Wealth ownership is highly concentrated in the United States: the top 1 percent of households have consistently owned about 33 percent of net worth, and wealth inequality has gotten even worse since the recession. High levels of wealth provide great advantage, but even a small amount of savings can mitigate the effect of financial shock. It is relatively enduring within and across generations and can have significant educational, occupation, political and social advantages. Wealth provides a buffer against financial emergencies and can generate more wealth when it is reinvested.
Researchers are only beginning to understand the complex individual and family processes that affect saving and wealth ownership, but religion has emerged as an important part of the process. Religion embodies a great deal about a person's general approach to the world--their conception about how the world does and should work--and we are learning that it can shape financial outcomes in surprising ways.
There are two broad reasons that religion and wealth are related. First, religion affects wealth indirectly through its very strong effect on important processes such as educational attainment, marriage, decisions to have kids, how many kids people have and women's decisions to work or stay home with their kids. Religion affects these behaviors and processes, and they, in turn, affect household income, expenses and the amount of money left over to save. Understanding these processes alone accounts for a large portion of the religion-wealth association.
Second, religion can also affect wealth directly by influencing intergenerational processes, social relations and orientations toward work and money. Intergenerational processes (the transfer of both religious ideas and wealth from parents to children) and social relations (contacts made through religious group who can provide information, capital and other resources) are certainly important.
One of the most fascinating explanations is the direct effect religion can have on orientations toward work and money. Many of the important decisions about family, work and saving have roots in their religious beliefs. For example, in some conservative religious groups--including Conservative and Black Protestant denominations--becoming a minister, working for a social service agency or becoming a career missionary are considered good jobs. A calling into one of these careers can be important for religious reasons, but these jobs don't necessarily require high levels of education, don't typically pay well and won't make it easy to save and accumulate wealth.
Some examples can help illustrate these processes. Results from analyses of the National Longitudinal Survey, the Health and Retirement Study and the Economic Values Survey suggest that Conservative Protestant and Jewish families tend to be polar opposites on most measures of wealth. The results also show that behaviors regarding family, education, work and saving help explain why. Conservative Protestants often favor large families and a traditional gender division of labor in which women do not work out of the home. Conservative Protestants have also had, on average, lower levels of education than other groups. Having a large family, low education levels for parents and a single income-earner both make saving difficult and can lead to low wealth. Many Conservative Protestants also view money as belonging to God. People are considered managers of the money but should consult God or God's agents on earth regarding decisions to use their money. Tithing as a percent of income tends to be high in these faiths, and the desire to accumulate excess assets in person bank accounts can be seen as undesirable. As this suggests, Conservative Protestants have been at the low end of the wealth accumulation.
At the opposite end are Jewish families. Many Jewish mothers also stay home with their children for at least the first years of the child's life. But Jewish mothers are more likely to have high levels of education and a relatively small number of children. This makes it easier for the Jewish mother to devote time and other resources to early education. The Jewish mother is also more likely to return to work after her children enter school, adding to income and making saving and wealth accumulation more possible. Jewish families are also more likely to take a pragmatic approach to money--that is, money is more likely to be seen as a tool or a vehicle for taking care of family needs and other practical concerns--and tend to accumulate relatively high amounts of wealth.
White Catholics are an important example because their position in the wealth distribution has changed considerably in recent years. Less than a generation ago, white Catholics were relatively disadvantaged: they had low educations, low income, low wealth. Important shifts in orientations toward family and women's roles in the family were important contributors. White Catholics now have much smaller families than in prior generations and Catholic women are as likely as Mainline (or Liberal) Protestants to work out of the home. Combined with a pragmatic, pro-saving orientation toward work, this has propelled white Catholics up in the wealth distribution in recent years.
Mormons (LDS) are also interesting because they combine elements of groups that are otherwise distinct. Mormons tend to be religiously conservative, favoring large families and traditional gender roles. However, Mormons typically have high educations and report more pragmatic orientations toward money and accumulation. The result appears to be that Mormons have higher wealth than other conservative Protestant groups, although these findings are a bit more speculative than for other groups because Mormons make up a relatively small proportion of the U.S. population.
Naturally, these relationships and processes are much more nuanced than simple examples suggest; there are very important differences within each of the groups I mention and a large number of other factors affect wealth accumulation as well These examples also leave open questions about happiness: wealth does not necessarily lead to greater satisfaction, and some argue that investing in religion can have both intangible and tangible benefits. However, it has become clear that the relationship between religion and wealth is very strong. The recent recession underscored the need for savings at all levels of wealth, and the importance of religion in American culture suggests that this may be an important part of the explanation for growing inequality.
Religion, Poverty and Capital Wealth
BBC - GCSE Bitesize - Poverty and wealth
Religion Wealth and Poverty Revision / Flashcards - Create Free ...
Some examples of religious brainwashing intended to produce financial success:
By sticking together, drawing only on our past strengths and ignoring weaknesses we can maintain our superior position.
We are God's chosen people.
You will gain advantages by going along with our thinking or lose them by refusal to comply.
Examples of religious brainwashing intended to produce impoverishment:
You will never do it on your own.
We are all exactly alike.
Any time you don't go along with our thinking you can expect to be punished.
Give without expecting to receive.
You haven't tithed enough.
Now I can comment that is not necessarily religion but religious institutions that influence certain traits on people. There are say, Babtist churches that are thriving and there are some that are barely surviving. The same could be said of Catholic congregations.
A much stronger argument could be made that religion destroys wealth because of its opposition to abortion and to family planning; and now its war on birth control. And, of course, there is all the money religion drains building temples to itself and selling it useless books, videos etc.
