Economics

A Handful of Random Musings

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After yesterday’s heavy post, I don’t have any thoughts deep enough to develop into full-length posts. Most of what remains comes under the heading of political or economic, so if that’s not your style, today’s not your day…

Mormonism: The Flex Religion

Mitt’s gone, but the flip-flopping remains. While I’ve not seen any pundits draw this observation, Romney’s playing to the poll figures not only made him the Republican version of Bill Clinton, but it perfectly mirrored the former MA governor’s religion.

How so? Well it seems to me that Mormonism itself is as poll-driven as the former presidential candidate. Take a look at the bad press Mormonism has received in years past for upholding certain politically incorrect doctrines, and not a month goes by before the LDS’s head prophet comes up with a revelation that addresses the bad press and spins church doctrine in a more politically correct direction. Believe me, such PR corrections come around like clockwork. When the LDS was lambasted in the media for its doctrinal stances on women or on dark-skinned members, the head prophet quickly received a convenient new revelation from “god” and changed church doctrine to appease the peasants.

Explains a great deal about Mr. Romney when you think about it.

Hand That Economist Some Goat Entrails, Stat!

It amazes me that vast herds of economists are stumbling around wondering where this recession came from. Business Week has an article discussing how economists are suddenly waking up to the possible problems of unlimited free trade with countries whose costs of living are a tenth of what ours are. They talk about the fact that such trade may actually only benefit a rich few here in the States while hurting the middle class masses.

Ya think?

And in other economics news, The Wall Street Journal ran an article on Monday that had economists agog that American companies seem to be rolling in dough, though the majority of their non-boardroom employees aren’t enjoying that largess.

Someone needs to tell today’s economists to move out of their tony Chevy Chase, MD, neighborhoods and meet the common man!

Meanwhile, I’m going back to college to get my doctorate in economics considering it doesn’t seem to take more smarts than what you’d need for an adult continuing-ed class in flower arranging.

You Are Getting Sleepy, Sleepy…

Is it just me or does anyone else find Barrack Obama’s rise to prominence eerie? Here’s a man who never held any national public office until a few years ago, has yet to complete one full term of office at the national level, yet may very well become the next president! I find the whole thing unnerving and have got to wonder what spell people are under. There’s just something about Obama that gives me the creeps. (And don’t even try to play the race card with me; I’ve been an Alan Keyes supporter for many years.)

Wither CT?

Again, is it just me or has Christianity Today magazine become utterly irrevelant? Not only has it lost its cutting edge, but in an effort to seem culturally-aware, it lost whatever doctrinal center it may have once possessed.

Mormonism: The Redux

Prediction: Just as 9/11 seemed to put Islam on the religious map, I predict that Mitt Romney’s failed campaign for the White House suddenly gets people interested in Mormonism’s claims. Prediction #2: A few years from now, Mormonism will be hip with the “enlightened” crowd in the same way that the disaffected suddenly “discovered” Islam.

…And a Bowl of Tea Leaves, Pronto!

For years, this blogger has contended our economy is caught in what promises to be an unending string of boom and bust cycles with the busts lasting longer and longer each cycle.

And now, here comes the science!

Yep, I definitely has to get me one of them economics PhDs.

A Little Too Close to Home

From 'The New Yorker'

Intelligent cartoons? Yep, that’s from The New Yorker.

Like they say, it’s always good to end with a laugh.

Ragnarok, Recession, and Real ID

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Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world (this took place in the days of Claudius). So the disciples determined, everyone according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.
—Acts 11:27-30

Anyone who’s read this blog long enough knows that I have continually warned that this country and the Christians within it are in for some lean, mean days ahead. “We are not ready” has been my clarion call, a warning I continue to see ignored by Christian leaders in this country. They seem absolutely oblivious to the last recession this country weathered, having learned no lessons on how to prepare our churches for going through tough times. I firmly believe those days are creeping up on us, yet we blithely go on, ready to be caught napping in what should be our shining hour of preparation.

