Today I'm going to try to explain a simple concept. I saw some one trying to explain this before and I believe it's a good concept to learn. I call it the bath tub concept and it's simple.
Imagine you have a bath tub and you have water pouring in and also water going down the drain and so if you want to fill the bath tub you put more water in the bath tub then what goes down the drain. If you want to empty the bath tub you simple put less in the bath tub then what goes down the drain. Now you can temporarily stop putting water in the tub and the water in the tub will continue pouring out until you add more or the bath tub runs out.
I think this has many applications and the one people understand the best is money. The money that goes down the drain is the money you use to buy things and the money that you pour in is the money you make. If you don't make money you will slowly "drain" your resources until you can't pay for things anymore.
The real problem is when you start dealing with a bath tube that every one draws out of and puts into because people want to put in less and take out more which doesn't work for any extended periods of time i.e. goverments. So we pretend that we can just draw out and hope someone else will pay for it.
Now did I really write a blog about money, well that was not the intent. I planned to write it about service, and helping others. You see generally if people are generous to you, you are likely to be generous to other people. But if people arn't generous to you then you really arn't generous to others and so imagine peoples good will as a giant bath tub. This could also be the institutions we have to help people in need such as relief work, salvation army, MCC, Red Cross ... and the list goes on.
This bath tube you can choose to just drain from or you can add to and the level in the tub will change according to what you do. So we can just draw out and someone else will pay for it, or decided to put in and it could be that everyone is taking out.
Why? ... well everyone has their reasons but well for me it's because of my faith.
That seems like a bit of a stretch :(. Well for comical relief check out The Jolly Banker by Wilco on myspace.
