We live in strange times. Here we
were, cruising along, living under the delusion that our economic prosperity
was invincible. But in a few short weeks, a simple virus―which may or may not even be complex enough to be
considered a living thing―has
brought the world economy to its knees. In the past two weeks, a staggering 10 million
American workers have applied for unemployment benefits. And we have not hit
the peak of the pandemic yet. The economic pain will increase drastically before
it decreases.
But as Paul Krugman pointed out in
his column this week, this is not a normal economic contraction. It’s more as
if we have intentionally induced an economic coma in order to save society and
as many of its members as possible. This is the effect of the unfortunately
named “social distancing” we are practicing and the stay-at-home orders from
government.
Krugman also points out another
difference between this economic contraction and a “normal” recession: it
affects some sectors of the economy dramatically, while other sectors are
booming, and still others are seemingly untouched, although if the coma lasts
long enough, eventually all sectors will likely feel the pain. The industries
that are most affected are those based on dense public patronage: restaurants,
airlines, educational institutions, sporting events, movies, theaters, concerts,
conferences, amusement parks. Many retail establishments are closing or
offering curbside service only. Other industries, however, are seeing the
opposite effect. Grocery stores, teleconferencing, ecommerce, digital media, and,
of course, some aspects of health care are seeing increased activity. And then
there are those organizations and industries that are largely unaffected by the
pandemic.
For the moment, I am in one of
those organizations. I work for BYU as editorial director at BYU Studies, a
scholarly Mormon studies journal, but even though the university is largely
deserted, trying to offer course instruction online, BYU Studies is still chugging
along, trying to pull together another quarterly journal. We have always been
mostly unaffected by the university’s academic calendar, and the pandemic did
not change this. Some of my colleagues have been working from home. Our student
programmers and interns are mostly working remotely, some even out of state.
But three of us have been showing up nearly every day, doing our work as usual.
Even if Utah implemented a stay-at-home directive, going to work at the Joseph
F. Smith Building at BYU would be pretty much the same as staying home. For one
of my coworkers, it would probably be safer, because she has kids running
around her house. BYU Studies has a fairly spacious office suite. The three of
us work in different rooms. The large building is pretty much empty. It is rare
to see anyone in the hallways. There is hand sanitizer everywhere. Student
custodial employees come around periodically and disinfect doorknobs and
countertops. I feel as safe there as at home. So I will likely continue to
drive in to work until I’m required to do otherwise.
The other aspect of my job that
makes it far different from many others in our pandemic-stricken economy is
that I don’t worry about getting a paycheck. BYU is not going out of business,
and it is backed by a church with massive reserves of wealth. So my paycheck is
not likely to be in jeopardy during this economic contraction. My wife, on the
other hand, tutors math in our home, so her income has taken a hit, but we can
still live comfortably on my salary, so we are not hurting.
What I am getting at here is that my
wife and I, and many others in our current macroeconomic predicament, do not
need the money Uncle Sam is planning to send our way soon. I am also just a few
years away from retirement. I have a very adequate pension from DMBA, as well
as a 401(k) that I have been feeding for quite a few years now, so I don’t need
any extra money for retirement either. Because of this, I feel particularly fortunate.
But I also feel a bit guilty. My wife and I will probably get $2,400 from the
government in relief money. We don’t need it, and we have talked about this and
have decided we should give the money somehow to those who have been sucked
into the economic vacuum created by COVID-19. The question is how. I’ve
entertained the idea of going to restaurants and dropping $100 tips on the
employees. But even though I’m sure most of them could use the help, they are
actually working and still getting paid. So maybe that’s not the best idea.
I’m sure there are better ways to
pass this relief money along to those who most need the relief. So I’m asking
you for help. Are you aware of channels through which we can get this
government windfall into the right hands? Who needs it most, and how can we
make sure it gets to them? I’m sure you have good ideas I haven’t thought of.
The other reason I bring up my own
financial situation is that there are many in our society who are in the same
boat my wife and I are in. Many people are still employed, as I am, and many
are retired and are living on pensions or retirement funds that are little
affected by the employment crisis. I would hope that most of these people will
do what my wife and I are planning to do.
It’s obviously too difficult for
the federal government to distinguish between those workers who are financially
secure and those who aren’t. They’ve set some arbitrary upper income limits to
the relief payments, but beneath those limits are many like me who don’t need
the money we’ll be receiving. So, really, it’s up to us to make this program
work for the greatest good. And isn’t that what being members of a society is
all about?
