Voting Power Should Be Proportionate to Who Pays Most of the Taxes

According to budget analyst Brian Riedl at the Heritage Foundation, the top 20% of US tax filers currently pay 80% of the taxes collected by the US government. If President Emanuel's, I mean President Obama's, new tax plan is approved, the top 20% of filers would be paying 90% of all taxes. Which means that 50% of all American households would be paying no Federal tax whatsoever as of 2011.

Which gives me an idea.

Obviously, there are a lot of lower and middle-class Americans who are free-loading off of upper income Americans, and by 2011 there will be even more free-loading going on, ever more so on the backs of upper middle-class folks (and small-business owners) who hit the $200,000 tier ($250,000 for couples).

Yet, the Constitution says that each citizen gets 1 vote, regardless of how much money he or she makes. It's kind of like owning shares in the economy, except that it doesn't matter how many shares you own, you still only get one vote in what goes on. If these shares were like common stock shares--the more shares you owned in USA Corporation, based on actual taxes paid, the more voting power you'd have--and therefore, those with more shares would get more "say-so" in making decisions!

Now, with Monsieur Obama's socialistic doctrine in play, ripe with effectively looking to, essentially, zero out common and preferred shareholders in the big banks with this whole convertible-preferred agenda, and take control of their boardrooms, I figure that, if the United States is really a Democracy, it makes sense to entitle those taxpayers who are actually paying for Obama's agenda to re-capitalize and control such big banks as Citigroup (C) or Bank Of America (BAC), or General Motors (GM) and the AIG's (AIG) of the world, to be the ones who have the most say in such decisions.

Logically, why should freeloading taxpayers who aren't paying any tax, or who are paying little tax, have any vote on anything?

If Obama and the LBJ free-wheeling Dems want to declare war on the richer Americans who are paying nearly all these politicians' salaries--the real taxpayers who are actually the ones bailing out these huge companies, and are now being forced to adhere to the New American Leninist Doctrine for the Freeloading Little People--then it is these same richer Americans who should be able to vote commensurately as to who gets to keep their jobs in Washington D.C. and at the recipient bailout companies, and in regard to what decisions get made within these companies, going forward.

All this talk about how Main Street "taxpayers" are angry about what happened (or happens) on Wall Street or the rest of Main Street is nonsense. Most of Main Street pays no taxes! They should shut their mouths and focus on their own little lives somewhere in Kansas. It's those who are making the money to be able to pay mostly all of the taxes who should decide what Wall Street and Main Street does. Which, when we still lived in a Capitalist America, that's what was going on anyway.

The problem is, that, even though things went awry in the markets, the markets would have fixed themselves. Some large companies would have failed--yes--but it would have been swift, ferocious and done with by now. America's free-markets adjust because Richer Americans figure out how to do it, and the rest of us are supposed to let them do it, maybe with a little help from the Fed. And then we emerge better and stronger than before. But, letting Socialists work with fixing markets is the death knell to life as we once knew it. Explain that to your daughter who wants to know why she can't shop at the mall no more.

I'll say it again. We need the successful folks in this country to do their thing, the way they do their thing--even with their lobbyist cohorts--so the rest of us can watch football games and go shopping.

But, now we're all stuck with D.C. the way it is for two to four more miserable years, and we're stuck with their ill-conceived legacy.

I would amend the Constitution myself to allow taxpayers who actually pay most of our taxes to do most of the voting, then fire the entire government tomorrow and hold new elections based solely on income reported, except that would spark a revolution.

So, instead, I'll leave it to the richer folks who will have to find their new place amongst the arrogant Main Streeters, the latter of whom have been led to believe by the current administration that they actually have a say in anything.

At the end of the day, my bet is on the richer set to figure out their next game plan to make even more money than they did before, but it will, necessarily, entail investment strategy far removed from any company or institution that the government has grabbed, or plans to grab direct control in.

I mean, what successful Capitalist trusts putting their not-yet-taxed money alongside a Socialist-leaning Totalitarian who is already hell-bent on using tax money for non-Capitalist purposes; not allowing anyone on Wall Street or Main Street to have a say in the matter, and who doesn't seem to mind letting 100 million American taxpayers (big and small) who have money in, or tied to the stock market, get obliterated by these Leftist agendas apparently designed to let the markets sink to zero!

