Originally
posted by
iccyh:
Your proposal would hurt women, minorities, people with disabilities, and the young especially.
Unmarried childless women earn 8% more than unmarried childless men in America. One tweak (and again, I haven't laid out all the safeguards I feel are necessary cuz there's more than a couple, just as with any system) - married filing jointly qualifies both. Boom, done. Women are not marginalized (which is the word you are looking for here).
How would it hurt minorities? Are you saying that minorities need more handouts? Racist prick.
How would it hurt the disabled? You might have noticed, they are not exactly a huge voting bloc but they have plenty of laws on the books to protect them.
Too bad for the young. If they want to participate get a job and pay taxes. I did.
For the record, the times I would have been excluded from voting were when I claimed the lifetime learning credit against my tuition (paid out of pocket) and the child tax credit in the same years. That happened twice (you can only claim the lifetime learning credit twice), and my refund exceeded my contributions both times. Which is a whole other problem.
You are correct though in your assertion to blid that the USA is the worst country ever to look at things as "classist," as we have demonstrated historically the greatest social mobility ever seen. That doesn't even matter though, you don't have to make very much money to pay some freaking taxes.
Neither one of you has addressed the issue that I have repeatedly asked you to address, which is that voters do not take their civic duty seriously enough. Universal franchise has degraded the value of a vote, and people treat it as a valueless thing. This is a problem. It is a threat to the integrity of our nation and government. In both Rome and Athens increased franchise led to decisions contrary to established law, and decisions destructive to the future of the state. Iccyh did, however, totally miss the point of the tragedy of the commons in relation to voting. The nation is our commons, and the tragedy is that people will happily throw away the long term interests of the nation for a perceived short term gain. As in the case of things like the welfare state, the gains are frequently illusory and/or actually counterproductive even to the people they appear to help.
So, how would either of you address the problem of voter apathy/ignorance/irresponsibility?
And iccyh, are you ever going to tell me what country you're in? Or are you going to keep trying to lecture me on economics?