The biblical tithing rate is 10 percent. Shouldn't what is enough for God be enough for Uncle Sam and local governments? Today, the average household pays roughly 38 cents of every dollar earned in taxes at all levels of government. That is, we are already paying almost 4 times what the Bible declares is necessary to be charitable individuals.

Donald Hughes, of Jesus.Journal.com raises one last beguiling ethical question: "Who says that a tax hike is going to help the poor anyway?"

That's the question that no liberal dares to answer. To the left, it is an article of faith that big government helps people. But if that were the case the most Christian and the richest country in the 20th century would have been either Mao's China or the former Soviet Union. After all, those communistic regimes loved the poor so much that they virtually imposed a 100 percent tax on workers. What they produced was not aid to the poor, but a lot of poor people.

Studies show that the nations with the most liberty and the lowest taxes have the least amount of poverty. Free enterprise is a Christian economic system because it does a better job than any other system ever devised to feed and clothe and house the poor. If you don't believe that, go to some of the countries that do not practice free enterprise and compare the living standards of their poor with ours.