Economic Stimulus Package

I received a notice from the Internal Revenue Service yesterday telling me that a tax rebate check will be sent later this year. The concept is total anathema to me but I will swallow my ideology and accept the check. The president and congress want me and 116 million others to spend this money with abandon in the hope that it will stimulate the economy and ward off a recession.

I learned about an interesting concept from my two grandfathers when I was a child, they were both astute money managers, the concept is called saving. When I studied Economics in College, I learned a fancy term for saving. The term is called “Marginal propensity to Save”. This term simply defined by the science of economics says that for each extra dollar of income received a portion goes into savings. This concept has a companion term Called “Marginal Propensity to Consume“, for each extra dollar of income received a portion will be spent on goods and services. The two numbers will always add up to one. As far as I know there is no provision in their theory for giving. I have not heard of a marginal propensity to give except in God‘s word. God asks that we give ten percent of our income to him through his body the church. This automatically gives every Christian a marginal propensity to give of 0.1. Hence, 10% of this rebate should go to God through His Church.

Some might say that this is not helping the economy -- “you are supposed to buy worthless junk with that rebate“. Imagine this money going into the mortgage fund at Mt Olive. From there it goes to the Lutheran Church Extension Fund to help pay off our loan. The extension fund then lends this money to other congregations to build. These congregations then hire contractors, buy materials and employ people to build church facilities so that more people will be drawn into the Kingdom of God. What a triple win situation! People are employed building useful buildings, the economy is still helped and God‘s work is facilitated. Depending on your situation the check can be split into giving, saving, and spending. Paying down debt, a form of saving is another option. Think about it between now and when the check arrives, we are even free to give it all to God’s work.