Do you think that most devout Mormons would still believe that God wanted them to pay 10% tithing calculated on their gross income?

"Hey, Billy! Happy Birthday! Hope you like your birthday present. A box full of twigs and rocks can be so much fun! All the other kids are going to be so envious!"

Is this a rhetorical question ?

I would be interested to know what other people expect would be the reaction of TBMs they know. I know many TBMs but I know that the sample of TBMs I personally know may be too small for me to reach any particular conclusions.

I think most of my TBM relatives and friends would realize the ludicrousness of paying 10% on gross in circumstances where the effective tax rate was 90% (resulting in exactly zero disposable income). They would probably come up with some compromise scheme. But what about tax rates of 70%, 50%...30%...? Where would it make sense to a devout TBM to draw the line?

At what point would reason and logic kick in enough to kick out the idiotic indoctrination that has them believing that they "owe" the church 10% of money that they actually never receive or have any control over?

I have actually never found any scriptural support for the tithing policies that are currently followed by most devout Mormons in any case.

The scriptures refer to paying tithing on interest or increase.

But when a person exchanges their time and labor (at market rates) for an equivalent value in money, THERE IS NEITHER INCREASE NOR INTEREST. To illustrate, if you exchange your 1970 VW Beetle for somebody else's 1970 Mini Cooper of equal blue-book value, would any semi-sane Mormon claim that you were obligated to pay tithing on it? I don't think so. You've gained a Mini Cooper, but lost a VW Beetle of equal value.

The same principle applies to wage labor. You've gained money, but you've lost the time and physical energy/labor that you exchanged for the money.

Back in the day, you could semi-reasonably argue that if your hen hatched 10 chicks, you had an "increase" in the number of chickens owned and therefore, according to the relevant scriptures, you owed one chicken to Gawd Almighty. But when you're making a straightforward exchange of two things of equal value, it's much harder to argue that you've had any increase.

Yeah. Good question. I was one of the morons that paid 10% on gross income. Of course, I wasn't making a whole lot of money for a lot of that time and the wife I had at the time made zero. So taxes were lower, but tithing was still 10%.

That is one of the things that bothered me about tithing even when I was a dyed-in-the-wool TBM. I would hear people exclaim that 10% is fair because it scales up. If you make little, then you pay little. If you make a lot, then you pay a lot. Of course, it didn't take me long to realize that there is this thing called disposable income. If you are poor, you don't have any. In fact, you are likely skimping on necessities - especially if you are multiplying and replenishing the earth like a good little Mormon drone should. If you are wealthy, you still have quite a bit of disposable income - even after you give away 10%.

I really found it galling years later to realize that this is not what the cult has always taught. In the early days of the church, tithing was considered to be 10% of your income after covering your necessities. And it was especially galling to see that the modern church has redacted some quotes of earlier church leaders to hide this fact.

in the way it operated. Often the communities were very stable, and everyone knew everyone else. The Bishop would be in charge of collecting tithing and, if he was a halfway decent human being, would naturally not try to squeeze a needy family for everything they had. In many cases, they would be great friends. Lifelong acquaintances. (And a lot of times with farms and such, it would be hard in any case to even accurately calculate 10% of income.) So a reasonable contribution based on the family's circumstances would usually suffice. The rest was between the member and God to sort out as a matter of conscience.

Since those days, it has become so corporate, cold and impersonal that the members of any given ward are nothing more than widgets in the minds of the men who make policy in the central command center in SLC. "How much income did the widgets generate for us this year? Ooh! That's down from last year. We need to get more out of the widgets next year. We need to crack down on non-conforming widgets."

The top marginal tax rate in the 1960s was 91% on income over $200,000.00

Lesser rates of course applied to income at lower levels so the overall tax bill was closer to 42% of all income.

you could theoretically pay to the church every penny that was left over after taxes...and end up owing more tithing than you could possibly pay. Wonder if Willard Marriott, Sr. paid tithing on gross.

The value of a dollar in 1960 is about $850 now, so the $200k earnings then would be $170 million.

If the tax rate was 90%, we would be in a 100% socialistic state and nobody would work, there wouldn't be any incentive. Government would have to pay for everything.

From where? They would just print more money and people would go to the stores where there would be nothing to buy.

Look what's happened in Venezuela.

The church would be getting 10% of nothing.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/18/2019 09:34AM by tumwater.

$850? No.

A dollar in 1960 had the purchasing power of about $8.50 in today's terms.

Effen math.

There's always a danger in mistaking a percentage change for an absolute number!

Sorry about the math mistake on inflation, I was using my Kindle to reply and the wording of the information was a little confusing.

But my statement on socialism still stands.

Well, yes. If total taxation is 100%, an economy will collapse to zero within several weeks--the amount of time it takes for a lot of people to starve to death.

But that is a matter of math and applies to all economic systems. No socialist state has ever behaved as you suggest.

I was just looking at the top income tax rates in Denmark and Sweden per Wiki, and to my surprise the top rates are not substantially different between the U.S. and these countries when you add in potential state and local income taxes for the U.S. Where Scandinavia and the European countries really hit you hard is on sales taxes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates

I see the Millennials really struggling financially. Salaries have been depressed, the cost of housing has skyrocketed, and they have enormous student loans to pay off. I think that tithing is or will be a tough sell to this crowd.

It will sadly get worse for Millennials. Today's "capitalists" and "libertarians" are perfectly willing to cut taxes and increase spending which is magically, and religiously, supposed to generate enough GDP growth to shrink the government deficit and national debt. People are remarkably willing to embrace idiotic philosophies that excuse their own enrichment.

The consequence has been an enormous expansion in national debt and unfunded liabilities. But the entitled have persuaded themselves that they have paid into the system and hence deserve everything they have, through their representatives, given themselves. The fact that they have NOT funded their own privileges by a long shot, and that the burden will fall to their children and grandchildren, is beside the point. Faith is like that: take what you want and trust God, the state, or magic to redress the consequences.

It's an egregious instance of inter-generational theft, the height of selfishness, to bequeath to one's own children massive financial obligations. Yet that is what has happened.

Some time ago I heard Sean Hannity complaining about taxes. He was at the 39% federal level, with New York State Taxes at 8.82%, and with a 3.8% city of New York tax. And a 4.5% sales tax. And if that's not enough then there is also property taxes as well.

He's left with less than 40% of what he started with. It's bad! it's really bad!

But if TBMs were taxed as high as Hannity I don't think they'd tithe at all.