Bethel was full of people, departments, assignments. A growing corporation often
has waste. When you don't provide salaries, it's even easier to have too many people.
Printing on multimillion dollar presses only takes a handful of people. Cut-and-paste
writing from old information and recycling artwork only takes a couple of people with
good "searching" skills. I don't believe that Brooklyn Bethel was losing money when
they sent people home, but the accountants said that even paying for their food and
lodging was impractical anymore.
Hardcover stock is gone for years, now. Hardcover Bibles are finally running out and
the paperbacks are winding up in the bookbags. Awake is down by half, WT is reducing,
and everyone speculates more reductions; perhaps the OKM will be put into the mag.
Yearly distribution work has included offering flyers to come to the Memorial, the DC, and
Kingdom News #37 (38?). I doubt that the profits were gone on the expensive materials,
but profits were in a downward spiral. The accountants probably want to maintain a
profit percentage, and dipped below it.
Assembly Halls are being built, others are being remodeled. Even though growth is
virtually nonexistent in areas like the U.S., they continue this work. Property acquisition
is a standard wealth-building strategy. Even remodeling with local contributions and
free labor allows you to spend the money any way you want to, or perhaps even to
keep some of the money for the corporation if more than enough is donated.
Bookstudy meetings are covering old information. A new book every year would be
covered in 6 months, so an old book needs to be mixed in with it. The obvious solution
would be to produce 2 new books (been done often in the past). That doubles the cost
of product at the conventions. Keeping the product cost down doesn't significantly change
the donations, so profits are much higher if 1 book or brochure is released.
Thanks for reading all that. My question is simple. Is the supposedly "spiritual" organization
merely being run by accountants? Not that the GB isn't making the decisions, but aren't
the accountants telling them what needs to be done? Isn't every area of potential income
scrutinized, and when the profit level drops below XX %, there is a new change?
Doesn't this mean that the exciting changes they are seeing will just continue more and more?
When your offerings and products get cheaper, you can't suddenly expect a big turnaround.