I initially read this sentence as advocating that we, the people get to vote on what country to attack if the president is a war-monger. I was going to suggest Belgium. Or maybe Denmark. 
Great idea. Let’s add some more:
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If you want to vote to regulate business, you should have actually run a business before.
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If you want to vote to change health care, you should at least be able to tell the difference between a liver and a spleen in an open cadaver.
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If you want to vote on any matter of economics, you should be able to define what a supply vs demand curve looks like, and how they behave when one changes.
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If you want to vote to increase income taxes, you must be currently paying income tax.
Hell, even I could get behind some of these reforms. Especially the last one.
Well if that was the case it’d be easy to fix. You have to vote by marking the country on a map.
Too risky. You might end up declaring war on Pat Buchanan.
I could live with that.
10x the population, for starters.
Place automatic standing tax breaks for people with degrees from accredited US universities, larger benefits for higher degrees, perhaps even a huge taxable income break for families of dependent full time students making it more manageable for lower middle class families who would otherwise have a hard time paying for it.
Create similar incentives to employers making them more likely to employ/retain those who have more education. Crank up the pay scales for college instructors and university level research types to make it a seriously financially attractive profession.
To keep good well educated people, the private sector will have to compensate.
Make a degree an automatic bonus on hiring criteria and pay grade for all government jobs, even at the state and local levels, no matter how mundane.
Make it so having graduate degrees (or even part time employee grad students) has huge bonuses for businesses to have them among the ranks of their staff.
Create a policy that generally turns terms like nerd and geek into racial epithet grade insults. Calling someone a nerd would be treated no differently than any racially or gender offensive term
Which means that since the US has 10x the population, it has 10x the accidents, which is why we have a lower life expectancy.
It all makes perfect sense. I heard it from an expert.
Here’s my proposal: People who want to make sweeping generalizations about how stupid OTHER people are must know how to spell “Secede.”
That wouldn’t be a very effective rule, it would only apply to one person. How utterly inefficient.
Be honest, how long did you spend making sure that you didn’t misspell anything in that post to avoid looking foolish?
Yeah, but there would have to be limits. The degrees would have to be in something real. Anybody majoring in Education, for example, would actually have to pay a penalty for each degree. Doctorates in Education would be subject to immediate exile. Anybody with a degree in the “Behavioral Sciences” would have to wear a sign.
Majoring in Communications would mean no taxes for life!
You realize you are setting the conditions whereby Art History majors could make a bid for world domination?
I’d like to see of this generosity expanded to trade schools, including subsidized training in the building trades. I see no problem combining intelligence and drive with good practical knowledge and skills or, more crudely, I’m not sure American society needs more lawyers when they could use some good electricians and machinists.
Well, while we’re on the subject, how many MBA’s can we afford? And how might we ensure that the next crop doesn’t turn into the Masterbators of the Universe and loot everything in sight?
Sam you’re being bloody minded. I was agreeing with your conclusion, just nit picking your reasoning that intent for political abuse is all encompassing.
Why is wanting the voters to know about Iraq before they vote someone in to attack it a bad thing?
However some of the following actually seem like interesting ideas, since we live in representative democratic republics where legislatures vote on issues. So I commented on them for fun.
That’s actually a good idea. The only change is it needs that both sides should be required. For example on an issue affecting businesses and hourly workers the voter should also have had to spend some time living as an hourly worker would live doing what an hourly worker would do for hourly worker pay.
It’d be great. We’d have people crafting and refining regulation having seen the issue from both sets of eyes.
I assume you mean actual healthcare, not healthcare coverage. In which case heck yea. I don’t want someone making rules about my spleen surgeries if they don’t know what the fuck a spleen is. Ain’t it that way already though mostly?
I don’t know much about medical codes, but the NEC (National Electric Code) is created and refined by NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) with input from any interested party. Interested parties are usually electricians, firemen, you know the sorts of people who know about electrical safety. The code is ultimately compiled and released for integration into building codes. The code is interpreted by an AHJ (Authority Having Jurisdiction, in most places the building inspector) to see if an new, or updated (50% of the wiring changed, which is defined to be a breakerbox+ one dpuplex receptacle, or something else) implementation is Code Compliant.
Granted the NEC is ultimately put into legal force by local jurisdictions (towns, countries, etc.) who may not know their butt from a light socket, but every rule in it is written, examined, rewritten, re-examined, and refined by professionals who know what their field. It’s a pretty successful work considering how dangerous electricity is and often we interact with it without ever having to consider it’s danger at all. You cook food on a 220 volt stove without even considering it could kill you because of so many failsafes. It’s circuit is required by law to handle the stove’s load so it won’t burn your house down, if there’s a short a circuit breaker will catch it and flip, saving your life. The code specifies what can share what. For example lights and plugs can’t share a circuit. The idea is if you flip the plugs you’ll still be able to see to get to the breaker box. Another is the 2008 code specifies outlets every 6 feet just cause extension cords are a fire hazard. There’s specifications for raceways, cabling (that stuff can get hot just from being near each other through electrostatic interference), entryways, etc. If you ignore the dry language it’s written in it really is a beautiful work of professional art.
I took my school’s Basic Electricity class figuring it’d be a good elective for computers. The teacher had the ambitious goal of teaching all the students enough to pass the NEC text and become licensed as an apprentice electrician, in a month and half at 4 hours a week. I ended up doing the electrical blue prints for a house for the final project. Anyway as you can tell by my random rambling about the NEC it left quite an impression on me.
Sure I suppose.
Don’t Congress/Parliament members pay income tax? How would this rule have any affect on anything?
So the Canadian solution doesn’t scale well, is what you’re saying?
I’d sooner think maybe it’s differing base ideas about education.
Hey, we’re trying to lose weight, back off! And it’s not like you don’t got lotsa fatties, either…
Nah, you don’t want to do that. You teach them about credit cards, for instance, you’re going to be talking about people who totally screwed themselves with credit cards. Or people who are hit by health or family emergencies who use their credit cards as a emergency line of credit, and end up borrowing a world of shit.
Then, sooner or later, a couple of them are bound to think “Shouldn’t we do something to try to see that shit like this doesn’t happen to people?” Or “Isn’t encouraging people to fuck themselves over kind of a rotten way to make a living? Or worse, make a fortune?”
You don’t want them thinking like that.
Look, if you’re going to do this, what you want to do is put some stakes to it.
Let’s take Heinlein’s advice: You go into the booth to vote, and before you can vote, you have to solve a quadratic equation. If you can’t, the booth opens again… empty.
We can tie this to each subject, and maybe make it a little less extreme. So, you go into the voting booth, and you get to choose the subjects you will cast your vote on. For each subject, you have to answer a related skill testing question. Get it wrong, and you get an electric shock, you don’t get to vote, and your house gets put on a google maps database called, “Idiots who know nothing about the things they are trying to force others to do.”
We can even make the subjects very relevant. For example, if you want to vote for gun control, you have to answer a question like, “Which kills more children each year? A) Handguns. B) Backyard swimming pools.”
If you want to vote against nuclear power, you have to answer this question: “Where would you stand if you wanted to be exposed to the least amount of radiation? A) The aisle of an airplane at cruise. B) Grand Central Station. C) Your basement. D) On a street in Denver, Colorado. D) Leaning against the cooling tower of a nuclear power plant.”