A Biblical Solution To The Recession

In the Old Testament government of Israel, God, through Moses, decreed one of the greatest principles for national fiscal health that has ever existed – the year of jubilee. Every 7 years all debts were released and wiped clean.  Can you imagine an economy where every 7 years the entire population becomes debt-free?

First of all,  no one would lend money long-term.  Even short term debt would be rare in such a system.   Cash would be king.   The personal savings rate would be through the roof.

Would such a system work in present day America?  Would we be where we are with the housing and mortgage mess if we had scheduled jubilee years?  We’re tossing around trillions that seem to be doing no useful good.  Why not try it?   Cancel all debts.   Cancel all mortgages.   Cancel the government’s debt (they’re broke too).   I know I would wake up perkier the day after.

And if it works, let’s just make every 7 years a jubilee year.  Then we could print the message that the recession is over on the front of every major news magazine ….. and this time, it would be true.

Having A Successful Yard Sale

As a connoisseur of yard sales, garage sales, estate sales, or whatever you want to call it sales, I am often frustrated with the way other folks run their sales.   My wife can run the sale and it won’t raise thirty bucks.   My average is $100 to $400, depending on what I have to sell.  Here are some keys to hosting a successful sale:

1.  Your number one goal is getting rid of everything possible. Don’t get hung up on getting top dollar for each item, but focus on volume. Many people who come are selling on ebay or at the flea market.  They can’t buy high retail and sell at retail.  My wife always comes out and yells at me about selling too cheaply.  But at the end of the day, she is amazed at the wad in my pocket.  Yard sale success is not based on how much you get for each item, but how little you have left over at the end.

2.  You have to have enough items to hold people’s attention. If you have 20 items, don’t waste your time.  Just gather it and give it to the charity thrift shop.  Go through every closet and storage area and ask yourself , “When was the last time I used this?”  Better yet, “When was the last time I saw this?”  Clutter is a source of stress.  Turn it into cash and go have a good time.

3.  Good signage is crucial. I never advertise in the newspaper, but I do have good signage.    Your signs should be in large readable letters.  Remember, people will be reading this from a car seat at quite a distance.  Not only that, they will be reading it while they are moving.  Try to get at least one sign on a busy street.  If there are turns to make, mark them clearly.   Most importantly, put your largest, nicest sign in your front yard.

4.  Pricing is everything. I’ve already alluded to this, but the reason most sales end with half their stuff not sold, is price.   Don’t wait until the final hours of the sale to drop prices.   I drop my prices continuously from the very start.  One of my most successful sales was when I had a couple of clothes tables with everything on those tables at 10 cents each.   People got on their cell phones and called all their friends and they came from everywhere.  In retailing, they call that a loss leader.   Stores will actually sell for below wholesale cost to gather a crowd to buy all the other stuff.

5.  Focus on your customers. It is frustrating to go to a sale and someone is engaged in an intense conversation with someone else either in person or on their cell phone.   I like to haggle, ask about the history of some items, ask for a group discount.  I always like to ask if the have any of the items I specialize in, and many times they go back in the house and bring it out.  Selling is not an exchange of merchandise.  Selling is an exchange of emotions, a transfer of feelings.

6.  An often forgotten old-fashioned value:  The customer is always right.

7.  Have some free items. It creates good will.   It loosens people up.  Many times the one I gave free items to will turn around and load up with the other items.

8.  My secret weapon….. When a customer enters my yard sale, I greet them in a friendly manner, saying, “Feel free to make me offers – I’ll probably say yes.”

9.  A few more pointers: Help people get items to their vehicle.   I enlist my kids (the big ones).   Also, I usually start a large sale on a Friday, but I don’t put out all my stuff.  I tell everybody who comes on Friday, “I have more stuff that I haven’t gone through.  Feel free to come back tomorrow and see all my other things.”   Many do.  On day two or sooner, take all your $1 to $5 items and put them on some tables and mark those tables: EVERYTHING ON THIS TABLE IS 25 CENTS.    A cardinal rule of yard sales is:  Don’t fall in love with anything…. it’s all junk.   JUST GET RID OF THE JUNK !

The Crippling Of The Elderly

Are the elderly, the ones who made this country great, being treated with respect by our government?  I would be the first to say that the government can’t do everything.   But, they do have a  moral responsibility to do  some things and protect the weak and less advantaged.

I have worked in a service industry (real estate sales) in a county that is more than 50% populated by seniors.  Not only have I seen neglect of real needs of seniors,  I also see some alarming trends of the government preying on their vulnerability.   For example, here in Florida, the state has cut benefits to the disabled, many of whom are senior citizens.  During the same time, state taxes have been used to buy swamp land in the name of ecology and purchase large sports stadiums.

