RELIGIOUS TEXTS APPLYING TO
“Question 5”

The Hebrew Bible includes many regulations to ensure that the wealthy understand it as their duty to set aside a portion of their earnings for the poor (for example: Leviticus 19:9-10 & 23:22). The Torah, Bible, and Quran are full of warnings against over-accumulation of property and wealth, identifying it as one of the barriers to entering the kingdom of God.

From the Torah: 
"If, however, there is a needy person among you…do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kin. Rather, you must open your hand and lend whatever is sufficient to meet the need. Beware lest you harbor the base thought, “The seventh year, the year of remission, is approaching,” so that you are mean and give nothing to your needy kin – who will cry out to the Eternal against you, and you will incur guilt. Give readily and have no regrets… For there will never cease to be needy ones in your land. [Deut. 15:7-11]" (source)

In the Church Meets World by Dean Winnie Varghese, she writes of Jesus and the 99%. 
“After loving God and neighbor - or perhaps illustrative of loving God and neighbor - are the commands to be makers of a just society by participating in, acting as if, God’s justice could be true now.  From Exodus to Proverbs and through the Gospels, treating those who are economically vulnerable with mercy is a mark of loving God.  We see in passages like this:

“You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your countrymen or one of your aliens who is in your land in your towns.  You shall give him his wages on his day before the sun sets, for he is poor and sets his heart on it; so that he will not cry against you to the Lord and it becomes sin in you (Deut. 24:14-15)”

In the early Christian community, the disciples took this seriously.  Jesus’s followers gathered in communities within which resources were pooled and shared to the benefit of the least. (Acts 2: 44-45) Many congregations respond with feeding programs and other efforts to help those in need in our communities, which is important.  And yet the statistics point to the need for a more permanent and system-wide solution. 

From the Jewish Labor Bund, in the Jewish Secular tradition (like Boston Workers Circle):
"Look not for reward in some heavenly paradise after death; create a paradise here on earth! Do not wait for the Messiah to come and deliver you from your sufferings; be your own Messiah! The emancipation of the workers must be achieved by the workers themselves. Be not ashamed that you are laboring [humans]. The worker is the salt of the earth. It is [their] labor that turns all wheels and produces the world's wealth, and it is [they] who one day will inherit the earth and the fruits thereof." (from this history)