Is tithing feasible in modern society?

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Healthcare is a big variable, although in general people in the states spend more on healthcare than most other countries. But the public transit outside of very large cities is generally poor, especially when given that low income jobs tend to have a lot of unusual hours expected. My experience is that standard U.S. public transit:

(1) Buses run once an hour, and you can likely expect to take 2 buses to get from where you live to where you work. So you have to allot 2-3h transport time for each ride.
(2) 24h buses are rare. Normal weekday hours tend to start around 6 or 7am, and the last bus is usually around 9pm. Saturday hours are typically much shorter and you can generally expect there’s no public transit on Sundays at all.
(3) “Bike friendly” is EXTREMELY rare within the states, and the places with good public transit tend almost exclusively to be large, expensive cities.

Add in that most lower income jobs tend to expect odd hours and weekend hours, and the public transit time is eating into your time to do other things (like fix dinner), and you get a problem.
 
Without reading the whole thread, I would ask why you are focusing on tithing. The Church does not require it specifically.

As to money, that is not all we can give. We also have time and talents. And there are a multitude of things one can give in those categories, which will advance the Kingdom of God.

On the other hand, I have known a number of people who struggled with the issue; they made the decision that their giving would be “first fruits”, and God was/has been generous with them.
 
I’d say this is accurate, though in many suburbs and small towns there aren’t buses at all. My hometown had a train stop for people commuting an hour into NYC and that was it. Right now I live in the suburb of a different expensive city and while there are buses and subways and they come more than once an hour, the bus routes are horribly inefficient. A 10 minute drive takes an hour and two separate buses.

And we could move further out and find (barely) cheaper housing, but my husband’s commute is already 45 minutes by bus and metro and he does not want to add to that or drive and leave me stranded at home with no car.
 
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Socrates92 said:
My $600 was based on renting 1/4 of a 4 bedroom house. The total would be $2400 split between 4 people. And yes, this would easily include all the utilities. I you want to be technical, this hypothetical arrangement could be 2000/month rent + utilities, variable based on usage. As an estimate, the difference isn’t overly significant either way.

I’m not sure about the degree thing. In Canada, I would say that if you are getting a degree in order to make $15/hr, you probably didn’t choose your degree very wisely. In that case, that’s more a problem of bad personal decisions, rather than an inherent difficultly in getting by in the given economy.

Also, how mobile are you? Is finding a job in, and moving to, a bike/bus friendly area feasible?

You could be right. I just tend to be automatically skeptical of pessimism.
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Minimum wage is $7. Many professionals in the medical field with AA/AS degrees are maybe earning $15 an hour. Most managers with BS degrees earn $15-18 an hour.

Teachers fare far worse…and they need masters.

I’m looking at this from the position of someone working their way up. WITH a management degree I started off at $30k, which is just under $15 an hour. Taxes (fed and state) took 20%. College loans, rent $750 studio with no utilities, and food took up most of my budget.

I mean monthly-- 30k is

$2500
State/Local tax -500
Rent -750
utilities -150 (usually about $75 in the summer, $300 in the winter-- electric, gas and water all other months)
college loan payment -400
car maintenance -100
fuel for car -120
food -80
Various fees (like car reg, insurance, etc) -100

Which would leave me around $100 a month for donations, clothing, and incidentals. By the time I had worked 5 years I was earning closer to 40k…which was $19 an hour, but then the tax bracket is closer to 25% and I also was living in a place that was $800 for basically a studio and had to drive even farther.

House sharing is a complicated process, and you have to know 4 people you’re willing to share a house with. And that’s if a house is available. In my area, a 3-bedroom can easily run for that price. So you’d be looking at 800 each plus utilities–which can get quite pricey. You might be able to find an older lady renting a room in her home for $600 + utilities, but it would be really rare and fairly “sketchy”.
 
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Fair enough. I don’t know enough about the different Stateside economies to comment. So, I might have jumped the gun a bit, but I’ll research more later when I have time. Just to give you an idea where I’m coming from, I was making $15/hr after 6 months experience in an entry-level landscaping job, $16/hr after another four. $15/hr here is a fairly easy rate to achieve year-round for non-seasonal work as well, so using that figure (40hrs/wk, 50 work weeks), and the figures which I used which are actually realistic in Ottawa with a bit of ingenuity

Monthly salary: 2500
Federal +Provincial + EI/CPP payment taxes: 490
Rent (1/4 of 4 bedroom downtown - utilities included): 600
Food: 250 (As a biker, I substitute food for gas. Also, I envy your food prices)
Buss pass: 115 (Personally I would ditch this during the non-winter months)
Car expenses: optional self-imposed torture
Left over for incidentals/donations/savings/luxury (potentially includes paying down debt including student loans):1045