And while I’m not so stuck on myself that I think my puny voice can sway Christian leaders, don’t any of them care? Even one smidgen?

I’m not ready to say the end is upon us, but it sure smells like Ragnarok around here. That term, lifted from Norse mythology, refers to the time when the gods fall. And if there’s ever been a time for us to stand back and ask if we puny gods are falling, 2008 seems an apt time.

The Bible tells us we set ourselves up to be like God and have paid for it. We Americans have set ourselves up to be the arbiters of all things, the pinnacle of 21st century Man, but our hubris may be catching up to us.

We’ve moved the strength of our economy overseas where others now manufacture and create what we buy. Increasingly, even our food is foreign. Crippling debt, the prolonged demise of our most cherished industries, and our unquenchable lust for cheap goods are killing America, yet we can’t seem to snap out of our mania. When greedy corporate wolves are allowed to run amok through our economy, taking it all for themselves and leaving the middle class with an empty chicken coop, should we surprised that we’re bordering on economic collapse?

I find it bewildering that the tone of The Wall Street Journal has only recently turned pessimistic on our economy. The “R Word”—recession—is now cropping up in editorials, though some forward-thinking economists were saying in the fall of 2006 that the our economic strength was illusory. Real world wages continue to drop, and people are dealing with crushing increases in the cost of energy and food, which, last I looked, were staples of life.

I’ve been furious all week after reading a hopelessly clueless George Will editorial in which he decries politicians who pander to the “death of the middle class” adherents, especially within the middle class. I could care less about the political portion of that diatribe, but the astonishing elitism of Mr. Will, wealthy columnist and talking head that he is, just slays me.

Will trots out a figure saying that the number of households in this country with incomes over $100,000 has doubled. He also says that the number of households under $30,000 has stayed the same. Wow, sounds like this middle class death knell IS a fabrication. That’s until we realize he compares today’s figures against 1979.

1979???

We all know about lies, damned lies, and statistics, but c’mon! You don’t need a degree in math to see how frightening that is given cost of living increases over thirty years. A $30,000 household income from 1979 would probably translate into at least a $50-60,000 income today, so if anything, the number of households stuck at $30,000 from nearly thirty years ago is a massive indication that something is horribly wrong in the middle class.

Same goes for the $100,000 income. All $100,000 incomes are not created equal. If you live in the Bay Area of San Francisco, I can tell you from personal experience that $100,000 is just squeaking by. That may sound insane from the standpoint of those unfamiliar with the cost of living in other regions of the country, but trust me on this. I still freak when I note that a property like ours in some parts of the country would go for way over a million dollars. My wife and I lived in the Bay Area and the crushing cost of living stunned us. I’d like to take away all but a $100 grand of George Will’s income and plunk him down in Palo Alto, CA and see how much he enjoys being “rich.”

What an ivory-towered dingbat.

So The Wall Street Journal finally starts to cave and wonder where this mysterious talk of recession comes from despite the fact that wages for most people have been stagnant for years, some people are desperately clinging to their jobs, and the costs of housing, energy, and food have skyrocketed.

What pains me is the American Church’s joint inability to read these distressing signs. It’s as if they simply don’t want to see. Yet check out the passage that opens this post. The early Church prepared for problems. In fact, they listened to their prophets and sprang into action. But where are our prophets? And in lieu of prophets, why can’t we seem to heed our own common sense? Yet I can’t think of one major Church leader in this country talking about economic issues and how the Church must face them.

I had a pastor in Detroit last year send me an e-mail asking what was going to happen should half the people in his congregation become unemployed. This is no joke, folks. Who is speaking to that kind of scenario? What national pastor/writer/speaker is addressing what we need to do should it come down to that in our churches? With Chrysler and Ford teetering on collapse, that pastor’s flock may have more than just half its people in dire economic straits.

