Government Money Policy and the Bible on Weights and Measures

Here is an article from a non-Christian economics think tank about the historical impact of profligate government printing of currency. As I write this, an estimated 80% of US dollars in existence have come into existence under the expansions of presidents Trump and Biden, partly, they claim, as economic incentive during the covid pandemic. The most famous example of such an economic program was under the pre-Nazi Weimar Republic of Germany, in which the currency was so debased that the inflation was part of the instability which inspired German voters to turn to the Nazi Party as an alternative. More recently, we have seen the same events in Mugabe's Zimbabwe and Chavez's Venezuela. 

The result of such a policy is that the same currency loses value with the passage of time. The government benefits from this devaluation because it spends the money before it has entered the market, where it will lose its value. The same is true for businesses favored by government with access to the new money, such as Wall Street and the banks. They have access to the money before it has lost its value, giving them a benefit of privilege that unfavored businesses and the general public cannot have. 

In the Bible, God expresses His divine displeasure with such manipulations of money. In Leviticus 19:35-36, He tells Israel, "You shall do not wrong in judgment, in measures of length or weight or quantity. You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt." He repeats this command in Deuteronomy 25:13-16: "You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, a large and a small. You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, a large and a small. A full and fair weight you shall have, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. For all who do such things, all who act dishonestly, are an abomination to the Lord your God." The references to "weights" may seem strange to our modern ears, since we think of money not as weight but as slips of paper, or even just as a plastic card. However, in the days of Moses, exchanges occurred through the use of scales, which told the weight in specie for a certain weight of commodity. 

The wisdom literature, too, warns against financial cheating. For example, in Proverbs 20:10, the Holy Spirit tells us, "Unequal weights and unequal measures are both alike an abomination to the Lord." He repeats the warning in verse 23: "Unequal weights are an abomination to the Lord, and false scales are not good." In both proverbs, cheating through monetary manipulation is named an abomination to the Lord. 

A policy of inflating the currency by government is a policy of theft, which is why it is an abomination to the Lord. it is government which should be the agent of God, not in stealing, but in suppressing theft. Yet our government has a continuing policy of such theft, especially from the poor and elderly. As such, it should be an abomination to every moral person.