I would
like to share with you a bit of poetry written by Steven Page and Ed Robertson.
If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you a house.
If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you furniture for
your house.
Maybe a nice chesterfield or an ottoman.
If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you a K-Car, a
nice Reliant automobile.
If I had a million dollars, I'd buy your love.
If I had a million dollars, I'd build a tree fort in
our yard.
If I had a million dollars, you could help, it
wouldn't be that hard.
If I had a million dollars, maybe we could put a
little tiny fridge in there somewhere. We could just go up there and hang out. Like
open the fridge and stuff, and there'd be foods laid out for us with little
pre-wrapped sausages and things. Mmmmm. They have pre-wrapped sausages but they
don't have pre-wrapped bacon. Well can you blame them? Yeah.
If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you a fur coat but
not a real fur coat that's cruel. If I had
a million dollars, I'd buy you an exotic pet, like a llama or an emu.
If I had a million dollars, I'd buy your love.
If I had a million dollars, we wouldn't have to walk
to the store.
If I had a million dollars, we'd take a limousine
'cause it costs more.
If I had a million dollars, we wouldn't have to eat
Kraft Dinner. But we would eat Kraft
Dinner. Of course we would, we'd just
eat more; and buy really expensive ketchup with it. That's right, all the fanciest
Dijon Ketchup. Mmmmm.
If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you a green
dress;
but not a real green dress, that's cruel.
If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you some art, a
Picasso or a Garfunkel.
If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you a
monkey.
Haven't you always wanted a monkey?
If I had a million dollars, I'd buy your love.
If I had a million dollars, If I had a million
dollars, I'd be rich.
Those
of course are the lyrics of the legendary hit single If I had $1,000,000 by
the Canadian band Barenaked Ladies. It
is a song wildly popular among the age group of persons who finished university
in the late ‘80’s and early 90’s. We
were the demographic who were promised that if we worked hard in high school
and university, we would come out into a world of opportunity, land a job in
our field, and make a million dollars, and retire early. Well, that didn’t happen and we are quite
disillusioned. We are the first
generation of the Modern Western world to not do financially better than our
parents. Woe to our children and to
theirs because the trend continues all the while the number of billionaires
increases. Canada has over 100
billionaires and I’ll never be a millionaire.
Now
let me give you a lesson on how real economics work. According to 2010 Census figures the average
individual income in Canada was $27,600 (just over $30K today). The Census folks considered you rich if you
as an individual made more than the average household income of $76,000 up to
$191,000. Above that you are
uber-wealthy, one of the wealthiest 272,600 or 1% of Canadians making
money. The uber-wealthy had an average
individual annual income of $381,300 ($441,000 in 2017). They are mostly Corporate executives types.
Let’s
take a snapshot here. Of the 27,260,000
eligible taxpayers in 2010 50% (13.6 million) were making $27,600 a year or
less and had dependents. Another 39%
made between $27,600 and $120,000 with the bulk of that being less than
$80,000. The top 9% $120K and $191k. .5% were making between $191,000 up to
$381,300 a year and then .5% (136,300) individuals were making $381,300 or
more. That’s more then 13.8 times the
average individual. This is a lot of
numbers but bear with me.
That
household making $76,000 would pay about 24% in federal and provincial taxes and
would have had $57,700 a year to live on.
That’s $4,800 a month. It may
sound like a lot but it’s not if you have a mortgage and children. Debt will be a major factor both as a
mortgage and a credit card/line and education debt. Saving is not an option. Therefore, ever having a million dollars is
not possible.
Now,
if that uber-wealthy individual was the single income earner in their household
and if they paid their taxes the way we do, that average uber-wealthy household
would pay 46% in taxes still leaving them $206,000 a year to live on or $17,167
per month. Once again, that’s if they
paid taxes at the rate allotted to them and they don’t. These folks are giving their kids university
graduation gifts in the millions of dollars.
Today,
2019, I don’t know how to officially define “poor” in Ontario, but working 40
hours per week at the $14 minimum wage with two weeks unpaid vacation is $28,000
which is more or the less the same as the 2010 average individual income. This means that while the cost of living has gone
up roughly 1.6% a year, the living wage has not budged. Labour is not as valued a resource as it was
ten years ago or 30 years ago. I make a
lot more than a minister did 30 years ago but the value of my income is
significantly less. It takes two incomes
now to do what one income could do 50 years ago.