And don’t even get me going on this hellish piece of neo-con anti-Americanism called Real ID. I don’t hear anyone in the American Church talking about this little 666-let. Link to FoxNews story on Real IDI get a reprieve of sorts since I’m old enough to linger till the second wave of ownership of this mandatory national ID card. And by mandatory, I mean you won’t be able to fly on an Airplane after 2014 or enter a federal building without having one of these anti-Constitutional pieces of garbage. Some claim Real ID will be required for certain monetary transactions, too. Scary? Oh, I’m sure it will get scarier when they find a way to sell the current opposition by tying it to personal medical records. “Sir, what should happen if you get into a car accident and the EMTs don’t have access to your Real ID? Well, sir?”

Trust me; it takes a lot to push me into the cabal of conspiracy theorists.

I don’t care what your eschatology is, though; Real ID is a real nightmare, especially for Christians. Yet who out there is fighting this in the name of Christ? No one that I can tell. In fact, it’s the hardest-core liberals who are screaming loudest. I never thought I’d be bedfellows with the ACLU and some of the wackier environmental groups out there, but at least they’re actively trying to shoot down Real ID.

So I sit here typing wondering why the Church of Jesus Christ in America gives not one hoot about any of these issues. Have we become so numb? I’m not saying that we can stop a recession or prevent the erosion of our civil liberties on our way to a one-world government, but to not even stand up and be counted? And what about putting systems into place to help us Christians prepare to live through these trying times? Sure, some think we’re going to be raptured out of the mess, but the sword that is Pascal’s Wager cuts two ways.

What is wrong with us?

We are SO not ready.

Still-in-the-Red Friday? – Further Thoughts

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Last Friday, after witnessing parking lots lacking the usual Black Friday crush of cars at local malls and shopping centers, I wondered if this holiday shopping season would disappoint retailers and further depress our struggling economy. I wrote “Still-in-the-Red Friday?” and closed my post by asking if the Church is ready for the economic issues coming our way.

If you’re a regular reader, you know that I take the position that God tabbed the Church to do the work of ministry. Yeah, you...Yes, He may rain manna from heaven for the starving, but since the Church was established, His primary means to meet needs is for the Church to meet them. That’s the plan, folks. You can’t read the New Testament and miss that very important fact. (I’ve quoted all the relevant Scriptures in dozens of previous posts. We should all know them anyway.)

What does a Church look like that doesn’t read the signs of the times? What does a Church look like that isn’t prepared to continue to meet the needs of others when times are brutally hard?

I can’t remember quoting a comment in toto, but David Riggins wrote an epic in response to last Friday’s post. I think it encapsulates the issue perfectly:

Interesting the confusion regarding how the Church faces reality. When economic hardships come, people lose their jobs, and when they have no income, they lose their homes. With the current stupidity regarding credit and its uses, people will lose their jobs and homes at a rapid rate. Two million sub-prime ARM loans are up for adjustment in the next 8 months. Those upward adjustments will often add 30% to the current payment those people are paying. Most of those people won’t be able to afford the higher monthly payments, putting $600 billion in bad loans on the books of already tightly stretched lenders like Countrywide. The loan industry has already lost 100,000 jobs in the last six months.

Each of those jobs is responsible for an average of four other jobs in the private sector, from auto salespeople to the bagger at Kroger. With the continuing collapse of the housing sector, home builders will start to go under, following the example of Neumann Homes in Illinois, which filed for bankruptcy protection this month. As more and more sectors of our economy are affected, an estimated 3 million jobs could be lost. This isn’t about spending more to motivate the economy, this is about making sure that what you spend actually has an effect on our economy. What you spend at Wal-Mart, Target, Circuit City or Home Depot lines the pockets of businesses from China to Indonesia, but little of it stays here. The credit used to buy housing is a commodity that pays for the estimated $18 billion net income of the major trading houses on Wall Street, where bonuses are expected to be down 5% from the average $136,580 in 2006. And this is a “bad year. It trickles down, but nothing like it flows up.

