Harry Guerrilla
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2008
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- Libertarian
Precisely what I'm saying.
works for me and those of us in the top bracket should have more votes than someone in the bottom one
Time is another, via community service.
Money is the easiest though.
I brought this up in another thread, so I'll do again here.
We require those who earn a lot of money to contribute a higher percentage of their income, as a fee for earning a lot of money in this country.
What do we require of those who do not pay anything but partake in the community safety net?
It smacks of a double standard.
works for me and those of us in the top bracket should have more votes than someone in the bottom one
Do you realize you just contradicted yourself?
so you'd have the rich more or less running the country?
so you'd have the rich more or less running the country?
Not at all.
For someone to use these services we don't have any expectations, other than an arbitrary standard of poor.
There is no requirement to even lift oneself from the use of these services.
Yet we require those, who do not use public safety nets, to pay more.
Seems to me that our right wing friends... since these are the folks recommending this, are wanting to turn the US into an official plutocracy. Amazing. I thought that you folks were for equal rights and such. You know, people are BORN equal.
Certainly no different then it is now
Now you are complicating the issue. You are talking about two different folks... those who try to rise about welfare, and those who don't. I'm talking in general. How would you make that distinction? Who would control this? It's interesting that what you folks are talking about is tyranny... something that I thought those of you on your side of the political spectrum are against.
Actually, it's a meritocracy I'm advocating. There's nothing prohibiting someone from bettering themselves by becoming a property owner. The government just has to keep its hands out of things it doesn't belong in to get it to work.
I'm of two minds, if we aren't going to be a freedom based society.
I'd rather the fascist approach, there is at least a minimum expectation out of everyone.
It's ridiculous to have such a glaring double standard on the citizenry.
Once you start limiting the rights of others, for any reason, you head down the path of tyranny.
You're looking at this in an absolute, all-or-nothing sense. Fascism is probably the most efficient form of government, however, it is also the form of government that has the most potential for abuse.
Now, to me, restricting voting rights is the antithesis of what this country is about. Once you do that, you head towards tyranny, precisely the opposite of what this country was founded upon. I have an alternative. Folks on welfare DO need to demonstrate some effort in getting off welfare. Without this demonstration, do not remove their voting rights. Remove their welfare benefits.
Voting has never been a right, but a legislated privilege to be taken away at the whim of Congress. The only voting recognized, originally, in the laws of the United States was based upon the ownership of land (once you move it towards the racial and gender equality of today).
I'm not going to get into another "natural rights" debate... since I haven't finished the last one. I reject the concept of natural rights. Voting currently is a right in this country. Removing it from a segment of society will create a type of oligarchy reflecting plutocracy, and places value on citizenship based on money. Ones value goes far beyond one's monetary worth.
At this point, for me it makes no difference.
The abuse has reached very high levels.
I'm a firm believer in freedom, to succeed and fail unimpeded.
Failure is a shock to the system of what you did wrong, it spurs positive change in many people.
I would be very happy with a proposal like yours but the political will does not exist.
The popular view of both wealth and poverty in this country is disgusting, to me.
I'm not going to get into another "natural rights" debate... since I haven't finished the last one. I reject the concept of natural rights. Voting currently is a right in this country. Removing it from a segment of society will create a type of oligarchy reflecting plutocracy, and places value on citizenship based on money. Ones value goes far beyond one's monetary worth.
Are you putting words into my mouth? I ask because I never said anything about money. I did say that only property owners could vote. Property owners can be rich or poor, but the requirement is that they must own land. This reflects the meritocracy ideal.
Your rejection of natural rights is your own business, but under the laws of the United States and the Constitutions thereof it is a recognized fact of life. All rights stem from the ownership of property starting with your body. Do you own your own body?
General voting is defined under the laws of the United States as being a privilege. This is quite evident since the legislature has removed it from certain groups, felons etc..., and gave it to others starting with all white males above 18 in the 1820's. If it was a right then the government cannot remove or restrict it in any way.
If one has no natural rights, who determines what that value is?
I'm not of the mindset that the abuse of the system has reached the level that fascism would create. The biggest problem with repairing the system is that there is a major discrepency on how and who.
It's not that simple at all. The problem is that if you have a segment of society that is failing, they will affect the segment of society that is not, regardless of what you do. The task is to minimize this failure, while, at the same time, encouraging success, both through positive and negative reinforcement. One cannot look at this as a "one-size-fits-all" scenario, or a scenario that sees the situation in isolated terms. You cannot seperate out one thing from the other.
I think there are two problems with the potential enactment of my proposal. Firstly, who will manage it. Secondly, how will it be done and how are is the motivation to acutally do it going to be created.
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