So, my attitude that people are generally just bad at saving does have some justification. But I did post a little impulsively at first, partly from frustration with some people in those circumstances, and hastily generalized. So, my attitude about the feasibility of living on 15/hr will be more less applicable depending where you are. (geographically or otherwise)
 
Socrates92 said:
Fair enough. I don’t know enough about the different Stateside economies to comment. So, I might have jumped the gun a bit, but I’ll research more later when I have time. Just to give you an idea where I’m coming from, I was making $15/hr after 6 months experience in an entry-level landscaping job, $16/hr after another four. $15/hr here is a fairly easy rate to achieve year-round for non-seasonal work as well, so using that figure (40hrs/wk, 50 work weeks), and the figures which I used which are actually realistic in Ottawa with a bit of ingenuity

Monthly salary: 2500
Federal +Provincial + EI/CPP payment taxes: 490
Rent (1/4 of 4 bedroom downtown - utilities included): 600
Food: 250 (As a biker, I substitute food for gas. Also, I envy your food prices)
Buss pass: 115 (Personally I would ditch this during the non-winter months)
Car expenses: optional self-imposed torture
Left over for incidentals/donations/savings/luxury (potentially includes paying down debt including student loans):1045

So, my attitude that people are generally just bad at saving does have some justification. But I did post a little impulsively at first, partly from frustration with some people in those circumstances, and hastily generalized. So, my attitude about the feasibility of living on 15/hr will be more less applicable depending where you are. (geographically or otherwise)
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Yeah, outside of big cities public transit in America is poor or non-existant. Literally. My town has NO public transit options for able-bodied adults. Zero. And we’re less than 1.5 hours away from a major metro.

In reality, where one is earning $15 you can’t really afford to live in the city. You may often, as many of my peers do, own a car to drive to the transit station to pay $300-500 a month to get into the city. Granted, most worthy city jobs are $25+ an hour, but your expenses are much higher.

I spend more on food now with a family–but my example is to show you just how someone lives paycheck to paycheck on $15-20 as a single person spending the least they possibly can.

And again, perhaps Canadian culture is different, but 4 bedroom houses rented 4 ways are practically unheard of unless it’s college students…and even then their rent is closer to 800 + utilities.
 
We are contemplating a move to CA which would necessitate my husband going out ahead of us. There was a shared 4 bedroom house with a room for rent for $1,400 😮 It was the master bedroom, lol. That rented room is more than our current mortgage on the other side of the country. Housing can be crazy.
 
Cars are also known as a big poverty trap for many people. See, people need to have a car to get a job, but they don’t have the money to get a good car. So they buy a cheap car that’s not holding together well. And then the car breaks down and they don’t have any way to get to work unless they get it fixed, so they pay to get it fixed…and in the end they may have spent more money than it would have cost to get a reliable car in the first place. Only they can’t get the money all at once and their new car fund keeps getting eaten by repairs.
 
DarkLight said:
Cars are also known as a big poverty trap for many people. See, people need to have a car to get a job, but they don’t have the money to get a good car. So they buy a cheap car that’s not holding together well. And then the car breaks down and they don’t have any way to get to work unless they get it fixed, so they pay to get it fixed…and in the end they may have spent more money than it would have cost to get a reliable car in the first place. Only they can’t get the money all at once and their new car fund keeps getting eaten by repairs.
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Add to that the low quality car was likely purchased by a loan, often from a “no credit/no problem” lot. They are making a $300 + car payment and paying hundreds of dollars in full coverage insurance because of the car note. When the car breaks down, they cannot get it repaired so it gets repo’d making the credit score even worse and the next car payment even more.
 
Someone needs to get a good car/ride sharing business up in your areas. Or for that matter, a good privately run bus system. It blows my mind that with a problem like you guys are mentioning, that no entrepreneur has come in with a feasible solution.
 
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Socrates92 said:
Someone needs to get a good car/ride sharing business up in your areas. Or for that matter, a privately run bus system. It blows my mind that with a problem like you guys are mentioning, that no entrepreneur has come in with a feasible solution.
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People have tried. When an area is rural they just can’t make it work. People can’t be compensated for their time at a fast enough rate.

Once there are driverless cars, I think it will probably be feasible. Taxi companies can’t make money and even Uber and Lyft don’t “really” operate. Zip car (and the like) has had limited success, but they are really the only ones.

Most people fail to understand the ruralness of the US. Outside of big cities, the sprawl is really huge.

Again, waiting on driverless cars. The issue here is really that one can’t make a living wage driving. Which is why the company that has had much success at all is not a ride-share but a car-share, which is still pretty pricy as one must mantain personal aut insurance.
 