We are looking at donating to the local food bank, homeless and domestic violence shelters, and a community foundation that distributes to many small non-profits. Also, giving to artists whose work we enjoy through Patreon and similar sites.
ReplyDeleteGreat ideas. Thanks.
DeleteGreat intention. You would probably like passthelettuce.org which is a social media campaign to pledge to pass your check along if you're ok. It also has a list of suggested organizations to donate to.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I'll take a look.
DeleteThe registration process here is weird, but I guess I will go ahead anyway.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your post and it has inspired me to write a small article in response. It may take a minute to figure out the connection between your post and my article, but maybe it will become clear later.
A revelatory virus?
I have been studying a related church history problem for a long time, and suddenly this virus situation has brought the whole thing into focus for me. As I understand it, the way the church is organized today is very different from the way it has been organized and operated for most of the history of the earth.
For most of the history of the earth, there was no requirement to have a meeting place or a temple in order to live the Gospel fully. For example, Adam had no requirement to build an expensive meeting place or a super-expensive temple before he could live the full Gospel. It would make little sense to say that Adam had to somehow devote one million man-years to building a temple like the Temple of Solomon before he could exercise all the priesthood powers he was given. Would he be required to wait centuries before he could have his first children married in a temple marriage? The most that was required, or even allowed, was an altar which was nothing more than a pile of rocks, easily created and easily abandoned.
The same was certainly true of Abraham. As the patriarchal head of a nomadic tribe, it would make no sense at all for him to build a non-portable Temple of Herod before he could live the gospel and fully exercise the priesthood. The Church which Christ introduced into the Jerusalem area explicitly did away with the law of Moses, including any need for the Temple of Herod or any temple at all, for that matter. During Roman times, the church members were not allowed to build chapels or temples, but we read that they had all of the temple ordinances necessary for complete salvation, including work for the dead. Any structures they might have built would be competing with the pagan temples of the time. The church members in the "seven churches of Asia" were operating independently, without so much as a headquarters anywhere, and certainly without any required architecture to carry out their priesthood functions. Actually, the temples that we consider so important today would be an aberration in the larger scale of things. One of the critical practical points is that the early saints just after the time of Christ could devote all of their resources to taking care of each other and did not have to make massive expenditures to set up fixed temples and altars. No tithing was collected again until hundreds of years after the death of Christ. Today we have gradually made the choice to spend all of our charity money on buildings and professional church staff rather than spend it on charity which was the original intent and action mandated by the New Testament.
So this new situation with the virus has required us to live the gospel as did Adam and Abraham and the early Christians, functioning without any special buildings.
Here is the rest of the story:
ReplyDeleteI thought it was interesting that on Saturday my daughter-in-law speculated that perhaps the Hosanna Shout, typically experienced during a temple dedication, would be a means of dedicating our homes for all the purposes of chapels and temples. It did not turn out to be true, exactly, but it certainly brings up the topic.
With the announcement of a new "temple" in Shanghai, China, we have an interesting situation where there will be a "multipurpose" building. Perhaps that will be something like the endowment house in Salt Lake City which served as a place for higher priesthood ordinances, and perhaps had other purposes as well, during the forty years while the Salt Lake Temple was under construction. I'm going to guess that that Chinese multipurpose building will alternate on a regular basis between being a normal meetinghouse for regular services and a temple for temple services.
The exact point that you made that I wanted to react to was the gross inefficiency and unfairness of the typically clumsy government programs of throwing trillions of dollars at social problems, knowing all along that probably two thirds of it will either be completely wasted or will go to the wrong people or will do active social damage. Having worked for the federal government most of my life, I understand all too well how that process works.
The only way to fix that problem with government programs on a long-term basis is to create a charity-based welfare system which would replace all of the corrupt and grossly inefficient tax-and-spend government systems that we are tolerating these days. If the LDS Church could show people how to live like the Saints did for at least the first 300 years after the life of Christ, we could get rid of about 90% of what the politicians argue about in Washington, fighting over who gets what transfer payments from whom -- pensions, medical care, economic disruptions, corporate welfare, reparations, etc. I believe all of the stated government welfare goals could be accomplished with 20% of the money now allocated, if it were done using a religion-and-charity based system, ending most of the political nonsense.
I often write up ideas for my own entertainment, and the last one had to do with my speculations that China could become the new Rome as far as how the church adapts to social situations. China's atheism is probably not that much different from Rome's paganism in that there can be no competing religions that are allowed to exhibit and advertise their existence, especially through unique buildings. I speculated that the church would have to adopt the 4000BC (Adam) / 2000BC (Abraham) / 100AD (Christ's followers) version of gospel operations if it was ever going to make any serious inroads into China.