Religion = self-sacrifice (if you don't)
There are a few exceptions, but that's about the sum of it.
Without claiming authoritative knowledge, an apparently reasonable hypothesis appears to be that the desire to return to what the Bible appears to describe as God’s original design might have given birth to the Crusades and “witch hunts” apparently reported by secular history. Perhaps the intent of those efforts was adapted from the Old Testament accounts: the elimination of those whose intent is not intimate relationship with and leadership by God, and whose inappropriate ethics appear to degrade the human experience.
I welcome your thoughts.
The Bible also appears to suggest that God also warns Israel to isolate themselves from surrounding communities that might have been left in place. Many commenters appear to question this guideline, as well. The above appears to offer substantive reason for this approach. Simply put, surrounding communities might prey on Israel – not via physical war, but by implementing guidelines less ethical than God’s that would place Israel at a disadvantage. In addition, the surrounding communities might draw Israel away from intimate relationship with and leadership by God.
Reports appear to suggest that America envisions a civil structure comprised of laws that appropriately manages, by those laws, the gamut of ethical philosophy and human temperament. However, one of the developers of that civil structure appears to have suggested that it would not be the structure itself that would bring about a peaceful, prosperous society, but the willingness of the people to do that which is appropriate. Somehow, the attempt to build a society other than that in which each individual is guided by intimate relationship with and leadership by God appears to have resulted as the Bible appears to suggest was foretold by God regarding human leadership in 1 Samuel 8.
An apparently reasonable perspective appears to be that a socio-economic perspective that is not appropriately and ethically self-constrained appears to result in an inappropriate economic opportunity advantage over the socio-economic perspective that is appropriately self-constrained. Reports appear to suggest that the less ethically-constrained implement this opportunity advantage to increasingly deprive the ethical of their appropriate portion of economic opportunity, even if the unethical are few in number.
The Bible appears to suggest that God advised Israel, in the Old Testament, that God would remove certain nations from certain territories and establish Israel in those territories. Many commenters appear to question the character of this goal. Perhaps the above provides a substantive answer that, perhaps, God knew that the ethics of these communities would incentivize their physically threatening Israel, if given the opportunity.
Appropriately and ethically self-constrained is not a characteristic of markets. Ethical constraints are not inherent in markets as such, any more than keeping contracts. Markets, in other words, contain no ethical constraining mechanism. That comes always out of the laws and mores of the cultures wherein markets are found.
It's also the case that, in the absence of cultural constraints embodied into law, markets generally fail to develop the efficiencies that they have where, in fact, laws enforce contracts, determine what can be produced or traded, et cetera. Markets flourish efficiently when and only when the legal and ethical framework is itself developed.
Re: Your second para.
The bible history was, of course, written by the conquerors. In their view, Yahweh had sanctioned their conquests. No doubt those who were dispossessed had a different view about God's ordinance. I personally do not believe the Bible or the Torah are good guides to G*d or G*d's will, though they are a rich history of human experiences, especially about how human beings seek authority and order in their lives.
I humbly and respectfully submit the apparently reasonable perspective that:
(a) ethics, defined as “the concept of right and wrong”, appears to be somewhat respectably considered to be a characteristic of the human experience,
(b) the concept of economic markets appears to be somewhat reasonably suggested to be a subset of the human experience, and that therefore,
(c) ethics appears to be reasonably suggested to be a characteristic of economic markets.
I humbly and respectfully submit, however, that ESC CEM (a) appears to be a fundamental issue of markets and that it (b) appears to be reasonably considered to be somewhat less than irrefutably certifiable as reflecting relevant reality. I have come to refer to such apparently not irrefutably certifiable tenets as “points of faith” – not necessarily points of “religious” faith (although somewhat religiously-associated concepts might apply), but faith defined as “belief in a premise despite the absence of irrefutable proof”.
The concept of ESC CEM and the question of its validity appears to impact most, if not all, market decision-making. Consequently, ESC CEM appears to warrant further focused discussion as a separate topic. I therefore, submit it as such and welcome your thoughts regarding (a), (b) and (c), above.
The punitive aspect of the legal system appears to be intended to address the citizen who does not desire to do the right thing. However, this aspect of the legal system appears to be vulnerable to human limitation in (a) foreseeing and/or recognizing the inappropriate strategies of said apparently inappropriately incentivized citizen, (b) knowing how to effectively preclude implementation of said inappropriate strategy and (c) establishing a system that precludes future implementation of said inappropriate strategy without curtailing appropriate strategy implementation. Secular history appears to report that sufficiently inappropriately incentivized humanity has typically, eventually found a way to overcome the external constraint of humanly-managed legal systems.
God is about humans or mankind finding about what they lost in the garden(Gen.3)
Religion is "what ever you make it."
God is about mankind finding about his lost knowledge.
Mankind committed High Treason in the Garden of Eden(Gods very Presence)
So God has been trying to enlighten silly man about his own pass truths.
So he (man) can get back to the real world of living.
Some well known preachers know this. But then you have all these small groups of no knowledge at all. Still preaching Nothing....about nothing...........Jesus.
But since you like to talk. Stay with your nothing.
The bible does not put woman down, No more than a male can birth a child.
Nor female can produce sperm.
Ignorant humans interpret without the spirit of God(truth).
Once again, anyone can read. But can we interpret what we read, without the correct nature.
Thank you
Her evidence, such as it is, could just as easily support the opposite theory -- that wealth (or poverty) influences religious belief.