Personally, I wouldn't put my money on the middle or lower income class to figure this out on their own, as Obama's approval ratings are still sky high, and their love affair continues. The same way I wouldn't put my money in any bank or institution in which the government has taken a stake in. Look at it this way, the richer class' tax money being used to re-capitalize the large banks has been converted into common money (whether they like it or not) along side the Main Street deposit-base money. But the richer folks deposit-base money and investment-grade money will outflow to better/safer pastures.

The only cash left at the large banks will be Little People money, the more for Obama and Company to control. Of course, if the little people followed the rich folks out of the large banks and into safer-haven banks, then Obama would end up being the King Of Nothing.


Now, wouldn't that be something...

Comments

[drbob66:]

This article is silly. Read the author's bio and then tell me, why should anyone take this guy's "ideas" seriously?

Furthermore, I thought this was an investing website. There's no useful information in this article...it's just one guys (questionable) opinion about politics.

What a waste of time.

Mar 01 12:08 PM

[Third Party...:]

I expect the author to be flamed over this article. I assume most of what was written was somewhat in jest.
However, to clear up a few points, America is not a Democracy. It is a Republic. Quite a difference and I suggest McDuffy do a little research on the subject. Also the Constitution allows for 1 vote for 1 person precisely to prevent the accumulation of power by one group or another (poor folk in the case of the author) through the Electoral College.
Obama and the Democrats aren't the only ones trading Capitalism for Socialism. The last 20 years should be proof enough of that. Learn and understand your Constitution and hold the elected officials to their LIMITED powers. If you don't know it, you'll not be able to recognize that you are becoming a slave.

Mar 01 12:25 PM

[beautyseer:]

Government is instituted to serve the greatest good for the largest number. Its power derives from the consent of the governed. For the past two decades both major American parties have persuaded the majority of voters to vote against their own economic interests and have sold the average citizen's birthright to the highest bidder, so the program this wild-eye is Vesuviusing has pretty much been in effect. It has been a race to the bottom, with corporate pirates despoiling the world, looting their companies, corrupting and/or subverting the regulatory process, and creating an America that has abandoned the American dream for all in order to compete with third world slave wages. Capitalism so begrudging to the hardest working people in the world forces two adults working full time to be the minimum needed to pay the mortgage. If one becomes unemployed, times become desperate for those who formerly could afford a decent place to live. With our mania for endless wars and childish belief in our international invulnerability the last superpower has spent its way into the dumpster, gentlemen. It is the macho way of the patriarchy. It is finished. When the smoking wasteland clears, it will be time to build a more cooperative way of life, not this Hobbsian war of all against all...

Mar 01 02:21 PM

[Al-USA:]

Well said beutyseer.

The authors proposal has in fact been implemented, with the predicted results... Just as it happened in the 1930's capitalism unleashed forces which threaten Western Civilization. It survived then, it remains to be seen if Western Civilization can once again survive the "free markets". In the choice between barbarism or civilization, who will choose barbarism?

You have to look at capitalism from its entire 500 year history.
From the time of the European voyages of discovery, starting in the 1500's, to now, one can observe that capitalism, as an economic model practiced world wide, has now reached its "natural" conclusion: a crisis of over production. The methods of production have accumulated into too few hands so what we are experiencing is the culmination of the "success" of first regional capitalism, then nation state capitalism and now, finally, the "success" of global capitalism.

About twenty years ago the capitalist ruling class was euphoric after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the proper demise of the caricature of socialism, built up by the monster Stalin, which was the USSR. We were promised a world of peace and prosperity, a new economic paradigm of constant uninterrupted growth, but now all those promises have been shown to be false.

The last 20 years have been difficult for the working class, their average wage have shown no increase, after inflation, and were instead forced to resort to massive debt accumulation to maintain working class living standards and the continued smooth functioning of the global "free markets". In summary, for the working class, with the global economy came not prosperity but, as is clear now to most observers, global economic crisis...

Now, trying to look at things from the perspective of the ruling class, the best solution they can deploy, like they did in the Depression of the 1930s, to save capitalism, is a reformist President along the lines of F. D. Roosevelt who will introduce something like the New Deal. If not, we will end up with a REAL dictatorship. Is Obama that man? I don't know, he certainly talks the part.

