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Tax The Rich

Tax The Rich

Last updated on: October 28, 2026 at 6:36 pm by Duncan Edward Pile

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Tax The Rich 2026-10-28T18:36:53+00:00 Duncan Edward Pile

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

There’s a cost-of-living crisis across Europe right now, resulting in protests in France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Belgium. Similar protests are ready to bubble up around the continent, and though I don’t approve of the violence and looting of opportunists who’ve hijacked them, these protests arise from genuine concerns. The core issues at the heart of a protest must be addressed for the public to feel heard. For the sake of clarity, I also apply this to protests I find distasteful, such as anti-immigration demonstrations in the UK. If we want to be heard ourselves, we must listen to others too, and debate with them respectfully.

The current concern is the hugely inflated cost of daily living, whether at the gas pump or in the supermarket, pricing ordinary people out of a respectable quality of life. Those who want to divide us give us all kinds of groups to blame, including immigrants and specific political figures and parties, but I put it to you that these are invalid attempts to distract us from the real cause of the worsening status quo.

Greed – the world’s gravest sin

Nearly half the world’s wealth lies in the hands of the richest 1%. They have more power than most governments and undue influence over the policy decisions of supposedly sovereign nations. All the while, the rest of the world struggles to get by as life becomes increasingly hard.

In my youth, poverty seemed like a faraway problem. My middle-class life was unaffected by the suffering of starving citizens in places like Ethiopia, other than during fund-raising extravaganzas like Live Aid. There was no overall sense of desperation that affected most people, and no sense that the majority were struggling to get by.

These days, poverty is present all around me, in the lives of my friends and in the deprivation of many parts of my community. Hospitals are stretched to the limit and schools struggle with ever-dwindling budgets, while public services have been badly eroded. Youth groups have been shut down, getting on the housing ladder is next to impossible for so many young people, and AI is rapidly stealing our jobs.

Make no mistake, the social contract of the twentieth century has been ripped to shreds. We no longer live in a world where a single salary can cover the needs of a whole family, and young people have much more complex issues to deal with. They have no guarantee that hard work will be rewarded in their futures.

The cause of this great unravelling is straightforward – capitalism has been allowed to reach its inevitable conclusion, rewarding the few and robbing from the many. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a communist or even a proper socialist – more of a social democrat. I believe in the importance business, entrepreneurial spirit, and aspiration, but not at the expense of creating an unholy wealth gap.

When I stand back and consider the position we are in, where vast power lies in the hands of just a few, it amazes me that we allowed this to happen, but of course, it took place over centuries rather than through a yes/no referendum. Naturally, there has always been inequality, but nothing like the obscene gulf between rich and poor we see today. It simply cannot be right. We are the fabled boiling frog, remaining in heating water until it boils us alive.

Jesus gave a stark warning about the dangers of hoarding for yourself in Luke 12:15b-21,

‘Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.’

And he told them this parable: ‘The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, “What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.”

‘Then he said, “This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’”

‘But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?”

‘This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich towards God.’

I don’t know how we square this with the existence of billionaires and trillionaires. Wealth in and of itself is a tremendous responsibility. It was never meant to be hoarded by individuals, but to be used for the sake of our communities.

Time for a revolution?

It would be misguided to spiritualise the current French protests, especially considering the violence of those who’ve taken advantage of the situation, but it could be a sign of the times. France’s revolutionary history demonstrates they have the stomach for toppling those who hoard vast wealth, and the cost-of-living crisis is exposing levels of injustice far greater than the corruption that sparked La Grande Révolution.

In 1819, Percy Shelley wrote The Masque of Anarchy following the Peterloo Massacre, in which English cavalry charged a peaceful crowd of around 70,000 protesters at St. Peter’s Field in Manchester. The protest was over the cost of living, but the state refused to listen, turning its military on suffering citizens. In the final stanza, Shelley wrote of the power of the many, should they choose to rise up:

‘Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number,

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you –

Ye are many – they are few.’

Ye are many – they are few! Are we there yet? Has the status quo become intolerable? If across the globe, societies engaged in non-violent collective action, governments might have no choice but to listen. If we refuse to be divided and turn our undivided attention to the grotesquerie of 21st century greed; if we insisted that our elected leaders tax the rich, the wealth gap could be filled and paved over. Wouldn’t that be worth fighting for?

Politics and Religion

Christianity and Capitalism

God's heart for economic Justice

The Sin of Greed

Christianity and Capitalism

economic injustice

economic justice

tax the rich

the world's gravest sin

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