Arbitrary, excessive taxation on the poor to benefit the rich (5:11). The situation in Israel was the opposite of our current situation in America, where the very rich provide almost all the income tax revenue and the very poor pay no income tax at all and benefit from various programs and services paid for, in large part, by the taxes of the wealthy. A smug assurance on the part of the rich who live in the lap of luxury on the backs of the poor. The wealthy in Amos’s day, like many in ours, were