I appreciate the answer. I don’t think the narrow examination of “per capita, post-tax and cash-transfer income … adjusted for purchasing power parity” is really a great measurement of “quality of life”. According to this chart from the article, our treatment of the poor falls somewhere between Australia and New Zealand and somewhere between Canada and the United Kingdom. That certainly doesn’t seem like we’re terribly out-of-line with our peers.
I briefly tried to find some “quality of life” metrics for the poor in OECD countries, but couldn’t. If you know of any, I’d be delighted to read them as well.
If I have some time later, I might look. My assessment comes from numbers like this, as well as the fact that so many poor people in the US have no access to health care, unlike most or all of the comparable countries.
So your world has no ironical or tongue-in-cheek commentary.
Now let me ask you a question. After you clicked to discover it was a Samantha Bee “documentary” — in other words, that it provided a more informed perspective than you’d ever get at FauxNews etc. — you declined to watch it, amirite? You got back to your Forbes.com or whatever, or poring through Google hits to cherry-pick stats to support your world view. Amirite?
Yup, I did not watch it. I can think of far more entertaining ways to waste my time than listening to Samantha Bee. Nails on a chalk board, medieval torture, etc.
I don’t share this view. I agree it was a primary intended effect on the part of some lawmakers, to be sure, but by no means a monolith. And I’d support them regardless of the motivation, as long as they are supported by a valid, neutral justification.
The paragraph above sort of conflates two different questions: “my position,” as it relates to approval or disapproval, and “my position,” as it relates to how strongly I push for/discuss/argue the issue.
I am absolutely certain my conclusion that Voter ID is valid, and good public policy, would be unchanged by whose ox was gored by the process.
I am pretty certain that if the end result favored Democrats, I wouldn’t end up in so many debates about it here. But that’s not simply because I’d be unwilling to defend it, but rather because it would lack no defenders to begin with. You rarely see me in long, drawn-out discussions here about the death penalty, for example, even though I oppose it. But others take up the slack when those conversations arise, because the issue doesn’t lack for people on the opposition side.
But by knowingly making common cause with (in some non-zero amount of cases) white supremacists, aren’t you enabling some evil here?
Wouldn’t a more moral position (and wiser in the long-term) be to look into the intentions behind these laws, and not support those with intentions aimed at making things harder for (for example) older black people?
Further, you must recognize how horrible this appears to folks like me. I understand that white supremacists also breathe and pet their dogs and all sorts of other mundane things that have nothing to do with white supremacism. But among their primary goals are hurting and making life harder for black people. At least some of these voter ID laws are aimed at making voting harder for black people (especially older black people). Even if that’s for partisan purposes. Can’t that be reasonably described as morally reprehensible? Isn’t aligning with the white supremacists on making voting harder for older black people morally unjust, in that assisting white supremacists in this is more evil than pushing your voting philosophy is good?
I’ll ask again what your position would be on this if the ones having their ability to vote made harder were mostly older Cuban Americans, or older Catholics. And suppose at least some of the ones advocating for the position were anti-Catholic bigots, or anti-Cuban bigots. Would you still be willing to politically ally with them?
Perhaps I will learn that some white supremacists favor a policy of not hitting themselves with burning torches, or that they like breathing oxygen. I may also adopt those policies, undeterred by my fellow travelers’ obnoxious positions in other areas.
No. Because the OTHER reasons to support the policy are sound.
I went with torches this time.
No, because I regard the actual harm being done here as slight. A policy that truly creates an onerous burden should be opposed. A policy that requires a photo ID, but provides a free ID to those who need it and a way to waive the requirement in edge cases, is not so onerous as to trigger this decision.
I’d be willing to ally on this particular issue, because this particular issue is one in which they’re right. This doesn’t mean I need to be fitted for a Klan robe.
This is where the difference in opinion lies. In my understanding, most of the laws that have been criticized on this board do not “provide a free ID to those who need it and a way to waive the requirement in edge cases”. Do you still support laws that require a photo ID, but provide no assistance to those without them, or those older folks who might have serious difficulty in getting them (i.e. no birth certificate)?
Of course not. I haven’t suggested your motives are racist in this thread, and in other threads I’ve defended you from accustions of racist motives.
In general, states offer some way of waiving or working around that requirement. If you give me an example of a state that does not, I’ll be happy to look into it, and if there is no such path, I will likely oppose it.
