Okay, this idea isn’t entirely my own, but expanded upon with my unmatched genius. You may or may not have heard of Blake Fall-Conroy’s “Minimum Wage Machine”, which is a penny-dispensing Rube Goldberg machine that “allows anybody to work for minimum wage.” See Picture.

“The minimum wage machine allows anybody to work for minimum wage, by turning a crank on the side of the machine. Turning the crank will yield one penny every 5.04 seconds, for $7.15 an hour (NY state minimum wage). If the participant stops turning the crank, they stop receiving money. The machine’s mechanism and electronics are powered by the hand crank, and pennies are stored in a plexiglas box.”

Basically anyone can work. No need for an interview or a nice button-down anymore or even that crappy resume you’ve been working on for years. But what if instead of turning a crank, those looking to make money pedaled a bike. And what if that bike’s kinetic energy was turned into a form of electricity. You’de have the unemployed literally working out to produce clean energy. Nice, right? So you ask, who is supplying all those pennies? Well, I don’t mean to get all “Nancy Pelosi” on you, but what if everyone was taxed 5 pennies a month on their income to pay for it? Not a big deal right? I’d give up 5 cents a month instead of bookoo-dollars in unemployment tax. Well, there are now 304,059,724 people in the US. If everyone gave 5cents a month that means $1,520,298,620 in pennies to pay those folks spinning those wheels. That means our current unemployment rate would be transformed into the rate of healthy, electricity producing fools who work on their own time and no one has to look after or manage them.

Yep.

Problem solved.

You’re welcome.

C