Rant of the Exiles

Money has a mystical quality. In ages past (aka 10 years ago), people carried around paper currency. New, crisp bills had a sacred aura. The stamped sheets of green had a fresh aroma like a new car. And then there were metallic circles called coins. I remember my parents used to collect pennies in rolls. I haven't seen a roll of pennies in years and I'm certain it functions better as a paperweight.  Technology has worked to make money invisible and touchless. It's no longer a physical transaction. We pay our credit cards online and shift them out of our attention through auto-pay. We set up recurring donations to our local church or charity. Taxes, healthcare premiums, and 401(k) contributions are automatically deducted from our paychecks and the remainder is directly deposited to our bank accounts. Even as money has become less visible, it's also become more visible in strange and magical ways. Every now and then, I scroll through my Venmo public transaction feed and g...

Our church started a sermon series about money. Money has all kinds of contradictions for Christians. For instance, I believe: I am a citizen of an invisible nation and worship an unseen king Nothing I've received truly belongs to me There is an afterlife and my choices matter into eternity Money presents supernatural temptations Generosity is the way the power of money is subverted On the other hand, I contend with these earthly realities: I grew up in the Silicon Valley as the child of Chinese immigrants who worked their "dream jobs" at IBM and Apple through the 1970s and 1980s. My parents emphasized saving money (the "Asian conscience" ), and like many of their Silicon Valley peers, accumulated significant wealth from their stock and real estate investments I want to provide for my wife and my future needs as well as provide for my children and contribute to my kids' costs of higher education I worked in tech and am well-educated, competitive, and enjoy...

I’m not sure if I’m on the #YangGang bandwagon yet but I’m certainly intrigued. Yang is funny and self-deprecating. His humor is evident throughout his book “The War on Normal People” with lines like “This was back when people dated in college” and his mom’s endorsement of universal basic income (UBI). My favorite chapter is the first, titled “My Journey”. I love how he tells his growing up story in a couple pages and I resonated with his stories of being bullied with ethnic slurs. I couldn’t relate to his entrepreneurial success but admired how he “had gone from being an underdog to one of the guys with the answers, from finding the most marginalized or excluded person in the room to finding the richest person and making him or her feel special” (pg. 9). I love how he visited various cities - Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh among many - and personally witnessed the hollowing out of the middle class. These rapidly increasing negative effects on America’s cities, Yang calls the G...