Posts by slimboyfat

89

why the watchtower is so short of money

by pepperheart in

the watchtower is so short of money because they have to pay for all the upkeep of so many branch offices around the world.because so many of the branch offices are in very poor countries and they are not balancing the budgets.

slimboyfat

The $200 million figure in the yearbook is only for “travelling overseers, missionaries and special pioneers”. The cost of keeping 20,000 bethelites and maintaining 80 branches is in addition to the $200 million figure. And then there are publications, digital output, legal fees and other costs on top of that.

Plus another reason for saying Watchtower spends around $2 billion a year is that Lett’s comments indicate revenue of around $2 billion and Lett on another ocassion said there is “more money going out than coming in”. Therefore if revenue is around $2 billion then expenditure is logically at least $2 billion.

I would add that these figures are rendered entirely plausible by a close scrutiny of the figures for the Seventh Day Adventist church which are freely available. They raise and spend even more than JWs. On the one hand that’s suprising because they are from poorer countries and don’t produce as much literature. On the other hand they tithe their members and build school and hospitals and have paid clergy.

89

why the watchtower is so short of money

by pepperheart in

the watchtower is so short of money because they have to pay for all the upkeep of so many branch offices around the world.because so many of the branch offices are in very poor countries and they are not balancing the budgets.

slimboyfat

The Sears comparison is excellent Sigfrid, exactly what is happening, they are selling off assets to buy time but their structural deficit remains and is catching up with them.

The sale of Brooklyn property only provided a very short respite. Even if we assume they got 2 billion dollars from the sales (probably closer to 1 billion) and it only cost 500 million to relocate to Warwick. That leaves 1.5 billion. If their annual running costs are around 2 billion (as indicated by various comments by Lett, possibly higher) then that means the sale of Brooklyn properties would cover running costs for less than one year.

44

PROOF That Trump Colluded With Russia

by minimus in

jw
friends

is there any “proof” yet??

?.

slimboyfat

You seem to have missed the seamless transition from “it is outrageous to suggest we colluded with the Russians” to “what’s on earth is wrong with colluding with the Russians?”

89

why the watchtower is so short of money

by pepperheart in

the watchtower is so short of money because they have to pay for all the upkeep of so many branch offices around the world.because so many of the branch offices are in very poor countries and they are not balancing the budgets.

slimboyfat

I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the biggest publishing company the world has ever seen. It would be interesting to research the figures on that.

89

why the watchtower is so short of money

by pepperheart in

the watchtower is so short of money because they have to pay for all the upkeep of so many branch offices around the world.because so many of the branch offices are in very poor countries and they are not balancing the budgets.

slimboyfat

They are not purely a publishing company because they are also a relgion, to that extent you are correct. However, they relied on publishing and the revenue it provided more than any other religion I can think of. They even called their members “publishers”! Pioneers were premier literature distrIbutors who obtained literature at discounted rates. The whole purpose and drive of the organisation was to print and distribute more and more literature in more and more branches.

The message was incredibly important too, you are correct about that. And it’s certainly a testimony to the loyalty of their members that the organisation has been able to continue to function for the best part of quarter of a century after their primary source of revenue came to a juddering halt. But the lack of revenue from publishing has clearly taken its toll. First came the paperbacks to replace hardbacks, then the calendars stopped, and the bound volumes, and so on and so on, until the yearbooks were dropped and the magazines decimated.

For over a century Watchtower boasted that they never take collections and their members are not tithed - they didn’t need to, they had the luxury of their publishing empire as their source of income. Now that has dried up they are relying purely on donations, and despite all the cutbacks and sale of assets, it’s still not enough to dig them out of the financial hole they are in.

30

Little Gems From the November 2018 Study Watchtower

by The Fall Guy in

quickly glanced through it and noticed these bits of "food at the proper time.

i'll leave the lap-dancing comment on page 25, par.

