MYTHICAL ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT — In a confidential memo leaked from the Church Office Building’s Celestial Resource Allocation & Needs of Kolob (CRANK), top LDS economists are raising the alarm: without a steady influx of post-mortal souls willing to do the heavy lifting, the Celestial Kingdom’s economy is headed for a divine meltdown.
“We’re already seeing sky-high cloud-rent, harp shortages, and a glut of idle exalted beings refusing to reassemble IKEA furniture without assistance,” the memo warns. “If we lose access to that Terrestrial and Telestial labor pool, we’ll have a situation even Enoch can’t prophesy us out of.”
The Celestial Kingdom—long touted by the church’s most sage storytellers as “the best gated community in the multiverse”—runs on a strict three-tiered heavenly caste system. While the exalted few spend eternity praising God, attending family reunions, and completely neglecting their spirit children on developing planets unless they really misbehave, someone still has to polish the crystal mansions, replenish the consecrated Costco, and perform celestial lawncare across infinite acres of Kolob-adjacent cookie-cutter suburbia.
“It’s simple economics,” said Brother Derk Simmons, a BYU professor of Celestial Macroeconomics. “If every exalted being is a landlord with no tenants, then who’s fixing the spirit plumbing? The Terrestrials. Who’s changing the diapers on your spirit toddlers? The Telestials. Without them, we’re staring at eternal stagflation.”
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Church leaders have historically remained quiet on the matter, preferring instead to emphasize that “every kingdom of glory is wonderful in its own way,” though leaked architectural plans reveal that only the Celestial realm features wine cellars, horse stables, and a resurrected Restoration Hardware.
Some theologians are now calling for a temporary celestial guest-worker program that allows worthy-but-not-quite-worthy souls to earn their way into higher tiers via probationary labor contracts.
Critics argue this heavenly outsourcing reeks of spiritual elitism and undermines the very principles of eternal progression. “It’s literally a pyramid scheme,” said activist and excommunicated sociologist Tamera Gold, who was last seen protesting outside the Nauvoo Temple with a sign reading “LET MY PEOPLE AT LEAST MOP FOR GOD.”
Meanwhile, General Authorities insist that the plan is doctrinally sound and spiritually beneficial.
“Jesus washed feet,” noted Elder Dallin H. Smokescren at a recent devotional, “and if that example taught us anything, it’s that washing is good—as long as someone else does it, and preferably from a lower kingdom.”
With inflation rising faster than translated beings can keep up, CRANK has quietly floated the idea of eternal unpaid internships in the Spirit World to “get ahead of the curve,” while paying and receiving a non-accredited degree from Pathways would also be a requirement.