50
years ago $28,000 would buy a house, a car, and everything a family would
need. Today it means you’re living in a
rat’s nest, hungry, mourning or begrudging your situation in life, with people
looking down their noses at you while you work jobs they won’t. You’re ashamed. I would estimate that a good 65% of Canadians
feel shame because of their household economic situation. Granted, being poor
in Canada ain’t the same thing as being poor in the poor nations of the
world. We have all kinds of assistance. And meanwhile, somebody out there is passing
tax legislation based on the myth that if the uber-wealthy and the companies
they own are given a break on taxes it will mean better jobs and higher income
for all. Meanwhile, the percentage of
those we call poor continues to grow. A
study came out in the last few weeks that indicated 48% of Canadians are $200 a
month away from financial insolvency and that 26% of Canadians can’t pay their
bills; debt being the major reason why.
Jesus
says “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” Well, I’m sorry Jesus but I don’t
understand. What is so blessed about being
poor? What do you mean by blessed? In the ancient world to be blessed was to be
free from material concerns like the gods or rich people were. It was to have good fortune and fullness of
life. Blessed doesn’t necessarily mean
you are wealthy. It just means you don’t
have to worry about things. It’s that
life is good. Jesus says the poor are
blessed because they have the kingdom of God.
They don’t have to worry about things because they have the kingdom of
God. He doesn’t deny the reality of
their poverty in the present. They still
hunger, grieve, feel shame, and are looked down upon. He just says that a better day is coming for
them; a day that will be “Yikes!” for that handful of very wealthy people who
have it all now.
It
may sound like Jesus is giving pie in the sky comfort, but in reality I think
Jesus was expecting his followers to handle their money differently than the
world did. He expected an immediate
shift to Kingdom-nomics among his followers.
In
the Kingdom of God, economics work like what Zacchaeus did. He was an uber-wealthy tax collector whose
encounter with Jesus led him to give half of his wealth to the poor and he
promised that if he had defrauded anyone in amassing that wealth, he would pay
back four times as much. Jesus equated
Zacchaeus’ redistribution of his wealth to salvation in the present. In the Gospels salvation is not about going
to heaven when you die because you believe in Jesus. Salvation is what comes about in the present as
a result of following him faithfully. In Kingdom-nomics, no one has too little
and no one has too much. Zacchaeus would
still have wealth, but not too much of it.
This
was also true of the early church.
Wealthy Christian landowners would sell fields that they really didn’t
need and give the proceeds to a program of distribution to help the poor in
their midst. In the early church in
Jerusalem they virtually eliminated poverty among themselves. This was also the expectation for ancient
Israel. Every 49 years wealth was to be
redistributed.
The
problem that we have in our world today is that there is not a basic moral
value with respect to having too much wealth.
There is no one saying that it is immoral to be uber-wealthy. The Church, being one of the wealthiest
institutions, certainly has a problem in this arena. As a consequence, the Christian church does
not say anywhere in it’s doctrine that it is immoral to make more than enough. We talk about greed, about the love of money
being sin and we say that generosity is a virtue. But, don’t you think this world be a
different place if the Church said it was wrong, indeed immoral, for an
individual to make more than $150,000 a year and as a consequence we, the
followers of Jesus made a practise of giving our earnings over that amount not
to the Church but to a means of actually helping the poor?
If
everyone in Canada had a basic guaranteed individual income of $60,000 and
lived within that means; and if the cost of basic needs such as housing,
energy, food, and transportation were regulated, and we put a cap on income,
life in this land would be blessed. That’s
a bit more ambitious than an NDP campaign platform. But, let’s keep in perspective that when
Jesus said blessed are the poor and “Yikes!” to the rich, he was speaking to
his disciples. Zaccheaus became a
disciple of Jesus and it changed the way he handled his money. Shouldn’t it be that way with us as well? Shouldn’t the fact that we are followers of
Jesus affect what we do with the wealth that our Father in heaven has entrusted
to us? Amen.
