Perhaps if the wages of Senators were at the minimum rate the tune you're singing David, would be very different?

That said, the best way out of poverty is via meaningful well rewarded work, and full employment! And that requires bold, imaginative, (AWOL) leadership and a very different expansive economic paradigm!

Which could unleash our full potential to grow and prosper, in a way without precedent!

Couple the world's safest, cleanest, cheapest publically owned and operated energy provision (molten salt thorium) to new space age desal (four times less expensive than traditional desal, with 95% returned as potable water) and we have a drought proof economy and quite massive growth in the next boom the food boom!

[And if you can find just one example where energy privatization has resulted in lower power prices, instead of a price gouged captive market, please feel free to elaborate on the benefits of privatisation, with irrefutable evidence!]

How could we pay for this I hear you ask?

Well we do have a two trillion dollar super fund! But don't have/never had, thirty year, government guaranteed, self terminating thirty year bonds, popular almost everywhere else!

And if we did, we could offset comparatively low returns by giving the income/return a tax free status, even if a person/entity bought billions!

Finally we need real and long overdue tax reform as a SINGLE STAND ALONE unavoidable flat tax of 15% for everyone, with an income above $50,000?

Meaning, all tax compliance costs would become null and void, as would fuel excise and the ubiquitous GST, which would mean the average 7% ripped from the bottom line could be returned (not taken) meaning, the effective company tax rate would be just 8%?

Except where the income was derived from said (tax free) thirty year, self terminating bonds!

Instead of trying to workout how to rip the unemployed or the long suffering taxpayer off, why don't you become a powerful advocate for change we can all believe in AND QUITE MASSIVELY BENEFIT FROM!? Rather than a privileged few!?
Alan B.

Alan,

From your post you consider the unemployed as the privileged few?

Many businesses close on Sundays, even a small percentage more opening on Sundays will employ thousands more.

Alan B you have won the award for making the most absurd posting in the history of OLO!
This thorium nonsense you keep banging on about? Tell us more? First tell us why if it is so good no one, and I do mean no one, but nut jobs has bothered with it. If it was one hundreth as good as you say it would be everywhere but it is not. It is a product of your fevered imagination.
Why don't you make an effigy of Donald Trump and attack it? Really go to town, make it out of rice paper and eat it. Then have a nice cup of tea and a lie down.

Back in 1999 a butchers wage 15 per hour while an electrician was on 17.5
Today the butcher is o 24 and the electrician more like 45.

The simple reason is supply and demand however the demand for electricians has reduced yet the unions will not allow wages to be reduced. The answer, 457 workers.

Sorry, its called rocket science and people still dont get it.

As for unemployed and the min wage, another reality is that some people are simply unemployable and not worth 10 bucks an hour let alone 17.

If we are serious about addressing unemployment STOP PAYING CASH. To a kid that has been dragged up, not brought up, cash on a regular basis is like a dream come true.

Finally, with our transition to automation in full swing, the problem is only going to get worse. Of cause the governments answer is to welcome Amazon who it is tipped will take a sledge hammer to our retailers.

Take a bow fools!