The warnings of recent papal teachings on questions of social justice rarely – if ever – identify the dangers of a highly bureaucratized central government.  Apparently most of the sinful and corrosive “love for money” comes from private sector capitalists, not government public sector agencies.  Certainly corporate capitalistic greed can and does have serious economic consequences.  But is it reasonable to ignore the negative economic consequences of Big Government, its centralized control and bureaucratic demands?

When my mother was alive, I used to prepare her tax returns. Mom’s income was $12,000 in Social Security benefits and bank interest.  She held her life savings in certificates of deposit, earning 3-4 percent interest.  When the certificate would expire, she would simply roll it into another one.  The interest earned was reported on her annual Federal income tax return.  One day she received a harsh notice from the IRS insisting she pay $10,000 in penalties and interest for failing to report income.

Actually, it was my mistake. When one of her certificates of deposit expired, the IRS understood the entire proceeds, not just the interest, to be taxable income, because I failed to file the required IRS Schedule D. I fixed the problem by filing an amended return.  But how many of the elderly (often old-fashioned “law and order” types) fearful of “trouble with the law” would likely pay off the IRS’s enforcer to avoid jail time (at least in their minds’ eye)?

Multiply this experience by thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands.

Fortunately Mom had a son, a marginally competent accountant, to be her advocate and tax preparer.  She also had my sister, a very competent nurse, as her advocate in dealing with the increasingly complicated health care paperwork.  How many of the elderly have this advantage, and how many elderly are taken advantage of by IRS computers?  How many of the elderly are abused by the bureaucratic and often unforgiving machinery of the (now largely government-run) health care system?

Read the article “ANALYSIS: Looking on the Bright Side of Sharia” on acton.org.