From Money to Meaning

Hey! I’ve got this great idea! Let’s turn lead into gold!

World Magazine reports, though I’m sure it’s known elsewhere as well, that our government spends $160 million a year to create $80 million of pennies.

I remember a time in the mid 1970s when my family lived in Okinawa (Japan) and there was a penny shortage. We rounded everything off to the nearest nickel. Even then my eight-year-old-brain thought, ‘Duh! Pennies are a waste…we should do this all the time!”

Now I’ve never talked to a real economist about this (one with degrees, a beard like almost every psychologist has, and theories that are useless to me at Fred Meyer), but putting my value guy hat on, here’s one posit about why the government might think it’s worth spending $80 million a year to make pennies: to represent and make available the smallest possible legal-tender denomination. One thing I think is probably true is that some money mover somewhere would stand to lose a lot of money if we didn’t have pennies and rounded off to the nearest nickel. The reason I think this might be true is because someone smart said the opposite was true when the New York Stock Exchange went from fractions to pennies (a penny being smaller than a ’sixteenth’).

It’s still stupid.
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8/21 WSJ has a tidbit that says a third of Americans “expect to rely most on personal savings and investments in retirement, rather than employer accounts or Social Security…Among those ages 18-34, that percentage rises to nearly 50%.”

Dare I say that this last part of that statement only substantiates what I’ve been saying about trust? Younger folk don’t trust Madison Avenue, politicians, big business, or, as it seems, the general well-being of their country. Probably for good reasons, too.

The challenge is…how do we reach them and earn their trust. Outside this country, how do we reach a world that somehow thinks we have it all together?

The real value story: “He is no fool who who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose” - Jim Elliot

Message for the two readers who check in once every two months…

I’m going quiet for awhile. Business (www.1080group.com) is just kickin’ my butt lately (in a good way), and I’ve got to focus there.

- the Value Sleuth

…on this side of Glory, anyway.

Jonathan Clements strikes another chord with wisdom in today’s WSJ, making the point that your retirement is likely better off in a small house and investing elsewhere than betting on the big house. He concludes, “There is, however, an upside to buying the bigger home. For the next 30 years you would live in a grander place. But that just highlights what this is all about. Buying a bigger house isn’t an investment. Rather it is a lifstyle choice - and it comes with a brutally large price tag.”

Touche’

Outline I haven’t looked at for awhile, but I just found it a decided to post it…just in case you’re wondering how a guy looks at the Bible with market-colored glasses (or rather, should be ‘how a guy looks at the market with Bible-colored glasses…).

From Eden to Money
• In the beginning, all was provided for us. It was paradise.
• The fall meant needing to till the fields. To work for self.
• Extending our choice led to barter.
• Money is the grease that improves the inefficiency of barter.

From Money to Value
• The only objective measurement of the monetary value of something in the marketplace is the one made at the moment of transaction.
• The transaction represents how, in that moment, we’ve acted on the sum of all our values and priorities.
• The sum of transactions is the marketplace. In a sense, it’s the sum of all we value as a group.
• Each transaction is a relationship. Each transaction exists for but a moment, but that moment is a point on a line.

From Value to Values
• The thing(s) we value are the foundation of our participation in each transaction. We are fundamentally motivated toward pleasure or away from pain. To the degree we identify pain and pleasure with any given thing (God, family, country, sex, golf, Cheerios), we behave accordingly (this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s rational).
• Values are hierarchical. Compare any two, and one is more important. We therefore end up with one at the top. Ever have buyer’s remorse? For a moment you valued one thing in a way that you didn’t the next day.
• Overall, whichever value is at the top becomes, essentially, our religion. Remember how New Testament authors used the word religion (John comes to mind at the moment…the Greek word was (very roughly) ceremoniousness. In other words, what we do.
• Humans are incurably religious. We all are trying to fill that God-shaped hole one way or another.
• “My values” is shortsighted. While we do have personal, identifiable values, stopping here is the equivalent of calling independence the highest good. If we cede that our goal is interdependence, then “our values” necessarily needs to be what we aspire to embracing beyond “my values.”