Many of the very oldest of our seniors are living on $300 per month in Social Security benefits.   And the IRS has the gall to tax their meager proceeds.  How does a person pay for housing, eat, buy clothes, see a doctor, and go to the dentist?   Sadly,  I have seen many end up homeless.  Talk to any Florida based organization that helps the homeless and ask how many senior citizens are on the street.   You’ll be amazed at what you hear.  Better yet, volunteer to help a homeless feeding program and you will see for yourself  many seniors living on the streets -  it will break your heart.  In the City of Tampa, FL alone, there are upwards of 8,000 homeless.   Sadly, many are older Americans.   Sadder still, is that many are veterans who fought to keep us free.

A factor that has been widely overlooked is the hidden and unhidden inflation in our economy.  The meager income paid to seniors is shrinking due to inflation.   Many are predicting hyper-inflation in the next few years.

Then, there is the marriage penalty that pressures seniors who would have married, to live together.  Many do so with great feelings of guilt and shame.  Seniors who live together draw more Social Security than couples who marry.  This is wrong.  Many a politician has campaigned on the promise to change it, but we’re still waiting.

One of the greatest tavesties of justice is the disappearance of retirement funds.  There has to be regulation put in place to keep retirement money safe.  When people work and save for an entire lifetime some money for their golden years, that money should be held sacred by our laws.  Those who would plunder those funds should do a life sentence.

The high gasoline prices have severely hurt many senior programs such as Meals On Wheels.  The slow economy has limited job opportunities for seniors who need extra income.  I see my own mother considering moving across the country to get lower rent.   It seems the deck is stacked against our senior population and with the exception of election years,  no one seems to be souding the alarm.   Growing tax pressures,  indifference from the state and federal governments,  a suffering economy and shrinking job market, all these things are making the golden years much less golden.

We owe a great debt to our seniors.   They fought our wars,  built our industries, raised up our institutions, and for the most part paid their own way.    We send billions across the sea to people who despise us.   We can do better than this for our own.

The American Caste System

In India they have a social pecking order called a caste system.  The lowest people class is a group known as the untouchables.   Privileges afforded to the higher castes are not accessible to them.   We look at that here in the United States and we think how archaic that is, and  how odd it is in modern life.   We think ourselves to be more advanced,  more educated, and definitely more sophisticated.   I would propose that all of our sophistication and American pride is a smoke screen.  The reality is that we are more backward than they are.

First of all I would observe that human rights and freedom are not accessible to all.  For example, if a rich man gets accused of a felony, he would immediately call the family attorney, make bail, hire expert witnesses to tear down the prosecutor’s case, and either get a greatly reduced sentence or be aquitted altogether.  But, if a poor man was accused of a felony, he stays locked up during the trial,  he gets a free public defender.  I’ve actually observed trials where the public defender didn’t even have a conversation with the accused until minutes before the trial.  Their reputation is that they carry a heavy case load and are forced to do the bare minimum for their clients.   At least they can wave bye to you on your way to the big house.  There is not justice for all – only justice for those who can afford it.

Then there is the credit reporting system.  Once an individual has a tainted credit score, they will have very limited access to housing and to employment.  So, how can someone get ahead if he can’t access housing or get a job?  And to add to the pain of the credit damaged ones, the insurance company will jack up your insurance rates if your rating goes down.  This creates a slippery slope for those who are struggling to avoid homelessness.

My next exposure of the American caste system is our health care system.   I can remember when my wife’s uncle needed a new liver.   He was told that unless he could ante up $6000 to make a down payment on rejection drugs, he could not get on the list to get a new liver.  Uncle Bill died.

Finally there is the matter of how we deal with life.   Medical technology has advanced to the place where people are killing the handicapped before birth and calling it choice.  Already in this country the elderly routinely get overdosed on morphine as a form of mercy killing if the care givers determine that their quality of life is not worth saving.  The systematic killing of the unborn and the elderly is vigorously defended by the liberals.   One of the first presidential orders signed by President Obama was to allow our tax money to be used internationally to kill unwanted children.  Meanwhile there is a huge shortage of babies for adoption, forcing many in North America and Europe to travel to Asia to adopt a baby.   When we were in China adopting our daughter, we met couples from England, France, Spain, and Italy who were there to adopt.  When people ask me why we didn’t adopt an American baby, I reply that the liberal political system is working overtime to kill them all off.

Your value as a human being should not be determined by your checking account, your credit report, your disability, or your age.  Let’s be the civilized society that we claim to be.   That would be true progress and justice for all.

Biblical Prosperity

Psalm 1  (NIV)

    ¹ Blessed is the man
       who does not walk in the counsel of  the wicked

       or stand in the way of sinners
       or sit in the seat of mockers.

    ² But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
       and on his law he meditates day and night.

    ³ He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
       which yields its fruit in season
       and whose leaf does not wither.
       Whatever he does prospers.

    ⁴ Not so the wicked!
       They are like chaff
       that the wind blows away.

    ⁵ Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
       nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

    ⁶ For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
       but the way of the wicked will perish.

