Update: Joseph and Economics
I wrote this blog entry “Joseph and Economics” almost exactly five years ago. At that time, I was re-reading Genesis 41-47 which was a narrative of Joseph and his life. Back in 2004, the economy was booming, housing prices were rising, we were in the midst of war and little did we know that in just a few years we would be in a major recession, fighting corruption, major foreclosures, bankruptcies, and other unfortunate accidents.
One of my favorite characters in the bible is Joseph. The miracle child born to Jacob and Rachel, betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused, imprisoned, and finally restored by God… He became the leader in Egypt, second only to Pharoah.As I was reading his exploits Genesis 41-47, I couldn’t help but notice the basic economic theories he used during his administration as president of Egypt. He implemented a strict 20% tax on the population which largely went towards the federal reserve for the ‘rainy day’ or in Joseph’s case the ‘unrainy day’.
For the first seven years of his administration, there were huge surpluses. He stored it up in the reserves due mainly to insider information to prevent inflation. The next seven years were much grimmer, unemployment started to rise, the economy became stagnant. But because the administration saved for such a time as this, they started releasing some of the reserves back into the economy. As a result, people from all over the region were coming to Egypt to do business. Egypt became the commercial capital during this time of global recession.
The food supply was low everywhere and demand was undoubtedly high. Joseph was able to sell at such a good price that people were willing to pay just about anything (which meant no rioting and still have plenty to go around). When people’s money ran out, they bartered with livestock, land, and even their service.
Even with all this going on, Joseph was able to save his brothers, put them on his work-for-food program, give them some federal land grants, see his aging father again, and learn that God’s plan of salvation and man’s economics may be intricately connected (somehow, on some huge cosmic scale, um, yeah, that’s right)…
I couldn’t but help notice the parallels going on with the Genesis story and today. I’m not taking economics anymore, but it sure helps to be wise in your finances. Anyways, we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. We can plan as much as we want, but no one knows the future…
So moral of the story (which I left out five years ago): do what Joseph did and trust God… that means during times of prosperity and during times of poverty. Trust God.
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