Comment by robocat

> it's hard to ascribe pure malice to a church that spends $1 billion annually on humanitarian aid

Where did your number come from? I've just read "Globally, the church boasted that it had spent US$40m on humanitarian aid in one year (2015)" from https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/full-page/behind-the-nz-m... (seems like a good article)

Bing says as of 2023, the church's net worth is estimated to be around $265 billion which would be income of $16 billion (assuming a conservative 6% annual ROI). I'm unsure how correct those numbers are since the article says (US$15.7b land and US$100b investment fund).

The Mormon church earns $7 billion a year from tithing. Even if humanistic aid were $1 billion - it is a relatively poor percentage.

Let's consider healthcare to be humanitarian aid (yeah, obviously not external). Governments spend 30% of taxes on healthcare, and people pay 30% in taxes so we might estimate that people are paying appromx 10% on humanitarian aid via their government. Although perhaps that is just a form of insurance you've paid in and you get paid out. I'm unsure of the statistics but my guess is that most people pay a lot in and get a little out due to skewed distribution of sickness costs. With health insurance the best deal is to never get sick and never claim (and your premiums help the poor bastards that do get sick - the best outcome a society could hope for). Note that health insurance in New Zealand is wildly different from the US model.

I've had a little experience watching how the Mormon church acts in Samoa which is definitely not a wealthy country. I would be interested to know how much of that humanitarian aid was paid for by countries that needed the humanitarian aid? The equivalent to paying in and getting paid out (with the church claiming doing good with the paying out, but not talking about what it keeps).

I'm a little cynical that there's some dissimulation by the LDS church - they are not well known for frank openness.