12 and the "how to give us more money" item on pages 28,29,30,31,32 for others to pick up on... page 16, par.

slimboyfat

I don’t know that putting gay porn and illegal porn on a level is “to their credit”. Plus the letter didn’t mention anything about informing the police.

89

why the watchtower is so short of money

by pepperheart in

the watchtower is so short of money because they have to pay for all the upkeep of so many branch offices around the world.because so many of the branch offices are in very poor countries and they are not balancing the budgets.

slimboyfat

Why is Watchtower short of money?

Imagine one of the largest publishing houses in the world built branches in every country on earth to support their publishing. They sold hundreds of millions of books and magazines every year, making billions of dollars in profit.

Then one day they couldn’t charge for their products any more but they continued paying the costs of production, infrastructure and personnel. No wonder they are in trouble. They have been living off their savings since around 1990 and the cutbacks have become increasingly dramatic. But no equivalent replacement for their income from publishing has been found.

How long can a bakery survive without charging for cakes, or a shoe shop without charging for shoes?

Quite frankly, it’s a wonder that Watchtower has managed to survive as long as it has!

89

why the watchtower is so short of money

by pepperheart in

the watchtower is so short of money because they have to pay for all the upkeep of so many branch offices around the world.because so many of the branch offices are in very poor countries and they are not balancing the budgets.

slimboyfat

It's hard to imagine the Watchtower not being flush with cash after all the sell-offs that have occurred in recent history.

Why? They reportedly sold the Brooklyn properties for something in between 1 and 2 billion dollars. Some of that would have been used to relocate to Warwick.

They receive something in the region of 2 billion dollars in donations per year. (According to calculation based on an internal comment about the response to Stephen Lett’s 2015 appeal for money)

So the WT sale of Brooklyn amounted to less than one year’s revenue. Plus we know that “more money is going out than coming in at the present time”.(Stephen Lett in 2015) So it amounted to less than one year’s spending too.

If the sale of Brooklyn had solved Watchtower’s money problems would they be cancelling the yearbooks, sacking bethel and other workers, and now selling thousands KHs across the world?

It takes Watchtower levels of motivated reasoning to avoid the obvious conclusion that they are desperately short of money and in real trouble.

89

why the watchtower is so short of money

by pepperheart in

the watchtower is so short of money because they have to pay for all the upkeep of so many branch offices around the world.because so many of the branch offices are in very poor countries and they are not balancing the budgets.

slimboyfat

It’s true Watchtower owns a lot of assets and as it runs out of money it can sell those assets to survive. In effect it can sell KHs in order to keep the HQs open. This seems to be what they are doing. So yes they can do that, but can they do it without dissolving the relgion in the process?

Plus it is just about possible that even selling KHs might not cover their losses. In Australia apparently the Anglican Church is selling a third of its property to pay abuse victims. Does WT have as much property as the Anglican Church?

27

Circuit Overseer's Outlines

by AverageJoe1 in

here's the outlines in english and spanish, grouped together in order for september 2018-february 2019.. english: https://we.tl/6orrqltrya.

spanish: https://we.tl/6w0acsdefr.

as per usual, these links will expire in 7 days from the date of this post so get them whilst they're hot!.

slimboyfat

Another thing that struck me is how even the CO has very little leeway to add his own stuff.

Did I read it wrong? I thought the outline says it’s the responsibility of the CO to devise their own service talk, which if I remember correctly is a 30 minute talk after the WT? That seems like quite a chunk of freedom for the CO to say what they like.

So then it really looks like he'd have to hypocritically counsel the MS not to do such bad things while he himself is doing the same. I don't think this scenario is so impossible.

I think this scenario, and the others you mentioned, are probably common place to point of being routine. I have increasingly come to the conclusion that JW standards are impossible to meet because everyone is guilty of breaking some Watchtower rule. This is no accident. This serves an ideological and organisational function because it gets JWs to be experts at rationalising their behaviour, a skill which comes in useful when Watchtower asks its followers to do things they would otherwise consider unethical.