That is also true here, but tax credits and tax offsets are one thing while tax deductions are another. A tax deduction reduces your taxable income while a tax credit reduces your tax owed. A non-refundable tax credit can’t reduce your tax below $0, while a refundable tax credit can.
Liechtenstein? The beery swine? Who was just as sloshed as Schlegel?
I really don’t see that the presence of ‘stupid’ people in the country is a problem.
I know a couple who are really, genuinely stupid. As in mentally handicapped, not in the ‘drool on themselves’ level, but with IQ’s right around 70. Guess what? They both have jobs, they own a house, they pay their taxes, buy food, cook, keep up their houses, obey the laws, and so forth. IOW, they are perfectly well functioning members of society and their presence is a net gain to the country.
And, yes, I really doubt they could point out Iraq on a map and I’m certain they couldn’t solve a quadratic equation. So what? In what way would having them gain that knowledge improve the well being of the country?
OTOH, I really wouldn’t want to rely on them to design a good health care system or decide on banking controls or if we should go to war.
But, so long as their are enough people who do have the intelligence and education to handle the top level tasks, does it matter how many people there are in the population who don’t?
So the goal, as I see it, is how to keep the Ignorants from preventing the Smarts from creating and implementing Good Stuff.
Here’s a stray thought: what if we put an economic value on voting? You can’t buy extra votes, but when you show up at a poll and check in, you get to choose between a ballot and a check for X dollars. (I’m not sure how much X would be, but I’m guessing not all that much.)
My guess is that people who would rather have, say, $20 than a voice in who their next senator will be are much more likely to be the ones who didn’t care enough to learn about the issues and where the candidates stand. IOW, that the average level of thoughtful decision making behind the voting would go up.
If they participate in polls and/or elections, their ignorance can harm this country.
Too easy! We all just move to Lake Woebegon, “where all the children are above average.” Problem solved.
I’m pretty sure my vote cancels yours in most national elections. Which one of us is stupid? It ain’t me…I got degrees and stuff. It ain’t you…I dunno your background, but when you aren’t working your sarcasm gimmick to be annoying, you’ve demonstrated reasonable intellect. Assuming we are both, therefore, reasonably intelligent people, it would then appear that perhaps there was not, and usually is not, a clear-cut objectively superior choice in the most recent national election. If that is true, then voting for either major candidate is something a reasonably intelligent person might do, thus the “stupid” do no more or less objective harm with their ballots that you or I.
Depending on how you interpret the question, of course. I can find points in Italy and Germany where one could take ten steps due west and be in Switzerland. Similarly, there are points in Germany and Italy where one could walk due east and end up in Austria. Hence, Switzerland borders Germany and Italy on the west and Austria borders them on the east. QED.
Frankly, these kinds of tests (if a serious attempt was made to implement them) to ferret out stupid people could easily have the opposite effect - stymieing intelligent people who see some nuance or ambiguity.
A lot of folks seem to disagree - but I call that rather, well, stupid.
Slippery slope and then some. If we start to apply standards of intelligence for voting, where does it stop? Literacy tests, for example? How would we do such a thing, and why?
There’s an old, old joke about a black man trying to register to vote in Mississippi, where he is challenged by a number of qualifications: residency, etc. Finally, the cracker poll worker hands him a Chinese newspaper, and challenges him to read it and prove literacy.
“Well, yes, I can read this newspaper quite clearly!”
“Oh, yeah? Well, then, what does it say?!”
“Says this Negro damn sure ain’t voting in Mississippi!”
(my bolding)
Which one would YOU vote in?:
- Prez
- The ammount of Jesus in schools.
By your own rule you can only vote in one
He said an opinion poll about the amount of Jesus, not a vote that would actually influence it.
Mr. President, I present two words. I.Q.
The very idea is an anathema to the educational establishment, and this aversion leads to things like abolition of tracking by ability, throwing kids of different ability into the same classroom, letting the dumb and disruptive sidetrack the class and leaving the able students bored. Reinstate tracking, and let the kids who really want to drop out of high school, drop out. Stop holding the rest of the school hostage to dumb bullies in the name of egalitarianism. And by the way, Mr. President, if this separation of kids by abilities happens to have “disparate racial impact” (gosh who would expectsuch an outcome?), too bad.
Next up: dysgenic breeding. There’s solidevidencefrom throughout the world that the lower classes have more kids than the upper classes, and since earnings are strongly correlated with intelligence, and IQ is about 70% heritable, that is a problem. We need an incentive system for smart people to have kids and reverse this dysgenic trend. One way to make this politically palatable is to talk about “education” and not “intelligence;” one is acceptable in political discourse and the other is not. So let’s have a tax break for college-educated couples who have several kids.
Finally, dump affirmative action. Extensive evidence has shown that we are overwhelmingly not picking up diamonds in the rough; even at the level of professional schools we find that non-Asian minorities admitted on quota are heavily overrepresented in the bottom quartile and have lower scores on advanced standardized tests such as the MCAT and board exams. This system is not only racist but represents an inefficient use of resources that could be used to educate students who could make much more use of that education.
So in conclusion, if you are really interested in increasing the education level and intelligence of the American people, this is how you would go about it. Of course, if your real agenda is about making more people agree with your worldview, your policies would be correspondingly different. (Conversely we can get some idea of your real motivations by the policies that you do pursue, revealing any preferences aside from “educating people.”)
So yeah, I wish you the best, Mr. President. Good luck on those midterm elections.
…and cuadratic equations and geography are important in voting because…?
weirdaaron, I was just tweaking his rules just a bit.
No vote for you!
Stupidity is a “pre-existing condition.” Deny them all health care!
Can we put this project on hold for a couple hours? The Miss Universe Pageant is being broadcast on NBC right now.
Lots of U.S. Americans do not have maps.
“Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.” --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Norvell (June 11, 1807)
“The fat Russian agent was cornering all the foreign refugees in turn and explaining plausibly that this whole affair was an Anarchist plot. I watched him with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies - unless one counts journalists.” --Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
You have GOT to be kidding. That’s what we had pre-Internet. Only now are we beginning to discover what bullshit went totally unchallenged then. For fuck’s sake, we now catch significant errors in the MSM that their so-called journalistic standards and their vaunted layers of editors and fact-checkers did not because THEY DIDN’T EVEN GOOGLE THE INFO!
And that’s directly thanks not to “any fuckwit with a broadband connection”, but rather to the few out of the thousands who read blogs that provide specialized knowledge on a particular subject that a single media outlet CAN’T. The unofficial motto of the blogosphere is “We can fact-check your ass.” AND THEY DO.
That’s not bad. It’s GREAT.
While I’d set the bar lower than quadratic equations, someone who does not possess a working understanding of mathematics (and by extension, economics) is more likely to buy into a proposal that sounds good, but would be self-defeating and actively harmful.
And while nobody gives a damn about Liechenstein, a failure to identify the UK or France on a map demonstrates both an inadequate education and a lack of interest in the outside world.
It would not prove someone is intelligent and informed enough to make good decisions, but it would weed out the worst of those who aren’t.
/handwave
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” Bertrand Russell