Moses and Wealth
Yesterday, in honor of Holy Week, Netflix put on a three-part series about Moses. It was a dramatization of the well-known biblical story that starts with Moses’ birth to a poor Israelite family in Egypt, his dramatic adoption via the reed basket floated up the Nile and found by a royal princess despondent over the loss of her natural child. It spent little time reviewing Moses’ upbringing in the house of the Pharaoh, but showed him with angst over the way the Egyptian task-masters were abusing the Jewish slaves. Moses is forced to leave Egypt because he kills one of the task-masters and flees to he desert where he starts a new life and a family before being summoned by God to be a leader for the people of Israel that he left behind in Egypt. The rest of the story involves his return to Egypt and his interaction with Pharaoh over the negotiation to free the Israelites, including the Godly threats and plagues that lead to the ultimate exodus of the Jews from Egypt and the manner in which God smites the pursuing Egyptians. It ends with the wandering of the Israelites in Sinai as they wend their way toward Canaan and the land of milk and honey that they seek.
The reason I chose to watch this type of programming is that as old and well-known as the story may be to me, it is both interesting to fill in a few more of the details and texture of the story and it is important to revisit the breadth of meanings that are imbedded in the biblical scriptures which have endured and guided mankind for so many years. One of the interesting themes in this story that this viewing evoked was the topic of wealth.
This morning, my friend Kevin sent me an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal titled The U.S. Already Soaks the Rich. The gist of that article was to use IRS data to show that a disproportionate amount of the U.S. income tax is paid by the the wealthiest people in the country and that they already shoulder much, if not all of the burden of our society based on the share of taxes relative to share of income that they pay. Naturally, this has imbedded in it the entire wealth effect that is such a big part of the disparity problem that exists in the U.S. and the world. We all understand that Warren Buffett pays much less in taxes than we would expect from a man with a purported wealth of $136 billion would imply. Estimates of Buffett’s tax bill over five years is about $125 million in the most recent period, when his wealth grew during that same time by about $24 billion. That would give him a marginal rate of about 0.5% if measured less against income as defined by the IRS and more by wealth appreciation, which is the true measure that must be deemed as “fair”. Making an argument that the rich pay enough in taxes is really a silly and somewhat despicable position to take in a world where by every measure, wealth disparity grows exponentially year by year in a world where progressive taxation only scratches the surface of leveling the playing field.
In the story of Moses, while he is working to free the Israelites from the grip of the Egyptian Pharaoh, one of the tactics that Pharaoh uses is to give Moses part of a loaf in the sense of telling him things like he can go into the desert to pray for two, not three days or that he can go but he has to leave the children at home. At one stage of this negotiation, one that seems very commercial, Pharaoh decides to try to buy Moses’ assent. He sends porters to Goshen, where the Jews all live, and they are carrying various golden luxury items. The comparable thing would be for Netanyahu to send into Gaza an array of Louis Vuitton handbags and Hermes scarves in hopes that it might satisfy the starving Gazan’s needs as they contemplate their future as loyal disciples of Hamas. In fact, I have heard that Netanyahu did indeed give some lucrative jobs to certain Palestinians from Gaza before the October 7th attack by Hamas, supposedly thinking that he could assuage the pain of suffering of the broader Palestinian populace by bribing a few and making their lives marginally better in a manner that connotes wellbeing in the developed western world. That would be through material wealth that could be counted and valued rather than in the fundamental Maslowian ways for food, shelter, safety and freedom. These efforts by Pharaoh, just like the feeble efforts of the Netanyahu government while placing more and more Israeli settlements around the perimeter of Gaza and the West Bank that have been systematically choking off the rights and the wellbeing of the Palestinians, highlight a fundamental disconnect in world view. Offering the Jews in concentration camps in 1945 material wealth as a solution to their problems was inappropriate and unappreciated. Human needs are very hierarchical as our evolutionary and behavioral scientists like Maslow have taught us.
In fact, the accumulation and growth of wealth, beyond the reaches of humanly comfort and security, are a perversion of the human experience that does more to signal the end of an era than the prosperity of it. As Pharaoh learned all too late, the things that he and his fellow Egyptian overlords ultimately cared about were not the things made of gold or the further refinements of their life of luxury, but the basic human needs of food, shelter, health, security and freedom. I would then go so far as to suggest that once those are secured for ones family and coterie in something like a reasonable timeframe or even in perpetuity (as best one can imagine), the only fair and reasonable use of wealth is the improvement of one’s environment. You can define environment as you wish or as it needs to be determined by circumstance, but that remains, in my opinion and based on history, the only worthwhile place to spend one’s wealth. The definition of environment would certainly include things done to save the planet, but it also must include improving the sustenance and prosperity of those less fortunate. One would have to be blind to history to not understand that populations that go underfed or unsustained in the basic human needs, are bound to create an untenable situation. The best sign that people of wealth realize this is the building of walls and the attempts to isolate oneself from the riffraff of humanity. Pharaoh built his temples and palaces and further isolated himself by convincing his subjects that only he could lead them to eternity, hence all the effort expended on the great pyramids and tombs. Today’s Pharaohs (a.k.a. The Billionaire Class) are buying Hawaiian islands and tracts of land in distant New Zealand in the current efforts to isolate themselves from the inevitability of their own excesses and inability to see the importance of caring for the needs of the great unwashed.
I read Kevin’s article from the Wall Street journal as just another feeble attempt by the wealth-hoarding classes to justify their continued wealth accumulation regardless of the pain and suffering of others and the growing wealth disparities that exist. It is more a red flag for concern than an argument to the contrary.
It is said that the past is prologue to the future. I enjoy watching programs like the Testament of Moses, less because it energizes my religious zeal and more because history is the best reminder of the things that matter in life. I am no fan of accumulated wealth or even inherited wealth. I spent six years running a wealth management business to solidify those views and create my own belief system that happiness does not reside in wealth and may even be impeded by wealth. It all makes me wish that when Moses got back from Mt. Sinai, that his tablets had an eleventh commandment; “Thou shalt not gather unneeded wealth”. That would make the world a better place.