Elitism

Imagine how different our country would look today if only those who paid income tax were allowed to vote.  This would eliminate most students–whose experience of the world is purely theoretical, and thus prone to large distortions.  This would eliminate unemployed people who sit home every day and watch TV.  The people who the Montel Williams ads target, black and white.  This would eliminate the working poor.

Does it not make sense that the people who FUND our nation, through their taxes, should be the ones to decide how we spend that money, through their decisions on who represents them in Congress?

We look back on our Founding Fathers, and the elitism implicit in only giving the vote to land-owning men. Yet, we need to remember that education, then, took both time and money, both of which were in short supply back then.  A great many Americans could not even read (although then I do think we were one of the more literate nations, since one must read to read the Bible).

And the thought is reasonable: what benefit accrues from lowering the intelligence of the discussion?  What benefit accrues from moving the amount of understanding of the average voter to the left on a Bell Curve?  We want good decisions, and good decisions in turn flow from intelligence.  Logically, the more intelligent the electorate, the better off we will be.

But what if the elite uses its power to PERMANENTLY keep everyone else down?  This is a valid question, and the reason we have continually expanded the voting franchise.

But as things stand, people who do NOT contribute are in a position to vote themselves money and goods from those who DO.  It would literally be no different than if we granted the right to vote, in America, to Guatamalans, who could be expected to support candidates who promised foreign aid to Guatamala.  Economically, the money is wasted.  The Obamaphones will accomplish no economic good; nor does any serious person really expect them to.

This problem would be eradicated with my solution.  If you want to vote, get a job, then make enough money to pay income taxes.  If you want that group to be larger, then we can expand the pool and bring the taxes down to your level.  You may quickly wish for less taxes, like the rest of us.

If the top 50% of the country ran things, everything would be better for all.  We could still have social welfare programs.  No one would go hungry or homeless involutarily.  But we would get a rational public dialogue oriented around our actual problems, and a responsible concern both with the well being of ALL Americans, as well as our posterity.

And for those who would scream at me: I ask again, do you or do you not understand that our true annual debt increase is something on the order of $5 trillion a YEAR, and that that cannot go on much longer?  If you do understand this, why are you not discussing it?  The economic crash that is a CERTAINTY will hurt the poor the first and most.