A strawman if there ever was one. The only time that has ever happened was in the last decade and it certainly wasn’t because of a property owner only suffrage law.
Generally, in normal times, a property owner is concerned with his investment (especially his home) and wants the community as a whole to succeed. Someone who doesn’t have such a tie to the city/state is looking out for number one.
Why is money specifically, reflective of someone’s “interests”? Money is paper, worthless by it’s self. It’s only a token of economic power. Skill at amassing power, whether economic, political, or whatever is neutral. However history is full of examples of the evils of concentrating power in the few because the few think they know better than the many.
Also I thought the Right hated Nanny government. How can you get any more patronizing than telling a grown adult they don’t know how to vote correctly?
Actually, you can end the sentence there.
The value of someone’s property is not necessarily tied to the long-term best interest of the community. If you were offered a profit to sell your home to a strip-mall developer, would you take it, and do you think your neighbors would appreciate such a civic-minded gesture?
I’ve asked this once already in this thread. Don’t know why I should expect an answer this time.
I agree that everyone, barring certain age and competency restrictions) should have the right to vote. But I also think that people have a responsibility to contribute to the general good. Everyone should have to contribute. Either in dollars, or for those for whom the burden would be too high, through labor. I see no reason why those who do not contribute should have a say in decisions that are made with the contributions of everyone else.
Do you have an example of these people who “do not contribute,” or is that just a hypothetical?
Or with wit and wisdom, depending on one’s gifts.
Give Huerta88 a little credit; he’s just restating Juvenal in a much more convoluted way.
Not that I completely agree with him, but what I think he’s trying to warn against is that if people aren’t being taxed, there’s no incentive for them not to vote themselves bread and circuses, as it were.
I’m not sure how you get around that; it does seem to a lot of Republican people at times like a large part of the lower socioeconomic status Democrat voters do indeed have that in mind.
They can be considered. They have been considered. They’ve been implemented often. And they didn’t work very well, so in 1832, 1867 and other years they were made less restrictive to stop those without the vote from carrying the heads of those with the vote on pikes through the street. Universal adult suffrage is self preservation (combined with a recognition by enough that it wasn’t going to end privilege).
If self interest was a disqualifying factor, there wouldn’t be any voters at all. How about somebody who owns shares in a company that does defense contracting. He has every incentive to vote for someone who’ll award contracts to that company. Sure, he pays taxes, but he can still vote himself bread and circuses that will return to him more than he puts in.
How is that any different?
Yes, well, no republic in history ever destroyed itself by way of the plebs voting themselves largesse from the treasury.
No kidding. If anything, a sizable minority of the poor continue to vote against their own interest. 40% of those making under $30k in 2010 voted for Republican candidates – those who are promising to slash benefits, eliminate services, cut budgets, and even perhaps some of those candidates are talking about how the poor have “no skin in the game.” Link.
The idea that the poor are going to take over the nation’s treasury is and always has been a paranoid rich person’s nightmare. People should be reminded that just because an opinion was expressed in an old book and it is sometimes repeated, doesn’t make it a valid forecast.
I’m actually not so sure about this. Take India for instance. Indira Gandhi came (back) to power in 1971 riding on the slogan ‘eradicate poverty’ and pushed an agenda that included, among other things, ‘poverty eradication programmes; nationalisation of banks and general insurance companies; ceilings on urban property and income; curbs on business monopolies and concentration of economic power; provision of house sites to the rural poor’. This agenda was to be achieved, naturally, on the back of redistributive policies. The marginal income tax for the rich during her regime was at one point around 95% ! She was able to do this of course, because her stated intention was to hand out ‘largesse from the treasury’, and ‘the plebs’ voted themselves it, and in massive numbers at that. The result was what are widely known as the ‘lost decades’ of India from 1970 to 1990 with percapita growth rates of lower than 1%, and while the country did not destroy itself, it did inflict upon itself a great deal of damage, the effects of which are still being felt today. Needless to say, poverty wasn’t eradicated either. Only an external shock viz. a crisis of payments in 1991 allowed a course correction.
Hugo Chavez and Venezuela may be another example?
Part of the point made by Huerta is thus actually extremely valid. There is definitely a moral hazard (in the language of economics) created where wealth is concentrated, relatively speaking, among a few, and a government elected by the many has redistributive powers. It may not be the old hazard of things getting so bad that guillotined heads roll in the street, but the hazard exists nevertheless. Let me add that I don’t for a moment think the solution is to restrict voting rights. But to deny that it is a potential problem is irresponsible I think. As some others have posted, the power of the vote is no doubt offset to some extent by the higher lobbying and monetary ‘power’, but seems a very imperfect check in many respects. Are there other checks in place? Can not some be suggested?
Presumably, the city would having zoning laws to prevent a strip mall from being constructed in a residential neighborhood. And people who own property in the community would be more concerned about such things than homeless people or renters who can pack up and leave at any time.
So what mechanism would renters have to look after their interests?
There’s a huge problem with all of the proposals for restricting certain groups from the franchise. All of these proposals rest of the premise that some groups can’t be relied on to vote for the common good - they’ll just vote for their own self-interest.
But if that’s true then the premise is actually arguing for the opposite conclusion. If you believe the Group A can’t be trusted to make the right decisions and we need to restrict government to Group B, is there any reason to assume that Group B won’t put its self-interest above the common good? If you make the argument that any group can’t be trusted to put aside its own interests, then you can’t argue that some other group should be put in charge because it will think of everyone.
The only way you’re going to have a government that represents every group in society is to have a government that includes every group in society.
Simple, really. The poor crave money, and will sell out the country to get it. The rich already have money, and are not subject to such temptation. Power corrupts, especially those who don’t have any.
Presumably, yes, there would be zoning laws. But laws change. Suppose the city council is planning a change to allow strip malls in a previously residential area. What’s to stop someone from pushing for his neighborhood to be rezoned so he can make a profit at the expense of his neighbors?
My problem with jtgain’s argument is twofold. Practical, because a homeowner’s individual economic interest may not be the best interest of the entire community; and ideological, because people who live in a community have interests beyond the simple market value of their home.
Well, the idea is that if the group is “property owners” then their interest will align perfectly with the common good because what is good for the city, county, and state as a whole will benefit them by protecting or increasing their property values.
If you vote for bad policies, nobody wants to live in your community, and your property value falls. If you vote for good policies, more people want to live in your area and your property value rises.
I don’t support the idea because it does leave renters out in the cold with no way to voice their concerns even though they live in the area. But I do understand the argument and it seems like a coherent one.
Simple. If you take the vote away from a lot of people, they will put you up against the wall and shoot you.