However, the fact is, America is already ruled by a dictatorship - the dictatorship of Money, of the "corporate masters" who make all the real decisions while giving the masses the illusion of democracy. But democracy in America, as in Europe and elsewhere in the West, is only a sham, a hollow shell. They pay no attention to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or anything else. Everything is decided by the one percent of the population who own America.

In my opinion, the Republic ended in 1950. Since then we have had an imperial system. What are the chief characteristics of this system? First, the USA intervenes in an aggressive way in every part of the world. According to published research, since 1950, the USA has waged at least 300 wars in different parts of the globe.

Even our much-vaunted American freedom is largely fictional: three percent of the population is either in jail or on parole, connected up by electric devices to the prison administration. There is very little real freedom. Freedom of the press? The press and the media are owned and controlled by "our corporate masters".

What about living standards in the USA? Eighty percent of Americans have been falling behind since 1973. That is the date they usually cite for the oil crisis. Nowadays a husband and wife make less money than the husband alone made at that time. Twenty percent who support the Empire. These are the lawyers, the journalists, politicians and bankers and so on. The one percent hires the twenty percent.

Citizens' rights have been demolished in our country. The Bill of Rights has been either suspended or cut down. Bill Clinton started the process at the time of the Oklahoma bomber. Then they passed the US Patriotism Act, a document of thirty pages that nobody bothered to read. It permits the government to organize surveillance, arrests and deportations. In fact, if you criticize the government you could be arrested for 'giving comfort to the enemy'. And Congress passed this Act and the President signed it immediately! But in practice it did not work.

It is an American Empire, but as the "financial crisis" has shown, it is more like a colossus with feet of clay. Quite simply, America is in the process of overreaching itself just as the Roman Empire overreached itself.

On the bright side, there's no need to worry about the American people. The establishment treats us as if we are fools, but we are not fools. Information is still widely available and the American people can learn, both online and from relevant books. They will learn most from the greatest book of all - the book of life itself. And when that happens, the American people will move as one...


More information below:
"Destruction of Demand"
seekingalpha.com/artic...
littlurl.com/b8z3e

"Recent Policy Decisions and a Greater Depression"
seekingalpha.com/artic...
littlurl.com/2it28

"The Fed's War on the Middle Class"
mises.org/story/2983

"What's Behind the Financial Market Crisis?"
mises.org/story/3111

"Economic Fascism and the Bailout Economy"
mises.org/story/3333

"How to Avoid Another Depression"
mises.org/story/3103

Mar 01 09:29 PM

[bigmoney:]

>> Voting Power Should Be Proportionate to Who Pays Most of the Taxes

how about Voting Power should be equally distributed among those that pay ANY federal income taxes. This would disenfranchise those that live off the government, which sounds fair in my book. Also, I am not entirely sure that those that work for the government should vote, as there is a conflict of interest. Government workers and the welfare types have every incentive to vote themselves a larger and more generous government. There would have to be exceptions, such as for military, who are government employees without the power to quit, conscripted, etc.

Mar 01 10:19 PM

[sether:]

This guy fancies himself a high-rolling freemarketeer. His paper assets have taken quite a beating, of course, as have his political heroes lately. However he would rather deconstruct the foundational principals of our nation than engage in any sort of meaningful, much less self-critical thinking. The delusional financial constructs on which his whole existence is based have some crashing down. This is the desperate and pitiful squealing of the fat and tender swine before slaughter. Yes, your taxes are going up, little piggy. We are going to bleed you. Take it like a man, you're emabarrassing yourself with this petulant crap. Everything is going to be fine.

Mar 02 02:06 AM

[Fabien Hug:]

Seems nice. The problem is that after a while you have 90% of the population who wants to punch the face of 10% of the population.

Mar 02 09:27 AM

[DuffBeer:]

How dare you say anything this need wonderful about Mr Wonderful him self.
Please do not slam those that are in Kansas or stuck there because of becoming fans of their pretty good sports team.
You should have used the region where Mr Obama' s political career was really started The south side of Chicago.
If he had it his way the group you speak of would have no say nor vote.
Remember the dead ,burnt out building residents and multi area registered voters get many votes too.
Chicago Politics fun and games still do go on.

Once again Mr Obama is nothing more then a trained slick talking
civil rights attorney . Now he has much more then a court room
to make his case!

