I know I’ve talked about this before, but I think this is a very important subject that needs further investigation. One of the first steps in repairing our economy is to bring money back to consumers…people who are actually going to spend the money in our marketplace, not leave it sitting in bonds, assets, or overseas somewhere. Until people have money to spend, ensuring that the money flows freely through our system, it will continue to stagnate at the top, grinding the wheels of our economy to a halt.
Many people believe that we can bring money back to the consumer class by raising the minimum wage, which is true…somewhat. But what about five, ten, or fifteen years from now? After inflation hits, we’re right back where we started.
The minimum wage doesn’t affect inflation! That is most certainly true. What affects inflation is the amount of money that is in circulation. This means that if money is destroyed, like when older bills are collected and taken off of the market for destruction, the value of our money raises, until new bills are printed, at which point, the value of our money decreases to accommodate the new bills.
What does that have to do with the minim wage? I am so glad you asked that! The minimum wage has always been a set number. At this point, the national minimum wage is $7,25 per hour. People want to raise that to $15 an hour, but I say again, what happens in a few years when the government prints more money, devaluing what we have? That $15 an hour will seem like the $7.25 we earn now. The resolution for this issue is to link the minimum wage to the total amount of money in circulation. Let’s try to put it into perspective. Let’s pretend that $15 is 0.000001% of the total amount of money in circulation (I haven’t done any research on the figures, so I just pulled that number out of thin air). Now, if the government were to say that the minimum wage is 0.000001% of the total amount of money in circulation per hour, rather than $15 per hour, if more money were printed, the minimum wage would go up to reflect the amount of inflation that has occurred. This would not only ensure that people continuously receive a living wage, it would also ensure that we have a continuous amount of vital funds flowing through our economy, rather than stagnated at the top.
The reason I don’t see a system like this being implemented is because it forces accountability onto those who have avoided accountability all of their lives. In fact, many of them pride themselves on it and make a living off of avoiding responsibility.
At some point it will have to become clear that the personal gain of a few is destroying everyone. A truly balanced system cannot sustain a single economic class, nor can it sustain one class with enormous economic and political power, while the other has next to none. Without balance, our system will collapse.
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