Democracy in Danger
(media.communities.win)
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I placed the bar at not being a taker (net positive) but you place it somewhere around being a wealthy cosmopolitan elite.
According to a 30 second web search that I don't care enough to put more time into investigating, coal miners' median income is around 53k, which would place this in the 12% tax bracket for head of household, after standard deduction.
Why such a dishonest distortion? Were you that desperate for a "Mitt Romney" dunk?
I'm just pointing out that people who are net 'takers' are not necessarily bad, and that so called 'makers' are often neither productive nor good people. I don't want to live in a world where the waiter at a restaurant is considered less worthy than the VP of diversity and inclusion, or where the former is not allowed to vote and the latter is. I'd rather have the latter banned from voting.
But are they net positive 'givers'? If so, who are the people who belong to that dreaded 47%? And what makes them less good than Zuckerberg or the VP of diversity?
You caught me. Actually, it's just a reductio ad absurdum. The worth of humans is not measured by the amount of money that they have, nor should their ability to participate fully in society.
Ah, I see the problem here. Words like good and bad.
It's not a value judgment, it's strictly professional. One can be a good person who definitely needs a hand up, through no fault of their own. But, yeah, maybe they should sit out an election or two until they get their shit together, nothing personal. Not because they are bad people, but no one can really verify your story that you had your life savings under your mattress which went up in flames and that you didn't actually spend it all on hookers and blackjack
The point of this scheme is that the people that vote themselves gibs find themselves unable to continue giving themselves gibs. Those who can't participate in society, like criminals, don't get a voice on how society administration justice. And of the people whose voices matter, there is still a majority so that the VP of DIE who wants Cultural Marxism is drowned out by many more voices who are sensible.
As far that bar? I'd propose it starts at zero. Don't cost people money, welcome to the table. And if you want a seat, all you gotta do is not cash that check
Now, that distillation needs to account for everything. Zuckerberg: how much taxpayer funded security is he getting? Is he paying his taxes on his property or is he weaseling out of it? How much liability is he dodging from that fictional "corporate personhood" thing?
It's got to be better than today where that homeless junkie that hasn't had an OD he didn't live through has the same voice in government as someone who can at. It's got to be better than that single mom who couldn't handle taking a practically free pill every day and couldn't say no to creampie action having a say. It's got to be better than literal children who have never known a day's work to dictate how much money should be stolen from a paycheck.
But why, and this is ignoring that elections obviously make zero difference.
Suppose that I'm broke. Does that mean that my opinions on the propriety of child grooming are less valid than those of people who have a lot of money?
The people who supposedly vote to give themselves gibs, are the least influential people in society. If they are given gibs, that is because it serves the purposes of those who actually hold power.
In fact, less democratic systems often rely on more gibs rather than more, as a way of keeping the population pacified.
Why should she have a voice at all? In fact, those "whose voices matter" are more likely to propose crazy, insane stuff!
Honestly, conservatism is retarded.
No disrespect to you personally, you seem a decent fellow.
They purport to stand for tradition, but every time, tradition is screwed over and the only people who benefit from it are the people who have money.
And that's cool! I like that! You're not a dogmatic libertarian-type "greed is good". At the same, of course, all this is quite arbitrary. What you earn may be the economic value of what you contribute, but not the social value. A housewife taking care of her kids may not contribute anything net postiive in taxes, but she does an unquestioned good for society.
Quite unlikely, even apart from your assumption that votes matter. Those who have lower incomes are less likely to vote, less likely to petition, less likely to contribute - less likely to do any of the things that actually influence government. That is in all so called democracies, which of course are completely phony.
And that is by design! It is a regime of the powerful, by the powerful, for the powerful.
A "good" person (in the sense of someone whose opinions would be useful in governance) in such a situation would realize that few in their situation would be definable as "good", and thus actively endorse their non-participation as they would be an outlier that would risk the system itself if they needed to be accommodated in it. With that action, they have done the job of a "good" person in such a situation, and participated in the voting and administrative process without needing to cast a vote.