Am I my brother's keeper?

I don't actually have a brother so I don't need to answer that in a literal sense. However, the question arises in the case of the universal sense that "we are all brothers". Some will  say " and sisters" but feminism and language is a topic for another day.

Actually we are not all brothers and sisters, we are fellow humans. The phrase"My brother's keeper" is often used to  justify helping our fellow humans. It is a phrase of Old-Testament Biblical origin, Genesis 4:8. "And the Lord said to Cain: Where is thy brother Abel? And he answered: I know not. Am I my brother's keeper?"

Commonly the question is interpreted as Cain being snippy and defensive. But The Lord is also being disingenuous in this exchange. If God is omniscient, he already knows where Abel is and doesn't need to ask. So Cain is simply responding in like manner.
The Lord though goes on to ignore the question. We never actually find out whether or not Cain is "his brother's keeper", so there is actually no moral lesson there. It is hijacked  in the moment by the bigger issue of Cain killing his brother Abel because the Lord showed favouritism.

According to the Bible, setting up siblings to fight each other b y showing favouritism to one is seen as a good thing. It starts with Cain and Abel, continues with Joseph ( of the coat of many colours) and into the New Testament with the story of the prodigal son. It seems that the Biblical God is usually on the side of the favoured child.

Message: Hard work producing results  is not rewarded and should not be  (Cain's farm, the unprodigal son, the brothers of Joseph).

Perhaps that attitude, which persists throughout the bible is part of the reason why flagrant favouritism of one sibling over another rears it head time and time again in our culture which has moreally evolved from Judaism and Christianity,( and throughout history). It causes a great deal of grief, conflict and family break-up, yet it seems to go unrecognised. Very often it is the favourite's story which hold's sway, and the victim who is seen as the bad person by everyone else.


There is a wider point to the question "Am I my brother's keeper?" though. The question is about obligation, not about choice. So it isn't about whether or not helping your fellow man is a good thing, its about whether or not we have to help him.

We have a choice to help others.. or do we?
If we are forced to, then it is no longer a "good act" on our part. We simply don't have a choice and there is no good versus less good or evil decision  to be made.
If we choose to, then it is a good act.

Where does obligation come in?
Well, let's deal first with family responsibilities and then consider everyone else.
A marriage contract means different things to different people, admittedly. But marriage is a framework in which to have children and provide for them a stable upbringing. Marriage is a choice, and usually ( except in the case of rape when it is not the woman's choice, or stealing somebody's sperm and injecting it, in which case it is not the father's choice) is a choice. By choosing to have sex, if both participants are fertile, it is a choice to allow the possibility of a child.

If somebody chooses to allow that possibility, by having sex, they have obligations to the children that result.Those obligations may also include obligations to the other parent as a result. Marriage is the framework that protects those obligations to some extent, but ideally there should be a level of love between the parents to sustain those obligations.

What about other people though?
In practice, those of us who earn or spend money, and therefore pay taxes, see part of those taxes allocated by government to help other people. We pay for all the welfare benefits: Job Seeker's Allowance,  Child benefit, Disability Benefit, etc. Universal healthcare here in the UK. Community projects, free education and foreign aid. Housing.

You could say that we have a choice in this, in that in a democracy we could elect a government to remove all these things - that the welfare state is "what the majority want" and therefore "right".

But what the majority want isn't necessarily "right". If the majority stand to benefit from this system, being paid for by taxes generated by the minority, what then? You have a minority of people generating wealth to support the majority. Eventually, a system like that will implode.

In the UK we have that situation already. If you add the number of people sustained by  benefits to the number of public sector workers, which represents the number of people who are sustained by taxes, it is greater than the number of people generating the wealth from which those taxes derive. The reason things haven't imploded already is that the government then borrows money to pay its bills. What that does is delay the implosion for a few years. But debt bubbles inevitably burst if debt keeps growing.

The other factor, is that in a democracy, if you have the majority of people receiving benefit from taxes, then they will continue to elect governments that maintain those benefits and increase them. So the form of government we have itself leads inexorably to favouring those who will not contribute.

So those of use who wish to earn money, do not have, in practical terms, a choice. We are forced to help others, and because we don't own the decision, we don't get to feel good about it ( or please our God if we have one).

What are the practical ramifications? Lets look at 2011-12 the last complete uk tax year for which there are yet figures.

Here is an infographic from the Guardian which shows government spending by department in 2011-2012:




Now, lets look at the tax receipts for the same year. Available here on page 5.

So we can see how much our taxes contribute to different areas of government spending.

Lets take the total benefits bill as an example. £159 Billion from the Department of Work and Pensions, plus another £12.22 Billion from Her Majesty's Revenue and customs in the form of Child Benefit. However, lets subtract from that the state pension - which arguably is a pension rather than a benefit although for people who haven't worked it is a benefit.
That gives us a benefit bill of £97 Billion for the year.

Now, let's look at the tax and NIC receipts for the same year.
Total income tax ( - tax credit) is £146.227 Billion.

So, if we stopped paying all these benefits, and didn't change anything else, we could reduce Income tax to £B(146.227- 97) - or to 33.6% of its current level.
(In fact it would be more than that, because it would also reduce the cost of running the Department of Work and Pensions, which you can see is greater than the benefits bill itself, at £B 166.98).

Think of it this way. Look at how much income tax you pay a year and calculate 1/3 of that. That 2/3 difference would be cash in your pocket if we didn't have a benefits bill to pay. Would you voluntarily choose to give that amount of money each year to people out of work, disabled or otherwise benefitting from our welfare system?

Alternatively, VAT receipts were £98 Billion for the year. Lets say that the reduced cost of the DWP would be at least a Billion less with no benefits to pay ( most likely a lot more than a billion).
So, we could abolish VAT and a lot of what we buy would become 20% cheaper immediately. This in turn would boost consumer demand, create jobs....etc.

So in the light of these kind of figures, what if we funded benefits from  a voluntary tax?

Then it would be clear whether or not our government does what we want with our money.

It was a cold wet day in March and the clocks..

Whenever we have visitors, it seems to get very crowded inside the house. Its like there is  an ever increasing number of elephants in the room, and increasingly less room to move around. Don't get me wrong, I love elephants. They are among the noblest of creatures, they mourn their dead, look after each other and like other animals, simply do their thing. However, it is getting harder and harder to talk openly about all kinds of subjects, and have any kind of sensible discussion.

Here is an example  of what I mean. We were talking to my sister in law about how, living in a rural area, we aim to source much of our food from local farms. For us this has two benefits. Firstly we obtain good, organically grown food and we can, if we want, see the field it was grown in ( meat or vegetable). Secondly it supports the local economy rather than the large supermarkets, although we do go to the supermarkets for some things.

So in response to our saying that we like to support local business in this way, my sister in law responds with " Do you mean racist?"

Its like a similar exchange which I had with someone who had presented a show on BBC Radio a few years ago. He was talking about how non-native plants had been introduced to the British Isles, and although they were pushing out some of our native species and changing our landscape ( Notable examples of this being rhododendrons and Japanese knotweed..) this was a good thing because it was reflecting our "multicultural" society.
In an online chat session afterwards, he too insinuated that I was "racist" for wanting to preserve our native plants..

So, the purpose of this blog is to look at these elephants in the room, on a number of topics. What are the topics, and what thinking of them will cause this reaction of judgment and condemnation from some quarters.

No topic will be sacred.

I'll leave this inaugural post with two quotes. One from a  socialist, and one from an individualist. Both free thinkers to some extent.

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."  Ayn Rand

"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."  George Orwell.