The LDS Church might be viewed by the Chinese government leaders as a competing ideology/religion or as a competing for-profit corporation or as a competing extra layer of government, etc., none of which are likely to be tolerated by a militantly atheist totalitarian government.
Interesting thoughts. I'm not sure I agree with your conclusions, though. Much of what you consider government waste is a largely futile attempt to correct the massive flaws of corporate capitalism. This problem is systemic, and therefore the only solution is systemic. We need to fix capitalism so that it distributes wealth more fairly. I've written extensively about this topic on this blog. You'll have to go back a few years, but it's all here.
ReplyDeleteIn the early days of the Church, before corporate capitalism was really a thing, Joseph Smith sought again and again to implement an economic system among the Saints that would equalize wealth. Brigham Young, who saw the beginnings of the capitalist abuses that have now run rampant, was a fervent anticapitalist. He sought to implement various patterns of communitarian economics (while accumulating a massive amount of wealth himself, which I find very ironic). Eventually, however, Mormons gave up their communitarian economics, their polygamous marriages, and their theocratic notions. We are now died-in-the-wool monogamous, capitalist republican flag-wavers. But most of us think government is evil and that capitalist businesses are the solution to all our woes. What we actually need nowadays is a very strong government to rein in the abuses of runaway capitalism.
But none of what you wrote or what I just expressed has anything to do with my current dilemma, which is how to get the government's relief payment to me into the hands of those who most need relief.
Thanks for being a good sport about my just barging into your blog. Some of us have too much time on our hands, I guess, and I'm using some of mine to begin to more seriously explore the Mormon Bloggernacle/Blogosphere. I will probably end up getting myself in trouble, poking my nose into unfamiliar places.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your concern about how to get this huge amount of recently legislated money into the right hands. I think you are experiencing the right impulse. But it seems like the mechanisms we have available are pretty clumsy. Using the IRS name-and-address database for taxpayers will probably miss a large number of people who need the money most, but did not need to send in a tax return last year because of their low income. I hear that the banks who are supposed to hand out trillions of dollars in loans/grants are completely overwhelmed with all of these new requests. It is hard to imagine how that can get sorted out quickly and accurately so that businesses can have the money to continue to pay their employees, whether they have work for them or not.
I read up a little bit about the book you published and about Herman Daly who supposedly is referenced in that book. The difficulty I see is between the need for individual freedom, which you mention in your description of the book, and the idea that government should flatten out the "economic curve" much like the CDC is now trying to flatten out the pandemic curve. Maybe I need to read your whole book to understand your ideas better, but I'm concerned that your logic might have been applied just after the invention of the wheel so that all the technologies invented in the last 300 years would have been precluded as being some kind of social contagion.
I researched and wrote three books about Joseph Smith's united order ideas and Brigham Young's united order ideas, and self-published two of them. I was concerned with similar questions, but arrived at quite a different answer than you. I actually don't see any conflict between Brigham Young's personal behavior and what he supposedly taught. I think he was quite consistent.
The critical thing which most historians have missed is that until 1869, there were no laws in Utah allowing ownership of any kind of land or other property, or allowing the formation of any kind of business organization except a common-law partnership, which is inherently unstable since it has to be totally reorganized whenever anyone enters or leaves. Certainly, there was no opportunity to create a corporation. This meant that Brigham Young and others were simply inventing temporary religion-based substitutes for "corporations" since they couldn't have real ones, using rhetoric instead of laws to reach a similar practical result. You might notice that as soon as a corporation form of business was available, the Mormons instantly used it, as in the case of the incorporation of ZCMI from its previous cooperative form to its corporate form.
It is my opinion that the only way to solve the problems you refer to is to create charitable institutions on a grand scale, presumably associated with religious organizations, which might be involved in $2 to $4 trillion a year as part of our economy. All of these kinds of problems could be handled voluntarily and charitably, and could be at least 100 times more refined and precise in how aid is delivered. My inclination is to say that about two-thirds of the money that goes through the government tax-and-spend systems is wasted or misallocated, allowing a Christian welfare system to be about three times as efficient and effective.
The great mystery to me is why the LDS church has gotten completely out of the charity business and has outsourced every important previously-charitable function to the government. I would like to see that process reversed.
Just a quick update. This is probably predictable, but so far we haven't received any money from the government, even though they have my info from my 2018 tax return. I haven't filed yet for 2019. We can probably chalk this up to a woefully underfunded IRS.
ReplyDelete