A National Tithe

First, in keeping with my new-found mission from God--support the Minimum Wage. Go to www.democrats.org, or www.MoveOn.org, and tell them that it is time to fight to raise the Federal Minimum Wage.
Now, onto more obtuse and less realistic goals. President Bush once believed in Faith Based Iniatives. I had an idea while I was reading the latest issue of TIME, which was a discussion on poverty, which was written by Jeffery Sachs, an economist for the UN's Millenium Development Goals. He made some very good, specific points about how to eliminate extreme poverty worldwide. However, his main point is that we as a nation need to honor our responsibility to the rest of the world monetarily.
Well, here is a website that tells you all about faith-based ideas of tithing, but every world religion encourages giving to those less fortunate. Now, here's my suggestion, since Republicans like to talk about our "Judeo-Christian" heritage, how about this. We commit as a nation to a national 10% tithe of GNP. Now, if Republicans don't like the idea of making laws straight out of the Old Testament, then they have to give up all efforts to criminalize gay marriage.
Now, here's how this would work, because we all know how much Republicans like to make solutions in the private sector. We would add up all the itemized tax-deductible contributions for the previous year. Then we would subtract that from the 10% of recorded GNP. We would then make up the difference in additional taxes, possibly in a nod to our Muslim brethren, a 2.5% tax on personal assets. We could use all this money collected for any humanitarian purpose. We could use it to pay for the Department of Education, Medicare, etc... However, we should set aside at least 10% of the money collected to go to world development.
This way, we encourage giving to private charities--which Republicans suggest is the true answer to society's ills--because the penalty tax amount would decrease as private giving increased. Now, I'm willing to compromise on the numbers here, because unlike some suggest about other issues in the Bible, we don't have to take these numbers literally. In fact, I wonder how many folks who think that the Earth was created in 7 days, or that homosexuality is abomination unto God actually give 10% of their income. Let's put our money where our big fat mouths are.
Oh yeah, let's fight for an increase in the Minimum Wage.