Notice how the libs swarm to protect him and discredit those who dare speak ill of his loaftness.
Gt ,I'd buy you a beer for causing such a stir
Cheers ,DuffBeer

Mar 02 09:32 AM

[henarl:]

Wow, I was going to join this debate between the haves and the have nots, but then I remembered that SA was supposed to be about economics and investing.

Mar 02 12:25 PM

[gtmcduffy@g...:]

What do you think 20% of America's taxpayers bailing out companies on behalf of the other 80% of Americans is: it's an attempt to "save the economy."
Or what do you think about the richest capitalist Americans' tax money being used by the new administration to gain control of our largest companies and institutions is, while the 100 million Americans in or tied to the stock market see their wealth deteriorate with each passing day as those in government on appear to refuse to use the tools available to them that can halt the slide immediately.

Go trade and live in your little bubble. Come out when the coast is clear...


On Mar 02 12:25 PM henarl wrote:

> Wow, I was going to join this debate between the haves and the have
> nots, but then I remembered that SA was supposed to be about economics
> and investing.

Mar 02 01:05 PM

[John R. Eri...:]

Interesting comments, but who pays taxes? Henry Ford stated that companies do not pay taxes, they just collect them and send them in. Thus, most of us sheep are paying for this socialism. When will we wake up? We just keep munching on "government" hay, that we buy! Baa!

Mar 02 03:21 PM

[Marianthi:]

Wow...this guy is nuts! Sounds like someone is a little bitter about the election;) Also the author forgets that there are more low to middle income people than wealthy people...and they have seen their savings for retirement cut in half. Whenever someone brings up shooting the bankers and CEOs, hardly anyone disagrees. Also, for those who agree, would you like Paris Hilton to have more say about vital issues than you? Lindsey Lohan? Terrell Owens? Shall I list more bubble headed celebs or do you get it now? Also worth noting that many innovators and successful people come from low or middle income families. The so-called "masters of the universe" have done a wonderful job so far, haven't they? Maybe next time the world passes by, this guy could get on?

Mar 02 06:30 PM

[fireball:]

gt
i bet when you were a boy you just had to poke a stick in the crusted over manure piles and probably a few hornets' nests too.
kind of makes you wonder about those old voting restrictions. you know no one who recieved government pay or stipend, no debtors,... wow those two would narrow it down... there are more but those are enough to consider.
a couple take issue with calling the constitutional republic a democracy. i understand and sympathize but i am afraid the democratic republic has devolved into a dumbocracy. listen to the bleating of the sheeple. obahahahmahahah. he obviously has disdain for the rights and liberties of the soveriegn citizen. sadly the opposition seems to find the constitution a mere annoyance too.
glad i prefer coffee to tea.

Mar 02 07:08 PM

[henarl:]

On Mar 02 1:05 PM gtmcduffy wrote:

"Go trade and live in your little bubble. Come out when the coast is clear..."

Well gt, I've got about a million and a half in the market and I've been in it continously since 1980. And I do trade. How about you?

Mar 02 08:01 PM

[sether:]

So is your article sardonic, or is it tongue-in-cheek? It certainly seems sincerely derisive of the new administration's policies, making it sardonic. If it's tongue-in-cheek that would suggest you don't mean what you say. Are you exaggerating often-repeated criticisms of the new admin to point out the ridiculousness of those critiques?
Your swiftian proposals regarding po' folks and voting are obviously tongue in cheek (I hope) and therefore somewhat funny. It's the mixture of the two tones which is confusing, and which is one of the many reasons your piece is terrible. What is the point of your article? You are obviously angry at the Obama admin and the po' folks who you beleive put him in office. The article can't come off any other way. Again, it's petulant crap. And I'm not in the Obama "camp". We agree on one thing here: all insolvent / bankrupt financial institutions should be allowed to fail. Let's get this over-with.


On Mar 02 05:22 AM gtmcduffy wrote:

> Actually, as another person commenting already pointed out-my article
> is tongue in cheek. Then, again, you obviously don't have the mental
> capacity to have figured that out. Which would put you in the Obama
> camp to be sure...
>
> Despite your flowery egg-headedness writing-style, you still can't
> find your way around the most basic sardonic interplay. Go back to
> your professors- and ask them if they'll still let you write a thesis
> on life in the real world.

