What do you think?

Excellent point , anonski21 !
****Okay everybody......What say ye ??? ***

Also a good way to spend, or launder, money.

We tend to look too much at insider contractor deals.

We should probably wonder more about consultants and suppliers for these projects.

Some of us consider LDS Inc may be the largest money laundering operation in the history of mankind, and we do not even know who the real shareholders are, who are the real decision makers, or which cartels money is being laundered.

This is nonsense. Spending money on construction converts tax-free money into taxable payments. Hell of a way to launder money.

There is another thread about how meetinghouses are having 4 wards per building where possible. If the purpose of construction was to "launder money", they'd be building as many meetinghouses as possible. They can't be both building temples to launder money and not building meetinghouses to save money.

Easy access to temples means more people with temple recommends means more people feeling obligated to pay tithing. Temples generate income. Simple equation.

I disagree with you Jerry. Construction is an excellent way to launder money. I've seen it done. People live on the cream from construction loans, and investors lose when the business cycle ends. If you have a huge amount of income that is tax free, the best thing to do is move it into what the Mormons call agricultural reserves. This is land that will increase over ten times in value by a simple re-zoning into residential.

People always cite extravagant church expenditures as possible money laundering, but laundering is more about suspicious *income* than expenditures. Laundering is used to hide the true, illegal source of income and make it look legit.

If tscc were, say, growing and processing cocaine, and wholesaling it to cartels for huge sums of cash, they could inflate their tithing income figures to account for it. Now that dirty drug money is "clean" charitable contributions (I'm skipping some steps for clarity).

So if you're suspicious that TSCC is "laundering money", please tell me what you think goes in place of the cocaine sales I posited above. IOW, what kind of dirty money is *coming in* to the church?

If you read the comments on the KSL.com article about the 5 new temples announced you would swear they were getting used more than ever - however every time I've driven by the Ogden temple the parking lot looks deserted.

The church is VERY good at PR. They also have seemingly unlimited funds. So I think that building more temples with that cash is all part of the illusion.

I feel it is also provides them an opportunity to gardener more money -- if I remember right don't they require those living in the temple boundary to contribute more funds towards building of the new temple?

Makes me sick to think about actually....

How high up do you think it goes?

I really doubt the Prophet prays and gets a revelation from Gawd that a town needs a new temple.

I think church-related bishop contractors have revelations that a town needs a new temple.

Want to build a new restaurant in a chain? They study the demographics of the area, income, ages, traffic patterns, etc, and see how it relates to their current stores.

Lots of new building in a Morridor location with wealthy TBMs moving in, going to need a new McTemple to keep them busy and make the McTemple Recommend essential, hence making in necessary to keep more people current in tithing.

For example
http://www.saratogaspringscity.com/index.asp?SEC=D7103C92-5AED-4712-86A0-772EC806E828&Type=B_BASIC

New McTemple in Sarasota Springs!

numbersRus Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> Lots of new building in a Morridor location with
> wealthy TBMs moving in, going to need a new
> McTemple to keep them busy and make the McTemple
> Recommend essential, hence making in necessary to
> keep more people current in tithing.
>

That was my thought. If your bottom line is suffering, and you're having a hard time acquiring new customers, start building locations closer to your customers. I cynically believe this is entirely about the longterm ROI with getting more full-tithe payers.

You know, I never thought of it like that. Yesterday, I read a post on RFM that there were going to be 5 LDS temples constructed and the first thing I thought was "for a church that is 'true' and boasts 15 million members (and shrinking) they are planning to construct 5 new temples around the world." I knew something was funny with the picture and now that you mention it, you may be right.

Or it could be that they are putting up new temples around the world so that members in that part of the world have a temple near by to save them long trips.

The church goes by what increases the bottom line--how long it takes a temple to pay for itself in increased tithing revenue. You'd be amazed, even in Africa and even and especially in Utah. Many more people will want to keep their TRs current if they don't have to drive all the way from Saratoga Springs to American Fork to go to the temple. Not to mention they try to call people who are slackers to be temple workers, grounds people, etc. They assign wards to clean the temple but guess what, you need a recommend. Do you want your neighbors to know you don't have one? Wards are encouraged to have ward temple nights for that reason. Kids are now able to go the temple without it being their ward's assigned time and to encourage their parents to make it a family event.

The temples are the money machines. Simple concept--convince people the only way they can be with their family for all eternity is to come to your building, and often. And then make it so they have to fork over 10% of their income to get into the building. And in the meantime, they are very cheap to operate once built. A few utilities, etc. And the high-value asset can be leveraged for other projects. It's a business, people. Don't act like it's some kind of real church or something.

I think so it makes them money because I think they are related in some way to the companies that build the temples.

The seller of the land, the building contractor, the subcontractors, probably many are Mo Royalty, friends of the GA's, etc. So if there is a "close call" they will err on the side of building another McTemple to keep lining the pockets of their friends and relatives, and, besides, it gives the appearance of growth. 5 on top of 180 is about 2.7% growth.

As for those in far-flung places, if they have to travel overseas to go to a Temple very few are going to do it. If it is in their home country, bingo, they have to go, they have to get their recommend, and they have to pay their tithing, even if they have a meager salary and can barely feed their children.

