It's not quite slavery, but it's walking an awfully fine line, especially since the value of the so-called "tax credit", at $40 an hour, by far exceeds the econ

It's not quite slavery, but it's walking an awfully fine line, especially since the value of the so-called "tax credit", at $40 an hour, by far exceeds the economic value of the work performed. As a thought experiment, suppose the value of the "tax credit" were increased to $1000 an hour, so that you need to either do your 100 hours of community service or pay $100,000 extra in tax. Since the vast majority of us can't possibly afford to pay a $100,000 fine for not doing our "community service", this would in effect be a government-run slavery system. At $4000 (forty bucks an hour for college students who otherwise be lucky to earn 25% of that) it's pretty borderline. This policy was always one of my strongest reasons for opposing an Obama presidency. It's facepalm-worthy to find out that many of his supporters are only just finding out about this policy now.