Mar 02 09:15 PM

[derryl:]

beautyseer wrote,
"When the smoking wasteland clears, it will be time to build a more cooperative way of life"

Corporatism is collectivism.
Socialism is collectivism.

Adam Smith and America's founding father's idealized individualism, not collectivism. Smith identified how "I" will engage my brain and back when "I" benefit from my own productivity. When "we" benefit from my work I become a Stalinist who loiters around the factory talking about the wonderful benefits of collective labor, but who doesn't do any actual useful work. Jefferson et al warned about the corporatist ambitions of the banksters, and they practiced free enterprise and personal charity rather than forced socialist 'redistribution' of individuals' productive outputs. The ideal was individual liberty, free to pursue happiness without an oppressive state (or corporation) dictating how you should live.

Generally speaking, collectivists want to arrange things so they can benefit from other people's work. Collectivists are exploiters of other people. Collectivists are the enemies of freedom and individual liberty.

The 'proletariat' never produced piss all. Ivan produced something and Nikita produced something but 'the proletariat' is an idea, not a person, and only individual people actually produce anything. 'Group rights' is the right of some collectivist idea over the rights of real people.

How is it right to steal from a productive person (tax him/her) in order to 'benevolently' give to a different person? user 270430 is right on. The corporatists (capitalists) now pretty much own the productive infrastructure of the globalized world and take so much profit for themselves that consumer debt and socialist redistribution become necessary to get enough money to the workers to keep them in the game.

Anyone who has worked in an Israeli kibbutz or other form of commune will tell you that 20% of the people do 80% of the work while the other 80% of the people laze around enjoying 'communal life'. Is this what you mean by 'a more cooperative way of life", that the ambitious should slave so the indigent can enjoy material wealth in addition to their freedom from labor?

Some people are highly social and will sit and chat all day while their work goes undone. Good for them. They are enjoying how they spend their time. But don't tell me I have to work all day to provide material goods to those who choose not to participate in the work of producing those goods. I 'paid' my time being productive so I could have economic goods. Socialists 'spend' their time enjoying their life, then want my goods too.

That's the moral of the Henny Penny story. Everyone is willing to help eat the pie but nobody wants to help make it. What bastardized collectivist version of god says it's more virtuous to eat pie than to make pie? That piemakers have a nonreciprocal moral duty to pie eaters? That piemakers laboring for corporate bosses cannot afford to buy the pies they produce because the bosses take too big a piece of the pie for themselves? Mr. McDuffy's rant rubbed off on me I guess.

And one further critique for beautyseer: 'the greatest good for the greatest number' is Jeremy Bentham's (and John Stuart Mill's) utilitarianism, which arose in the mid-late 1800s as a non-religious generic alternative to the founding fathers' Christian values system. The idea would have been alien to America's founders.

Mar 02 10:38 PM

[Leftfield:]

I will always be in shock over TARP, and how it slid through before an election yet incumbents were overwhelmingly elected. That was socialism for the rich on an unprecedented scale.

Unfortunately, the ever-increasing coercion we face from all sides for bigger government has impoverished the lower 40%. Just because many pay little or no income tax doesn't address the many other taxes paid. Anyway, Warren Buffet did say his cleaning lady pays more taxes than him. Leona Helmsly said, "taxes are for the little people."

Face it, the rich aren't underrepresented. Their exploitive policies have enriched themselves more than any other time in history, aided and abetted by their political enablers. They have minions to smooth their paths and they've been obscenely overpaid.

Market forces? This country has been too much of a banana republic for too long. The rich could earn their overcompensation had they solved real problems, not gamed the system for themselves.

I'm no socialist. I've always been a small, self-employed sole proprietor and I want only opportunity to be left alone and attain a good life. But, the Republicrats who rule us keep saddling us with ever-more big-government obstacles and solve nothing. Except, apparently, for their own narrow interests.

The trillions spent and about to be spent on banks and the sops thrown to everyone else will go mostly into the wrong pockets, especially the rich. It will be a miracle to retain any freedom once government establishes this next power grab.

Voting rights based on income taxes paid is nuts.

Mar 02 11:20 PM

[Leftfield:]

I get it. I read/wrote quickly, late at night. Others may have done the same. Great article and lots of great points in the commentary nonetheless, methinks.

Mar 03 10:46 AM