Only if it produces something that is worth something to others who have something to trade.
True, but the workers will produce things others are willing to buy. Otherwise companies wouldn't hire them.
... but companies won't hire them. That's the point. If you have a field that can be fully harvested by two machines and ten workers, and 100 workers ask for a job; what are you going to do?
You're not going to hire 100 workers. Most would just be standing around, you couldn't afford to hire them because if 90 just stand around you aren't producing anymore than you used to.
You're going to hire the smartest/most hardworking workers that are willing to work for the least pay. If the wage is forced by government you will simply hire the smartest/most hardworking. If the wage the government demands for 10 workers is less than the cost of buying a specialized machine, you'll buy the machine and then you'll be employing nobody.
You've discovered the conceptual error at the root of minimum wage laws. You can't mandate value into existence. All you can do is mandate a certain level of compensation.
The companies still manage to make profit from the minimum wage; otherwise they would have gone out of business.
That is fallacious reasoning. Companies go out of business all the time. Do you simply assume that none of them have gone out of business because their business model required less than minimum wage labor?
Do you know how many currently unemployed could have been employed had those business models not been effectively outlawed?
Do you think the currently unemployed are better off getting no wage rather than a wage arbitrarily decided to be illegal?
Of course not, and it is quite plainly a vicious cycle. The more people sitting around doing nothing but collecting unemployment the less actual production goes on. The less production the more expensive things are. The more expensive things are the higher the poverty threshold and then ignorant left-tribers want to raise the minimum wage thus resetting the cycle.
In circumstances where the work is not worth the product, there simply won't be a job opportunity.
True, but if this is the case, companies would have already gone out of business.
Or automated...
What if you added to your plan that minimum wage is $1000/hr?
I don't agree with this and have never advocated this position. I think counties should set their own minimum wages, provided it's at least $7.25 an hour.
Irrelevant what you agree with, we're testing your economic assumptions here.
You can't produce chicken sandwiches by signing a piece of paper or printing money.
True, but more workers and more customers means you can produce more chicken sandwiches and more people would buy them.
They aren't customers unless they're producing value to trade. They can't produce chicken sandwiches without a chicken farm. Like I said it depends on the available means of production. If there was a plethora of potential productive positions to fill more people will increase production. That is conditional, not some reliable law of economics.
Perhaps you could argue that you could open up federal lands and let them build new low-tech farms and mines... That would hardly be instant growth.
It's true that if everyone is doing manual labor there is no time to do anything else, however it was innovation not slavery (or cheap labor) that freed people by increasing the food production per person.
Innovation allows for more food to be produced, but so does more workers. Why not both? I don't think they are mutually exclusive, in fact I think the more people are in your country, the more innovation comes to your country. It's why as the world has gotten more people, technology levels have skyrocketed.
Or maybe the population skyrocketed with more technology... When 3/4 of your kids die from starvation and sickness it really dampens the enthusiasm.
U.S. Spending under deep state policies is proportional only to what they can get away with. If you increased the real GDP by some means they would simply spend more on something or other.
I'd want to end that; the only spending I propose is outlined in operation get out of debt.
Then the necessary condition to get out of debt is within your plan and the rest are unrelated points. We don't need more or less people, we need to stop wasting money and driving the means of production out of the country.
You must understand our current spending is at least ten times what could be considered necessary.
What would you cut to reduce spending by 90%?
First define a standardized government contract (SGC) system with rules and requiring double-blind and confrontational evaluation mechanisms.
Abolish taxes, causing the last veto on inefficiency to be the paying public. From that point (assuming the paying public agreed with whatever I said):
Cut the military budget by 80%, destroy the military industrial complex with SGC. Preparing to take over the world is an enormous waste of money if you aren't going to take over the world. There is much waste in government spending on top of that. So long as we have ICBMs we are immune from traditional forms of aggression.
Abolish both social security and income security and replace it with a closed wallet system with clear rules administered by computers (blockchain). Closed wallet = no discretion in spending money in hopes that future generations will buy in, that's called a pyramid scheme. The idea behind it is welfare/retirement insurance, run it like welfare/retirement insurance.
Abolish medicaid, medicare, and all government medical programs. Replace it with:
1.) A government option medical service. Government medical service (GMS) is just a corp of doctors, hospitals, pharmacological factories, and insurance program all administered as a non-profit. If the theory is that big pharma is conspiring to keep prices high, undercut is the obvious answer. If the non-profit can produce drugs cheaper then you were right. If it can't you were wrong. Neither scenario justifies stealing or (much much) worse threatening violence to anyone who doesn't practice medicine under your command.
2.) Public medical charity fund on the order of $10/year per citizen. The purpose of this fund is to provide for medical care through the GMS (or cheaper) to those people who genuinely can't afford it and only in cases where the medical situation threatens their life/productivity, is easily treated, and is not due to their idiocy.
So a homeless person breaks a bone for example. Someone who gives themselves diabetes is not. The rules governing what qualifies must be clearly spelled out and if they are not popular it may cause the fund to split. So for example left-tribers might think that someone contracting COVID would not qualify if they choose not to get vaccinated. Right-tribers might disagree, then they would have two different funds. One which funds unvaccinated covid patients and one which doesn't.
With computers, keeping track of thousands of different rule sets and getting instant answers about qualification is quite possible.
Abolish DOJ. Replace it with standard cooperation protocols between police forces of different states and counties. (there never was any intention for the federal government to enforce common law and the corruption of the DOJ is such that it is better to start over)
Declare the US insolvent and delete the debt. Constitutionally prevent the US from taking on debt again. Adopt a blockchain currency as the national currency to remove currency manipulation as an option for theft and fraud. (this removes all interest payments).
Department of education abolished and not replaced with anything with a significant budget. National guidelines on objective levels of education is fine, but it takes like a hundred people in a single office floor to maintain and publish such things. There is absolutely no reason for the federal government to steal money from the people just to give it to states in the name of "education". Those who care about education can and should do it as locally as they want. If an efficient system emerges it can grow organically.
Transport budget remains but becomes more efficient via SGC.
That reduces the total spending by 90% and makes the remaining 10% an order of magnitude more efficient.
There was a time before income tax
My plan has no income tax.
Your plan assumes that the portion of GDP spent by government can be much lower than it is now. You're wrong about what would produce a much greater GDP but you are right that public sector spending need not be so high.
It thus follows that if the economy could grow by 500% without the government spending growing, that we could reduce the current government spending by 1- 1/500% = 80%.