Yes, I proved that here:

http://www.mormonism101.com/2015/01/how-big-is-mormon-church.html

Most temples are idle most of the time.

I believe Scientology does the same thing.

They buy huge buildings, slap their name on it... and it sets empty for years, but they boast constantly of growth so much that they "need" these building.

It's a religious form of a ponzi scheme.

How about this as another possible reason: temples as magnets for growth? The sagebrush expanses of Saratoga Springs, I assume, will continue to attract other new building as TBM real estate agents say "And there's a temple nearby!"

The other thread about the Pocatello mayor thinking the temple is a bulwark against economic problems prompted me to think of that.

Prompted me?

Prompted?

The church is true!

What do they do in those temples? What can they do? The number of names coming from genealogical research cannot be large enough to keep all temples busy.

If you do the math, 150 temples, doing 3 sessions a day each with 30 participants, 260 working days a year would require 3.5 million new names. Guessing that about 50 billion people have lived in the last two thousand years, and records were available for every single one of them, at 3.5 million endowments per year, it would take about 143 years to do all their temple work. My guess, however, is that records exist for very few of the people who have lived in the last two millenia. Let's say that records exist for every living person, plus a quarter of the historic population - 7 billion plus 11 billion = 18 billion potential genealogical records. Doing temple work at 3.5 million names a year, all temple work would be completed in about 52 years.

Or, working from the other direction, supply instead of capacity, if genealogy produces only 250,000 names a year (about 1000 new names per working day), divided among 150 temples gives about 1667 names per year per temple. Divide that by 30 patrons, and you get 56 sessions. At three sessions a day, a temple would be open less than 20 days a year.

Of course, if there are only two sessions a day, each with only six people, a temple can look busy for about 140 days a year.

For just living endowments, it would be cheaper (and maybe a more powerful unifying experience) to pay for members to travel at church expense to regional temples.

MarkJ Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What do they do in those temples? What can they
> do? The number of names coming from genealogical
> research cannot be large enough to keep all
> temples busy.
>
>

I believe, if you look into it, that you will find that many, if not most, names that have their temple work done have been done before and continue to have their work done repeatedly. Check around to see if this is true.

Tax-exempt real estate investment. Often built in urban areas where tax would be high.

e.g. http://www.sheratonphiladelphiadowntown.com/philadelphia-mormon-temple?product_id=

If temple ordinances are essential to exaltation (for yourself and your dead ancestors) then all members should have easy local access to those ordinances. Temples should be as plentiful as stake buildings. But they aren't, they haven't been and they never will be. It's not that temples need to be large and expensive. They just need a consecrated space with a font, changing rooms, a little curtained booth for washings and anointings, a room where a few people can watch a TV, a curtain, and another small room for sealings. You could do all that in the space of a single-wide mobile home. A wing added to existing meeting houses, with a security checkpoint, would do the job.

The fact the church doesn't do this means temples are about something more than their actual purpose. One is to help create and maintain the mystique of going to the temple. Oooo, a pretty place, a special place, where they do special things.

Another is to look impressive to the outside world. "Those Mormons must be somebody to have a building like that."

Another is to plant their flag (or golden horn player) in an area, which is why they try to put temples in prominent spots. "We're HERE, bitches."

Another is, as stated above, to maintain the illusion of growth and that Zion prospers.

Another get a two or three year boost in activity and tithes in the proposed temples' districts. Yay, we get a temple! No more driving to ________ and back! Let's all get worthy!

Another is... well there are a lot of reasons, none of which have anything to do with temple ordinances or the exaltation of the saints.

The church is building temples *because it can.*

It's an investment in commercial real estate, as well as PR.

Building temples is a business venture. What is the church leadership consist of but businessmen first and foremost.

My father (may he rest in peace) was a TBM in San Diego and a building contractor. He put in a bid to build the San Diego Temple AND he was a friend of the temple architect,Brother Bill Lewis.

My father was quickly and quietly outbid by a construction outfit from Utah. My father scratched his head and wondered how some out-of-state contractor could build the Temple and put in a bid that was millions less than the other bids.

Looking back at the incident as an exmo I realize that there are numerous ways for a construction company to maximize profits simply by having change orders and other devices to make the profits but still winning the contract by having the lowest bid. The construction company that won the bid was a Utah-based company the probably had some GA's on the board-of-directors. The bottom line was that there was an understanding with the contractor who could place a bid that was super low (company-going-bankrupt-low) but still make out in the end due too a special relationship between the client and the construction outfit.

I wonder if it is possible to find out who the contractors are who get hired to build all of these temples? Are they all the same company? It just seems funny that a TBM building contractor like my father would be under-bid by some Utah-based construction firm by MILLIONS of dollars without some understanding that the Utah-based company would profit in the end.

It could be interesting to trace the money.

I've noticed here in the Morridor, family connections equal contracts with the city, even if that company isn't the best one for it.

The way they do road construction (let's just shut down the highway for 6 months!) seems that it's nepotism rather than efficiency at work.

I think there's a little more than simply bidding, that bidding at times is just an illusion in Utah to make it seem legal, and then they go grease the hands of those who are their relatives and sometimes...friends.

It happens elsewhere, but it seems especially prominent in the Morridor from what I've seen thus far.