Yup. The U.S. has a lot of sprawl. My 30min, 20mile commute into work (by car) is actually considered fairly average - many of my coworkers have more like 30 miles. I’d say that sort of housing for lower-income workers extends in three directions around where I work. There’s just no way to have a bus system that serves all that territory and is profitable. Most systems that server rural areas are either government programs or charities. But there aren’t enough people concentrated in any one spot to make the system profitable, especially given that more rural areas also tend to be populated by poorer individuals.
 
The sprawl around here is crazy. You can drive out to what would be a two hour commute in traffic and there are ugly tract housing neighborhoods popping up. To not live in an apartment or condo, we’d have to move an hour away, at least. People have actually told me the only way they were able to buy a house in our town is because a relative died and left them a bunch of money, which all went to the down payment.
 
Tithing (10% donation), as many mentioned, is not required, but regular giving is feasible, especially in light of programs for Electronic Funds Transfer.

And, as others have said, the ability to give (as far as amount goes) is dependent on the situation of each giver.

Its not how much, but with what spirit we give.

On a side note, long ago I realized that when there was a need, and I told myself I just couldn’t afford to give, that if I gave anyway, it presented very little hardship on me, in both the short and long run financial picture.

Another idea (and again, amount is not important), is to make your donation the first “bill” you pay.

My method (and again, I may be blessed, so the amount or percentage is not important) is to add all my gross (before deductions) income, divided it by 52 (weeks in the year), then divide by 40 (hours in a work week). This equates to the first hour (gross) pay I earn for the week. And this becomes the basis for my giving for the year…and then I adjust it each year when my gross income is calculated for the passing year.

So, technically not tithing, but it is a manageable donation of “first fruits”.
 
I’m not sure why a mostly poor population would make a bus system less profitable. If anything, I would think it would be the other way around. Maybe not enough to offset the sprawl effect though.
 
The idea is that a mostly poor population doesn’t necessarily have a lot of money to pay to support public transportation. But you’re right, the sprawl effect is the biggest problem.
 
So, do they walk instead? This doesn’t make sense in a context of talking about how necessary cars are because of sprawl. Public transportation is more efficient, and therefore cheaper than driving, therefore I’d think that demand for it would go up in low-wealth areas, just like demand for rice is higher in third world countries.
 
There’s also an entry barrier. If everyone has a car, then they’re likely going to drive their cars. You’d have to somehow come up with the money to start up a public transportation system, then convince enough people to switch over to it quickly enough to see some return on your investment.

As a practical matter, I suspect that also affects the tax funding - poorer areas don’t have the political clout to lobby for better public transportation. It’s generally restricted to those who are physically unable to drive a car.
 
Socrates92 said:
So, do they walk instead? This doesn’t make sense in a context of talking about how necessary cars are because of sprawl. Public transportation is more efficient, and therefore cheaper than driving, therefore I’d think that demand for it would go up in low-wealth areas, just like demand for rice is higher in third world countries.
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I don’t think you understand rural poor and the costs of running transit in a radius of 20+ miles from town. It isn’t cheaper than owning a car.

Look at it this way. It’s about population density. In a city you can have 1,000 people in a 5 mile area (so 25 sq miles). You’re looking at 40 people per mile. If everyone pays $20 for a monthly bus pass that’s several hundred dollars per mile…enough to maintain a bus, pay drivers, etc.

In a rural area you might have 200 people in a 20 mile area (400 sq miles). That’s half a person per mile. A $20 bus pass, therefore, would not even cover fuel.
 
Good point. Although I’d suggest the entry barrier is minor, assuming time/inconvenience (driving is “easier”) isn’t a major factor. I’d bet a month’s bus fare that the average person’s car insurance alone is greater than what they would pay for a buss pass. Therefore, I’d think if there were a barrier, it would be on the supply side, rather than with demand. In other words, what would induce an investor or a business starter to act?

Also, we’re assuming that the hypothetical solution is a inefficient conventional bus system, with busses that, practically speaking, would be 90% empty or more most of the time because of their size and the sprawl effect. There’s no reason why this has to be the case. The industry could get started with a couple minivans and grow from there. (I’m not sure if there’s red-tape in play here, so feel free to education me if I’m missing something) There’s no reason why the solution has to be full-scale with a massive initial investment to begin. Some combination of public transport, ride/carsharing, and uber sharing-economy technology should be able to produce a solution.

I grant you the tax funding point. But then I was thinking more along the lines of private entrepreneurship and how it would bring a solution about. The government doesn’t usually provide effective or efficient solutions to anything.
 
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