There are those in the religous world who have made a sacred tradition out of poverty.  Having observed poverty in nine different countries, I have not seen anything about poverty that I like.  For those who would take a vow of poverty as if poverty is some sublime state of spiritual existence, come with me to see the hungry children, millions of them dying slow deaths, and tell me what part of poverty you are the most in love with.

The glorification of poverty is akin to the pole dwellers during the time of the early church who came to believe that all that was spiritual was holy and all that was physical was evil.   So, to become more holy and close to God, they lived on elevated platforms for years at a time.   One historian tells us that people would venerate the pole dwellers and when maggots fell from their bodies, they began to worhip the maggots.   God, and all other living beings with common sense and a sense of smell knew that this was not divine.

Psalm one lays the foundation of a blessed life of prosperity that finds its source in a relationship with God:

First, divine prosperity is based on who you listen to.   The wicked, the sinners, and the mockers are always plentiful and always eager to give you an earful of what they strongly believe.   Don’t make your spiritual ears a garbage can.    Meditate on God’s word day and night.  God’s word prepares us to hear God’s voice.   As we listen to what God says to us in His written word,  his living rhema word will be easily recognized.

Secondly, to prosper you must get planted.   Get planted in a devotional habit with the Lord.   Get planted in a prayer life.   Get planted in a local church and strive to be the most devoted member in that church.   Some are so arrogant to believe they can please God and ignore the local church.   Jesus is one with His church.   The church is The Bride of Christ.   When you love Jesus, you’ll love what He loves.   Your love for God is illustrated in your relationship with the local church.   You cannot seperate Jesus from His church.   It is error to say, “I’m committed to Jesus, but I’m not committed to a local church.”   You are lying to God, people, and yourself.   It is a rampant form of self deception that is spreading through the church.  Jesus never taught anyone to be a lone ranger.

Psalm 26:8 says,  I love the house where you live, O LORD,   the place where your glory dwells.   Ephesians tells us that the church is God’s holy temple in the New Testament scheme of things.  The church is where God’s glory is.  God has one program, the one he built before he left, the church.

Growing up, I loved to watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.  It is amazing to see how the animals and the ecosystem all work together just as God designed.   The lion would never jump in the middle of a herd of gazelles and start eating gazelles.   He would chase the herd causing them to fear and panic.   Then he would target a weak one and seperate it from the herd.   Once it was alone, he knew dinner was ready.   The enemy wants to get you alone so he can destroy you.

Third, to find biblical prosperity you must choose the right path.  The Lord watches over every area of the lives of those who choose the path of righteousness.   In contrast to the philosophy of this age, there are moral absolutes.  Every day we make choices.   Sometimes it will seem that you are doing everything right and God has overlooked you.  Job wrongly concluded that God had forgotten him.  Yet at the end of his life, he was blessed spiritually and financially twice as much as before.  

Choosing the right path will most often not bring immediate fullfillment.  For instance, stealing money may seem to work better than earning money.  But, in the end, the thief will meet justice and face punishment in this life and the next.  Earning money seems harder at first and much slower.  The tree planted by living water “yields its fruit in season.”   There is a season for God’s blessing of prosperity if we stay on the path of God’s righteousness. 

Jesus, God in human flesh, died and rose again so that we could be ransomed from our spiritual death brought on by sin.   Choose a personal relationship with God through His son, Jesus Christ.   Ask His forgiveness and ask Him to take over as the Lord of your life.   You will never regret your decision.   His redemption is for the entire man – body, soul, and spirit.   God is concerned about your well being in every area of your entire life.

The Timeless Power Of Creativity

Mark Twain, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, people with the ability to create something of value to others.  Perhaps the great need of the hour is not really money, a new politician to save the day, or even more jobs.  I suspect that the real need of the hour is creativity.

Creativity can open doors to a new world of fantasy to escape into or birth  an entire new industry that creates jobs for individuals and spins off other side industries.   In the case of  Walt Disney, a struggling cartoonist saw a mouse run across the floor and created Mickey Mouse.  Out of that came an international entertainment empire which includes film studios, theme parks, world class resorts, and television networks. 

The publishing industry is an industry that depends upon creative persons.  Books are powerful.  Their influence outlives the authors to shape future generations.  Regardless of your opinion of the Bible, no one can deny the worldwide influence of one book that spans most of known human history.  

We live in a world beleaguered with serious problems:  energy shortages, world hunger, homelessness, pollution, and poverty.  Solutions come with new ways of thinking.  People with new ideas are problem solvers.  We desperately need financiers, social workers,  scientists and inventors who can think creatively.

Someone has said that our most important work is when we take time to think.  Creative thought can become reality.  Today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s technology.  But we live in a busy, noisy world and serenity is rare.  Some of our most profound leaders in the future without doubt will come from those who work at creative thought.  Some of the greatest world leaders have been farmers, shepherds, fishermen, and sailors.  Take a day and devote yourself to serious thought – who knows?  You just might solve the energy crisis or even world hunger.