Just read that things in the US economically are so tight that almost half of working Americans are cutting or eliminating their contributions to their retirement accounts.

I wonder how many Mormon families are cutting or eliminating their tithing or at least their other offerings.

Looking at an organization that belittles the family, bullies everyone around them, flaunts the law and has over $150 billion dollars in the US plus who know how much outside the US, I can't see going without for the vague promises they're given.

My dad would rather starve than stop paying tithing.

But I'm sure there are plenty of members who aren't so ardent. In fact, my accountant/bishop as I was leaving the church a decade ago admitted that there was a significant decline. He was very concerned.

That's not surprising. In 2014 the US economy was still in the doldrums from the Great Recession. A large number of Mormons must have been skimping on tithing for years, and once such habits are entrenched. . .

I can't believe the situation is not worse now. The revelations of enormous concealed wealth as well as the COVID era decline in meeting attendance must surely have rendered the problem worse.

What's God to do without the widow's mite--starve?

Hidden wealth is nothing new. What do you think Switzerland runs off? It's not all chocolate and cuckoo clocks.

Most of the public now remembers Jeffrey Epstein for the sex business, but the main reason he bought that island was financial. You don't need a passport to travel from the USA to the US Virgin Islands, and it's ideal for smuggling US dollars into the neighboring British Virgin Islands whose banks will take them for you, no questions asked. That's what moat of his guests were up to and that's why the slimeball was so rich.

Source? JP Morgan had to settle for $75M with the USVI regarding Epstein, and I'm not aware of any reason why the BVI would not hold their banks equally accountable.

Thank you for that, 2525. I had no idea that rich people and institutions hid their wealth.

Doldrums yes but it was on an upward climb that began in 2010 and continued until Covid shutdowns, the biggest event in my lifetime after WW2.

Robert Reich, former United States Secretary of Labor, has a pretty good handle on this. Walmart is a pretty good example.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/x03JamePNEo

Heartless Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Just read that things in the US economically are
> so tight that almost half of working Americans are
> cutting or eliminating their contributions to
> their retirement accounts.
>
> I wonder how many Mormon families are cutting or
> eliminating their tithing or at least their other
> offerings.
>
> Looking at an organization that belittles the
> family, bullies everyone around them, flaunts the
> law and has over $150 billion dollars in the US
> plus who know how much outside the US, I can't see
> going without for the vague promises they're
> given.

Actually, the economy (on paper at least) is doing well. Unemployment continues to hover around 4%, and wages are rising. However, as Susan I/S points out (see her post and its video link above), prices are rising faster than wages, and more of the wealth is going to the top 2% rather than to the middle class. The result is a mismatch between perception and reality.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if LDS church tithing is down--most of the money the church comes from its middle- and lower-class participants.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/08/2024 09:01PM by blindguy.

Yes, the jobs report was very good again. One big problem is housing, I don't see an easy way to fix it. It has been driven way up by investors that have bought up large chunks of houses and created shortages that can be exploited for high rent.

Housing is a huge issue in my condo community. I wish our covenants limited outside investors. Instead we have our condos being snapped up by investors to rent out. It used to be that our condos were great first homes for teachers, nurses, police officers, etc., and also good for retired people of limited means. It's getting harder in my area for the middle class to find entry level housing due to the investors sweeping everything affordable off of the market.

Teachers are really feeling squeezed. Central Maryland pays teachers generously by most standards, but my colleagues and I don't feel that we are getting ahead. Again, it's rising prices, and also Federal taxes, Medicare, SS, etc. that seem to eat up any increases we get. Whenever I get an increase, I mentally only count on getting about 60% of it at best.

Increasingly I feel that the rich are eating up too many of our resources, and the middle classes are left with paying the bills (and are about tapped out at this point.) How all but rich Mormons can pay the 10% tithe is beyond me.

>Again, it's rising prices, and also Federal taxes, Medicare, SS, etc. that seem to eat up any increases we get. Whenever I get an increase, I mentally only count on getting about 60% of it at best.

But the rates on none of that has changed in years. You only got 60% of a raise at best for a long time now. The only thing that might change when you get a raise is you move into a higher income tax bracket, and that only applies to the part of the raise that falls into the higher bracket. So why is that 60% figure more onerous now but than it was ten years ago?

Auto insurance is way up, as is homeowners insurance in many areas, neither of which has anything to do with taxes. Home mortgage rates are way up, but up to what they were for most of my working life. For decades, a 5% to 6% mortgage was pretty much what a mortgage cost, except in the late 1970s, when they spiked into the upper teens for a while. That was real inflation, which started in the late 1960s and lasted into the early 1980s.

In 1971, Congress passed a law giving the President authority to set wage and price controls, and in 1972, Nixon actually used that authority to create wage and price controls. Can you in your wildest dreams imagine such a thing happening now?