All this can be directly attributed to a lack of action on the part of the Church. Our society is corrupt because the Church is corrupt. Greed has run rampant, not merely in the corridors of power and money, but in the desire of the the Church to be seen as relevant and growing. We have created cults centered on charismatic pastors and exciting music, and have abandoned our role.

Is the church ready to take care of the people in the body who will lose their jobs, their homes, their savings? Are we willing to take people into our homes when they’ve lost theirs? If we don’t, who will? Is the Church ready to feed the homeless, provide care for the widow and orphan? As the mortgage crisis wipes out retirement funds, will we take care of the elderly who now only have social security?

I know most church-goers would scoff as these concerns. These are, after all, the responsibility of the government.

Not according to God, they aren’t. And ultimately, it is God we will answer to. I know that, personally, I am not ready to do anything to help anyone. I also know that our church is certainly not ready, and beyond a food pantry for the holidays, has no plan for taking care of the needy, either within or without our congregation. As conditioned as I am to clarion call of independence, I would find it hard to take care of someone who didn’t plan for hardship. It’s only by the grace of God that my family made it through the jobless times we’ve faced. It certainly wasn’t through the help of the “body.

Soon, the entire country could be facing the same situation that Ohio is in, with unemployment up over 7%, but this time, the price of fuel will be triple what it was in the last recession, and that will affect the price of everything else. Are you ready? Is your church? This is about looking out for your neighbor, and making sure they have what they need. This is about making sure your Church body is focused on meeting the real needs of the body, not bottle feeding the 200 pound infants.

We need to grow up, and it seems that we are about to enter one of those times when we either grow, or wither on the vine and get pruned.

Regardless of how well retailers do this Christmas shopping season, the issue remains: Are we as a Church the five wise virgins or the five foolish ones? Are we the Church who by prophetic word hears of the famine to come and prepares for it (Acts 11:38-40)? Are we hearing from God during the fat years so we are prepared for the lean years?

And so what if the lean years don’t come in 2008 or 2080. The issue is Are we ready?

Leonard Ravenhill once said,

The Church today wants to be raptured from responsibility.

That’s a stunning thought on dozens of different levels. Perhaps it even explains why we are not preparing as we should.

What will happen in our churches when we have dozens of unemployed families without medical insurance? What happens when someone in one of those families undergoes a medical emergency and gets stuck with a huge medical bill? What are we doing to be the church known for supernatural healings should that become the only means by which most people receive medical treatment?

As David mentioned above, what happens when people lose homes should the economy go down the tubes? What will your church do? What do you have in place right now to address that issue? And if your church has nothing in place, why not?

What will happen to evangelism when we’re trying to keep our heads down at work to lessen the chances of being the one pink-slipped when the inevitable downsizings come? Are our churches ready to pick up the pieces when our frontline people take that kind of hit? Or will that be chalked up to “the cost of doing ministry” with us leaving those frontliners to struggle in the aftermath?

We went through a precursor the last recession, which many believed lasted almost five years. What if the next recession is eight years and far deeper? It may have been your neighbor who got whacked last time. Tough for him, right? What if it’s you this time? What happens when you turn to your brothers and sisters in Christ and they look the other way?

What happens when the lost, people without the hope we have in Christ and without membership in the Body of Christ, come to us desperate for help and direction? Do we toss them a Bible and say, “Be warm and filled,” because we didn’t take our own membership in the Body of Christ seriously enough to seek the Lord so we knew in advance how He would have us prepare?

I’m not fearmongering here. What I’m doing is asking why the American Church is oblivious to these issues. Rather than being proactive, we’re reactive—and long after the damage has been done. We can’t continue to be so unprepared.

It’s not enough to say, “God will provide,” when the means by which He’s chosen to provide is asleep at the switch.

I ask again, “Church, are we ready?”