From Values to God
• Interdependent values are rooted in ‘the house’ (at least in the Judeo-Christian world, but largely elsewhere as well). Beyond me, this is my immediate family. Beyond my immediate family, my house is my business, my employees, partners, co-workers, those on ‘my team’, in the Old Testament this was my ‘bondservants and sojourners/Gentiles in our midst.’ Beyond my team is ‘the other team,’ or the marketplace, and how I buy, sell, invest, give of the four elements of value (time, mind/imagination, energy, relationships).
• God is the very definition of relationships and reveals himself to us in His scriptures.
• The Bible, therefore, has a lot to say about how we conduct the business of life.
• That our world, our marketplace, does not represent Biblical (Godly) values, is proof positive that we ‘manage the house’ (oikonomos/economy/stewardship)in a manner inconsistent with God’s will.
• As we are each called by God to be the ‘salt and light,’ our mission is every step we take. We each are ministers, whether kings or priests.
• And we are all kings. We are all ‘managers in the business of life.’ We all must decide on the values of the house. We must choose whom we will serve.

From God to Market
• As we manage, we either sink, swim, or surf. In other words, we are consumers in deficit, break even, or produce, profit, exceed. If Jesus is our highest stated value, what are we doing with our time, talent, and treasure?
• Without profit (some margin above ‘break even’ of said time, talent, or treasure), there is nothing to give.
• Without giving, there is no eternal investment.
• While being quick to eschew ‘works-based’ theology, our eternal investment determines our eternal reward in a real sense. Note that the measurement of said investment, however, is not earthly. It’s the heart that only God can judge.
• It is that heart we bring to the markeplace. The relationships in our transactions. Our opportunity to, in the power of the Spirit, be Jesus to our world.

The End
• In the end, all is provided for us again. It will be paradise again. It will be oikonomos fit for the King.

Quote heard Saturday in a discussion of prices on packaged goods…

“I love Wal-Mart. Don’t you love Wal-Mart? I LOVE Wal-mart. I just don’t want them in my backyard.”

Well, not YOURS. But consider…

The oil companies are taking a bath in the media for ‘gouging’ their record profits. But those big, faceless, easy-target companies are run by people, executives and board, who are doing what their share holders have asked them to do.

Exxon alone has 6.1 BILLION shares outstanding. Millions of shareholders, directly or with money in funds that have positions in oil company stocks.

Want lower gas prices?

Convince those shareholders to give up the gains in their personal portfolios and to vote that the board of Exxon lower gas prices and give up those profits.

Did you know that your debit transactions don’t clear right away?

Most who know me know that I generally equate highly regulated industries (read: government in business’ clothing) with poor service. There are exceptions, I know, but generally banks, insurance companies, airlines, telephone/utility providers, etc. don’t present a convincing serve-the-customer-or-die gameface.

Business Week recently pointed out in The Debit Shuffle that banks have a little game they play that generates higher fees. In this game they hold all transactions until the end of the day, then process them from biggest to smallest. The result is that someone who over draws will bounce more transactions.

An old saying in the world of salespeople is ‘your price, my terms; your terms, my price.’ In other words, if I can get you to negotiate on one part of the deal, but not the whole thing, I can set up a winning game.

Banks are more profitable now than ever…in a place where most everywhere you can get a ‘free’ checking account. And I lean pretty lassez faire/caveat emptor as marketplace values go. But what I did want to point out is that this is something you might just pay attention to.

Could it be that auto makers have pulled a good one on new car buyers with this ‘employee pricing’ marketing message? It may be true that they are now offering to the public the opportunity to buy a new auto at a lower price, and that lower price might just be as low as company employees have been able to buy one for. But isn’t that still a retail price? After all, Manufacturers can Suggest a Retail Price, but it’s nothing but a marketing pipe dream…the market value is defined by what someone is willing to pay, not what the sticker says.

Doesn’t that really mean that employees are no longer getting a discount vs. retail? Relatively, employees are now paying more. They get no discount.

These days, the wages of s-i-n depend on what kind of deal you make with the devil.

-Kara Vichko