Inflation roared on for a full decade after that. Mortgages finally settled back down to 5% and 6% in the mid 1980s. The last 15 years was the anomaly. The current mortgage rates are reversion to the mean. People have conveniently forgotten what mortgage rates used to be, and they feel very put upon.


I'm also suspicious of the claim that 46% of middle class are cutting retirement contributions. I'd like to see a source on that statistic. I know what's not going down - travel, hotel occupancy, airline traffic, gasoline consumption. People may whine, but they are still spending money. At some point we need to ignore what they say and watch what they do.

When this was first posted, this was the only reference I could find.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/46-middle-class-workers-slashing-115100807.html#:~:text=A%20Primerica%20survey%20found%20that,cited%20as%20a%20major%20culprit.

You are correct that insurance (auto, home) has risen sharply, and also food and entertainment costs.

The reason that I mentioned taxes is that schools in Maryland (especially central Maryland) are really making a good effort to pay teachers better. So when you get what at first seems to be a generous (and long awaited) raise, by the time it hits your checking or savings account, a large chunk of it has been taken away.

I am closing in on 30 years in my career. I went into teaching with a Master's degree and have multiple certifications. It's only in within the past few years that I can do a little bit more than just pay my monthly bills. No one goes into teaching (nursing, police work, etc.) to get rich, but deep into your career, given your education, experience, and degrees and/or certifications, you do expect some degree of prosperity.

And that's my complaint. I see the middle class continually denied. We write the checks, and no one else is (the poor can't, and the rich won't.) As a teacher, I paid more in taxes for at least one year than a certain rich ex-leader.

Brother Of Jerry wrote in part:

"People have conveniently forgotten what mortgage rates used to be, and they feel very put upon."

This is (mostly) a very good point. We humans tend to think very much in the short term, and long-range trends mean almost nothing to us both in the future and in the past. Additionally, people who came of age and started buying things as adults during the anomaly when rates were very low have absolutely no memory of what it was like when rates were higher because they *never* personally experienced it. Sure, their parents experienced it, but many parents attempt to shield their children from the truths of financial decision-making, resulting in children who really have no idea of how things used to be and who think that those low mortgage rates are the way things are supposed to be.

When we bought our home in TN in 1987, the interest rate for the mortgage was 11%. Several refinancings over the years reduced it to 5.5%. We paid it off early, but it was a challenge with a young family and a 11% mortgage at the time so we could have a home.

I bought in 2003 for over 6%. I refinanced down to a 15-year in 2008 at about 4.65%, and rode that one out. I never got the lowest rates, but the 4.65% in particular was quite affordable.

I too would like to see a source for Heartless's 46%, but the figure is superficially credible. Mortgage expenses have risen significantly, so too consumer loans, etc. Household debt is consequently rising, which means by definition that savings--which would include retirement contributions--are decreasing.

It would also be nice to see what the magnitude of the decline is.

It's totally my fault! I accept full responsibility.

The Survey was done by Primeric

Thx. Yahoo finance did cite Primeric, and Primeric said it was a tracking poll, which is the same group of people, repeatedly surveyed over a period of time, so even if the group is not a particularly representative sample, they can at least be reliably compared against themselves over time. I was concerned it might be a self-selected internet poll, which would be wildly unreliable. Self-selectors tend to be the aggrieved.

I too was wondering what the magnitude of the decline is. Like I said, other measures of discretionary spending (e.g. vacation travel) seem to be holding up, and tax revenues are up, and wages, particularly at the low end, are up. Middle and upper-middle wages, not so much, and that is a group that votes pretty reliably, so them being unhappy worries the present administration.

I would think, that entirely separate from national and world economic conditions, the news stories about LDS Inc being worth something in the neighborhood a quarter trillion dollars would make some LDS families put a thumb on the scale when they were handing over money to the church.

I'm sure I would have been a financial conscientious objector under those circumstances, but I was a doubter clear back in HS. The BoM and BoA just didn't pass the smell test for me, ever.

I feel like Mormonism is suffering death by a thousand cuts. There is a steady stream of events that for a few of the faithful, that particular event was the straw that broke the camel's back, and those few leave. There are not corresponding events that draw a small group of people in (or back in) to the church.

Frankly, I think the financial disclosures, both about how much the church is worth, and its illegal maneuvering to hide that wealth, are pretty large straws that are breaking a correspondingly larger share of camel backs.

> I feel like Mormonism is suffering death by a
> thousand cuts. There is a steady stream of events
> that for a few of the faithful, that particular
> event was the straw that broke the camel's back,
> and those few leave.

"Impressive! EOD feels proud when he's managed to mix just two metaphors."

--Dorothy L. Sayers, crime writer, playwright, and soothsayer to the stars

I have always loved mixed metaphors, as my high school English teachers pointed out again and again. ;)

We have created a monster and it has come home to roost.