I’ve heard on occasion by TBM’s (and even some of you on this board) justifying the Morg’s mall building (City Creek), in these tough economic times with people unemployed and struggling, on the grounds that it “helps the economy” and “provides employment opportunities.”

If this is the case, THEN WHY IS THE MORG LAYING OFF JANITORS AND OTHER PAID EMPLOYEES OF THE CHURCH?

I call bulls**t on this argument and think you all should too when you hear it from TBM’s. If providing jobs and spurring economic growth were one of the reasons for justifying the LDS church to build a mall, then why are they LAYING PEOPLE OFF????

Well, that argument is only a temporary one. When the mall is done where are all the construction workers going to transition to? They are creating a mini-bubble in the SLC area at best.

All of the mormon God's solutions are provided by investment opportunities. Convenient, yes?

There was a poster a few months ago (as best as I recall) who said the contractors were not being paid on time. A job is good only if it is accompanied by a paycheck.

local workers in Ecuador to build safe housing for members, or to dig wells in some remote place where people are suffering.

In a small poor nation, 3 billion spent wisely could really change lives. I'm sure God would direct them how to spend it wisely, too, without thought to gain or politics.

In SLC, it creates yet another Nordstrom.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/23/2010 03:20PM by Heresy.

Heresy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> local workers in Ecuador to build safe housing for
> members, or to dig wells in some remote place
> where people are suffering.
>
> In a small poor nation, 3 billion spent wisely
> could really change lives. I'm sure God would
> direct them how to spend it wisely, too, without
> thought to gain or politics.
>
> In SLC, it creates yet another Nordstrom.

No, because we need to have MORE department stores for the white and delightsome AMERICAN teenyboppers.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Topped

Don't forget, by confiscating the money from the members through tithing, it deprives the members of using their dollars productively where they live. The church is taking the money from members to give it to businesses in SLC. The productive power of members' dollars is wiped out and sent to SLC.

For every job created in SLC, a job is destroyed somewhere else.

Good point! In Economics that would be described as the Tithing Opportunity Cost......Mormons unwittingly flushing down their hard earned money for decades.....what a shame.

madiran Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Don't forget, by confiscating the money from the
> members through tithing, it deprives the members
> of using their dollars productively where they
> live. The church is taking the money from members
> to give it to businesses in SLC. The productive
> power of members' dollars is wiped out and sent to
> SLC.
>
> For every job created in SLC, a job is destroyed
> somewhere else.


Yes, Exactly! That's one thing that really pisses me off about the Morg. They claim to be a world church preaching to all people regardless of race, yadadad. So what do they do? They take all the money donated by these members around the world (mostly poor people such as in Latin America) and INVEST it into the white, upper middle class UTAH economy. Makes me sick. It should be the other way around. If it was really GOD's church, we would see that $4 billion invested in local projects spread around the world equally (mostly poor countries), not in an American shopping mall.

No one is going to support a family working as a store clerk.

When money is put into the pockets of the poor, they spend it because they need to, and it stimulates the economy.

When the rich get the money, they save much of it.

The $4 billion would've been far better spent as other posters said above, in projects around the world where the need is greatest.

Or better yet, the money could've been refunded to the members.

Back in 2008, I was sitting in church, and everybody was saying how you should save your money, because their will be tough times ahead. I remember thinking, "No, we need to spend our money because spending money, more than anything else, will help the economy recover."

Building the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings during the Great Depression certainly helped the NYC economy. It helped keep Manhattan vital and has provided indirect economic benefit far in excess of the cost of the buildings.

Ditto the Interstate Highway System, the bulk of which was built in the 60s and early 70s.

There is a great deal of development that has been going on in the SL Valley in the corridor 4 blocks either side of Trax. There are major commercial/corporate parks at 10000 South, 5600 South, Downtown SLC, and major housing from downtown to UofU, 3300 South, and 4500 South.

I'm skeptical about how well the malls will do, but I fully expect downtown will do very well over the next 30 years, and City Creek Center is going to be one of the centerpieces of that development.

Face it. LDS Inc is basically a real estate corporation that sells religion as a way of keeping up property values, and providing cash flow. SLC is where a lot of their high-value properties are. They are protecting and promoting their investments. That's what real estate corporations do.

A lot of those billions of dollars are going to skilled laborers, and materials and equipment suppliers. It provides jobs for people in those industries until the economy improves and major construction picks up again in other parts of the valley, like Cottonwood redevelopment. If there wasn't a project around right now, they would move or change careers, making future projets more difficult to staff.

It appears they are in a financial bind. If they had a choice, they likely would not start City Creek now, but that ship has sailed. They can't stop it at this point. So they pinch pennies where they can. The janitor jobs may be a big sore spot with members, because they get yet another unpaid job dropped on them. However, those were primarily minimum wage part-time jobs with no benefits. Those jobs provide relatively small and extremely diffuse economic benefit.


Now, if you think LDS Inc should not be in the real estate business, but should be involved in humanitarian projects, I totally agree. Jimmy Carter, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, to name some of the high profile examples, run circles around the humanitarian efforts of LDS Inc. Hey, there are reasons it is called LDS Inc, and TSCC. It is what it is.

That is also true.

But as one economist on the NewsHour said recently, making hundreds of thousands of tank and shipping them to kill Nazi's did revive the economy.

However, making hundreds of thousands of tanks and dumping them into the ocean would have achieved the same results.

I think CCC is closer to an ocean dump than killing Nazi's.

I suppose if all Mormons lived in Utah, then spending tithing $ sprucing up the state capital would be an ok thing....BUT the LDS church is supposedly a worldwide church. Why are they not fixing up my small town in rural South Dakota?

Mormons are taking notice of the Jesus mall and they are both embarrassed and irritated. Most are still trying to defend it as 'fixing up SLC', but I don't think very many people really believe that is how the church should be spending the 'Lord's money'.

I think the 3 billion dollar mall is going to help a lot of morgbots see that they are being used by a corporation...so in the end, I think it's a good thing : )

I thought the church wanted out of the retail business when they sold ZCMI. Perhaps not.

...should show church members what 3 (or 4, or 5) billion dollars looks like -- a physical representation. Maybe then it would strike home.

One thought -- it could be represented in terms of home values. How many Utah homes could have been saved from foreclosure with 3 billion dollars?