And you guys are from the party that cries when referred to as Democrat. Keep it classy.
Don’t forget agriculture subsidies. Hi there, Iowa…
And you find it perfectly fair to be disenfranchised through tough times. Lovely.
It’s not a conflict of interest; it’s just an interest. And it’s no different in quality from the interests of rich people, who also use their political interests to vote themselves more money.
This position assumes that those who are wealthy don’t depend on the government in order to acquire and retain their wealth.
Gulftiger wrote: “My criteria is based on the inherit conflict of interest when one is dependent on the government treasury to survive and being able to vote himself more from that same treasury.”
It is always seem logical to me that those persons dependent on governmental largess for their livelihood have a greater interest in the stability of the system rather than a lesser one.
we just disagree then
I see it differently.
The situation right now is vastly superior to anything that would occur under any sort of a model of limited suffrage. We’ve had natural experiments in that and it looks like 1780 England or 1920 Mississippi.
It’s true that under your system things will rapidly downgrade to the point of a socially atomized oligarchy that wouldn’t be too dissimilar from Anglophone Brazil.
I might add that due to white flight, increasing racial diversity, and cultural changes this kind of thinking has mostly disappeared from Orange County itself. Indeed our proud county may very well end up giving its votes to a Democratic candidate for President for the first time since the days of FDR.
It’s one thing to have an opinion or disagreement over policy. It’s another thing for that opinion to be that some huge number of your fellow citizens should be robbed of their political voice. This isn’t “just” a disagreement in my eyes. It’s a fundamental rejection of the concept of equality of one’s fellow citizens. This is created a tiered society of unequals, with a nobility and a serf-class in all but name. To me, even suggesting such an idea is abhorrent and one should feel ashamed to reveal such a level of disrespect for one’s fellow humans.
It’s called an “interest”. Every group has them. Yes, even rich people who pay tons of taxes have them. In fact, guess which group gets catered to, almost exclusively? It ain’t the welfare folks, I’ll tell you that much. I wonder - does your requirement include people whose companies might get government contracts? Why not? That’s a serious conflict of interest right there - they’re probably voting for the candidate more likely to give the millions of dollars of business! Or does that not count as a “conflict”?
Why is direct assistance different from indirect? I benefit from the DoD, the EPA, roads, fire departments, the CDC, my state wildlife conservation department, my city parks and rec department, the local state-funded colleges, the county-funded high schools, etc.
As such I want to vote for more of all of them. And thereby increase your taxes and reduce your economic freedom. Some of what these agencies may do is promulgate regulations that impede your freedom in more direct ways than simply taxing your wallet.
How do we resolve this so-called conflict of interest? Which is really (as pointed out several times above) just me voting my interests; no conflict involved.
The answer is there is no answer. Everybody votes for what’s important to them. When *all *the citizens vote equally the results will match the desires of the citizens. When only *some *citizens are allowed to vote, the results match the desire of that minority.
Rest assured you personally will be on the losing end of that stick. Bigly. Maybe not in version one of the rules; but certainly in version two that quickly follows. So my advice is don’t advocate for removing your own right to influence your government. Or mine.
Politics is more than simply economics. When you reduce your idea of society to simply voting your wallet you reduce society to grocery shopping. It’s far more important than that. And far wider in scope.
The road to enlightenment begins when one stops thinking only so far as their own nose.
At the very least, there must be a mind for one to have an insight into.
Not directly, perhaps, but I can imagine your stance on affirmative action quite clearly.
I can also imagine your opinion of whether structural racism and sexism exist.
So, no, you don’t explicitly talk about limiting suffrage by race or sex, but that fig leaf is looking mighty thin there, boyo.
Because you’re paying for them.
That is, when you receive “indirect assistance,” it’s fundamentally different than receiving money personally. You’re receiving the benefit of shared infrastructure built for the purpose of shared use and paid for by money taken from your paycheck.
That’s the difference. I am not necessarily endorsing the “pauper’s oath,” but it’s clear there is a difference.
The so-called founding fathers believed that only wealthy landowners should have the vote, and that was indeed the law of the land for a very long time. Everyone else was disenfranchised, with pretty much ALL the poorer people being either indentured servants or slaves, with no rights whatsoever. Those who did not want that sort of life were pushed out to the then frontiers of North Carolina, Georgia, etc.
Thomas Jefferson, who everyone likes to hold up as the very embodiment of democracy, owned hundreds of slaves. Despite his writings about farming and the nobility of tilling the land, he never so much as lifted a hoe his entire life.
I’m assuming that this is what you’re referring to as the “original recipe” that we should all go back to in order to make America great again? “Watering down the product” sounds alarmingly like eugenics to me, which was also the thinking of that time.
Surely you jest.
The difference between what I pay for all government services (ballpark 60K/year) and what a pure welfare recipient pays (arguably zero) is negligible compared to the difference between what I pay and what Bill Gates (WAG 1 million-plus) pays. The overall average American pays WAG 4K.
If it’s OK to disenfranchise the welfare recipient because he/she is underpaying by just 4K versus the average, clearly its far more appropriate to disenfranchise upper-middle class folks like me and you (and everybody else farther down), since I’m paying not even 10% of what Bill and his pals do.
IOW, the logic you’re explicating (if not *quite *advocating) clearly says nobody but the 1% should be allowed to vote. And even then the bottom 10% of the 1% are pretty suspect.
That’s not the idea of American citizenship I grew up with.
It is in my interest, and yours, that there not be desperate starving people in our communities. Direct cash assistance to our neediest fellow citizens is good for our local economies, not to mention our safety, and our souls.
I’m not remotely advocating.
But I don’t have the disease that seems to prevent people from accurately understanding and explaining positions with which they don’t agree.
It may not be something you picture as part of American citizenship, but swearing the pauper’s oath was a legal prerequisite for welfare as late as the 1930s, so it’s certainly inaccurate to claim it runs counter to the nation’s history and traditions.
My apologies for putting an inappropriate position into your mouth so to speak. I’m definitely a believer in being able to understand and articulate the opposition’s POV. Until one can, one’s demonstrated one doesn’t understand it well.
And yes, there is an identifiable bright-line distinction between paying $0 vs $some that is qualitatively different from the distinction between $some vs $more.
OTOH, identifying bright lines is often a route to legalism rather than to justice.
Sure. My own view is that we can readily reach the correct answer by asking ourselves why we provide public assistance. It’s not a quid pro quo; we don’t require it be paid back. So that suggests to me it is intended now as a targeted benefit, not tied to voting in any meaningful way.
I think arguing about justice is too abstract, however, in that two people may well have very different, yet very sincere, opinions about what constitutes justice.
Classy? Compared to Trumpasaurus-Blechs???
You need to understand that if you’re supporting Trump, having your limbs made into musical instruments at “The Titty Twister” by vampires IS classy.
This board really needs a “like” button. 