So, on the one hand, too lax a policy would allow illegal voters, too stringent a policy would hinder legitimate voters. Yet in either case, the fragile blossom of voter confidence is imperiled! In a sooper dooper close election, a mere handful of votes, or even less…
You know where that one goes, you built it. But the one in *this *hand bothers you, demands action, whereas the other does not. Just a little bit of harm done, no biggy. Not compared with the massive tide of illegal voting! Don’t even start on the peril of unicorn stampedes!
That makes no sense. I could see arguing that it would improve democracy if people had to put effort into thinking about their vote, learning about the issues, etc.
But saying that it’s important for people to put more effort into the mere act of voting is silly. (And your use of Paine’s Revolutionary War quote to try to support it, with the implication that the suffering of a bloody rebellion and obtaining a voter ID somehow have comparable effects in making members of a democracy appreciate their condition, certainly doesn’t make it look any less silly.)
Voting already takes a non-negligible amount of effort, especially for the non-wealthy. Why should we require people to jump through even more hoops that will just skew advantage even more toward the wealthy? Unless, of course, the real point is that you want to increase the disproportionate difficulty of voting for the non-wealthy so that fewer of them will vote.
But a fundamental purpose of democracy is supposed to be countering that unfair bias towards wealth. It’s not supposed to be easier for a rich murderer than a poor one to duck out of a murder charge. It’s not supposed to be easier for a rich person than a poor person to avoid government censorship or quartering of soldiers, etc.
The fact that in our current quasi-oligarchic distortion of democracy rich people generally do have significant advantages over non-rich ones even in matters where they’re supposed to be equal before the law doesn’t mean that we ought to be striving to increase the unfair advantages of the rich in such situations.
So then what happens to your sanctimonious insistence on the importance of “dearness” in order to “put a proper price” upon voting? On one side of your mouth you’re arguing that voting needs to be burdensome so the thoughtless proles will learn to appreciate its value, while on the other side you’re protesting that the burden isn’t really impacting anybody in any significant way so there’s no real harm done.
Make up your mind, Counselor: is voter ID beneficial because it makes voting significantly more difficult for the non-wealthy, or is it unobjectionable because it doesn’t make voting significantly more difficult for the non-wealthy?
This isn’t a rebuttal. I can just as well say that your response is sillier.
Because there’s a valid reason to do so: ensuring the identity of people casting votes.
This has been asked before of me, and I have answered it before.
We’re not. We are, however, willing to accept that as a natural consequence of the world and society we’ve created.
Voter ID is beneficial because it allows us a degree of assurance about the identities of the people casting votes, which in turn contributes to voter confidence in the results of ultra-close elections. The fact that it creates a small, NOT SIGNIFICANT, difficulty, is also beneficial because what we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.
Now, you don’t agree that the difficulty is not significant. You think the difficulty is significant. But most voters, most courts, and most legislators situated to weigh in disagree. So you don’t get to insist on your version. Because democracy.
And if that last sentence isn’t true, then try to take it away – pluck the repeal of Voter ID laws from the tree upon which you think it grows. Go right ahead.
Ya know, Kimstu, like how everyone going into a movie theatre has to undergo a full body cavity search to make sure they aren’t bringing any grenades into the theatre. That’s a thing we do, right? :dubious:
Some things aren’t worthy of rebuttal because they’re so bizarre or insane. “We should make it harder to vote on principle so that only the people who really want to vote will vote” is one of those things. “We should hire John Wayne Gacy to supervise our coulrophobic 10-year-old’s birthday party” is another. You’re a trained professional in a difficult intellectual field; I think you can figure out why you’re getting this response.
Come on. It’s not that hard. Here, let me give you a hint, one (crushing but not exclusive) reason why the only response this is worthy of has to do with this graph. Maybe you can figure it out.
If voter confidence is the issue, no laws need be written. Just tell the people that laws have been instated that guarantee no illegal votes will be counted. Then they can shuffle off to the polls with confidence. Which is what this is about. This way Republicans aren’t purging voter lists of people who aren’t likely to vote Republican and the hoi polloi can vote with, as I said before, confidence. Everybody wins.
In debate, an assertion made without rebuttal (even if the rhetor declares it’s “not worthy” of rebuttal) is known as a gratuitous assertion, and the rule is that it may be equally gratuitously denied. Therefore: nuh uh.
Now, you may protest that this is not debate, but real life.
In which case: okay, then. Erase the Voter ID laws in real life. Go right ahead. Why haven’t you done it already? The most recent news is that the Fifth Circuit kept Texas’ law in place for the upcoming elections. That doesn’t seem like a real life win.
