The United States should abolish the minimum wage!

[Massacure]

Great! Now I have your attention! :D

Under this system I would also abolish unemployment benefits and social security too.

I'm thinking that the United States should levy a 25%-ish tax across the board on all income and not offer any deductions on it. If 25% of the $14 trillion GDP were divided equally between the 230,000,000 people age 18 and over, everybody would receive roughly $15,000 a person. However, I also propose for every two dollars of income you earn, one dollar is subtracted from the amount you receive.

Hence you would give one dollar to everyone to had no income in the previous year. Then you would give one dollar to everyone who had less than two dollars income. Then you would give on dollar to everyone who had less than four dollars income. Then you would give another dollar to everyone who had less than six dollars income, then another to those with less than eight dollars, and then ten, and so on until all the money is spent.

Opinions?

[Fumesucker]

1. Umm...

:wtf:
:crazy:

Could you repeat that in actual English?

[sendero]

2. I've got one..

... but I don't want to get tombstoned so I'll keep it to myself.

[drm604]

3. I'm not sure that I follow what you're saying.

Are you suggesting an across the board 75% tax?

[Massacure]

7. No. It would be a 25% tax.

The tax would be given directly back to the people. Think of it as a reverse income tax where each bracket is an interval of two dollars. A person making no private income would get the full X dollars, a person making exactly at the upper limit would get one dollar, and a person making Y dollars would receive (X - (Y/2)) from the government.

[drm604]

9. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post.

You suggested a 25% tax. But then you suggested that on top of that one dollar be taken away for every 2 earned, that's 50% tax.

The 25% would be 50 cents for every two dollars earned. Then another dollar would be taken for every two dollars earned. That's a $1.50 taken from every 2 dollars earned or 75 cents per dollar. That's 75%.

[Massacure]

10. I wouldn't tax the proceeds of the tax. Money would be taken from the refund.

A 25% tax would raise roughly $3.5 trillion dollars. Given to 230,000,000 people, that would be $15,000 a person. But I'm not advocating giving everyone $15,000.

I would give $15,000 to someone who has no income.
I would give $14,999 to someone who has $2 in income.
I would give $14,998 to someone who has $4 in income.
.
.
.
I would give $1 to someone who has $29,998 in income.
I would give $0 to someone who has $30,000 in income.

However not all of the $3.5 trillion has been spent yet. So I would increase how much I give out. Maybe it would be like:

I would give $15,500 to someone who has no income.
I would give $15,499 to someone who has $2 in income.
I would give $15,498 to someone who has $4 in income.
.
.
.
I would give $501 to someone who has $29,998 in income.
I would give $500 to someone who has $30,000 in income.
.
.
.
I would give $1 to someone who has $30,998 in income.
I would give $0 to someone who has $31,000 in income.

Will 25% of the GDP be used up by starting the handouts at $15,500? I don't have any idea... The magic number is X dollars, and everyone will be given (X - (Y/2) where their income is Y dollars. If their income is greater than X*2, then they just get no money, money is not taken from them, other than the original 25% tax.

[NYC_SKP]

4. Love it! Then, we could all quit our jobs and we'd get all those dollars that are collected, wait,

WHAT?

:shrug:

[Brickbat]

5. If we abolished the minimum wage,

our GDP would fall as well.

[Massacure]

11. Would it?

More people would have income to spend...

[Brickbat]

18. Sure, if wages stayed the same.

They wouldn't.

[Brickbat]

14. Sure, if wages stayed the same.

They wouldn't.

[Political Heretic]

6. Under my system, you have to stop taking crack.

Let me crunch the numbers on that....

I see a 97.5% decrease in WTF over 10 years.

[Catshrink]

8. Celebrating the wearin' o' the green, eh?

:toast:

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[Ikonoklast]

12. Now I know how Amway started.

Except this is a reverse pyramid scheme.

You would run out of money to take in short order.

[leftstreet]

13. The Minimum Wage should be $20 an hour n/t

[Greyhound]

15. Interesting redistribution, but it leaves nothing to run the government with,

If I understand what you meant to say.
:shrug:

[Luciferous]

16. My head hurts

:shrug:

[KillCapitalism]

17. Corporate America would have a field day if so.

If the min. wage were abolished, well, we all better get used to working for $.75 an hour like the Chinese do.