Who Should Vote? Shareholders!

[Why So Serious]

So, if you own a share of stock you get to vote in the company elections. If you own two shares, you have two votes. If you have 100 shares you have 100 votes. Easy to understand.

How do you acquire those shares? You purchase those shares with money. Again easy enough!

Let's use Johnson and Johnson [JNJ] as an example. If you buy a share of stock you get a vote, if you buy 10 shares you get 10 votes, and if you buy 100 shares you get 100 votes. Ready for this ... if you buy a bottle of Johnson and Johnson shampoo to wash your hair you get no votes. Just because you use the product or service that a company provides that does not allow you a say in how, or who runs that company. Fair enough!? If you do not like the way JNJ runs there company you are not obligated to use their shampoo. You could go use some other company's shampoo

Let's run the country like a company. If you pay into the system you get a vote, the more you pay the more votes you get. AND if you do not pay, if you only use the goods or services provided by the country you do not get a vote. Now, as with the shampoo, if you do not like how the country is run you could buy shares [votes] by paying into the system, or you could go to a different country [in the same way you can buy a different shampoo].

[1rudeboy]

Thank you, President Soros. (Good idea, I just don’t think you thought it all the way through).

[cripplecreek]

Let's run the country like a company. If you pay into the system you get a vote, the more you pay the more votes you get.

So we should make Mitt Romney emperor for life?

[cripplecreek]

Especially considering the fact that we’re creating non taxpayers at an astounding rate.

[Thane_Banquo]

Something akin to this thinking was why the franchise was originally restricted to landowners. There are pluses and minuses to it. Among the pluses are that landowners (at the time) would be the educated classes, so that your voters generally have some modicum of intelligence. Among the minuses are that an oligarchy can, through various means, restrict ownership of land unnaturally so as to prevent all but a select few from voting.

[Why So Serious]

I thought it all the way through. The people who do not pay into the system would have no vote. That is the first start. The founders wanted to men of education and means to vote. You had to have skin in the game. I am not saying we sell shares of the country. I am saying that taxpayers are the people who should have the votes. People who pay income tax get to votes. People who don’t pay income tax, don’t get to vote.

[FreeAtlanta]

I would be willing to happily accept a plan that gave everyone one vote, if they don’t take food stamps, government housing, public school education for their children or some other form of welfare.

If a citizen goes a year without any of those forms of welfare, then they get their vote back for the next year.

[An.American.Expatriate]

SO you would enslave 90% of the popluation? Nice little hellhole you got planned there ...

[Phlyer]

Thank you, President Soros. (Good idea, I just don’t think you thought it all the way through).

Or perhaps he has.

The idea that the 'rich' could just buy the government that way is the same fallacy as that we could balance the budget if we just taxed the 'rich' more. For all that they have a lot of money by the standards of personal wealth, they don't really have enough total money to directly 'buy' an economy of $14 trillion.

The reason this might work starts with the recognition that the consumer pays all taxes. For example, the federal taxes on a gallon of gasoline that a trucker uses to haul groceries to the store are not paid by the trucking company. That cost is passed along as part of their fee for delivering the groceries. If they don't recover that, they go out of business. And in turn, the grocery store passes those costs along as part of what they charge for a loaf of bread.

All of us pay taxes. If our vote was 'weighted' by the amount of taxes we paid, the vast majority who pay the (approximately) $7 trillion in taxes at all levels would overwhelm Soros' even if he paid $7 billion in taxes (0.1%). And Soros pays a lot less than $7B in taxes. Same with Mitt Romney.

Imagine if - as you walked into a voting booth - you were handed a slip of paper with the amount of taxes you had paid into each taxing entity: Federal, State, local, school board, etc. Then, when you voted, your vote was weighted by the amount of taxes you paid into that entity.

The first thing that would happen is that people would be horrified and infuriated by the amount of tax that they pay. The second is that the vast middle class who - in aggregate - still pay most of the taxes would *not* be voting for the looters who are now buying votes with *our* money anyway.

[B.O. Plenty]

Maybe not a bunch of votes.....one only...

..but having to demonstrate that you are a net contributor to the system.

We are coming up on a population, ~50% pay no income taxes, taking out more than they are putting in.

As long as we are stuck with the present graduated income tax system, people, at a minimum, should be required to validate their voting status by presenting their tax return showing that they paid some taxes....

For the retired it should be easy to prove that they had a net positive tax history.......and for the disabled, they better be disabled, unable to work and can prove it.

We will not survive "one man one vote" if over 50% of the voters take out of the system more than they put in....

[An.American.Expatriate]

We will not survive "one man one vote" if over 50% of the voters take out of the system more than they put in....

We would also not survive a "one tax dollar one vote" system.

[An.American.Expatriate]

There is no way to economically calculate the amount each of us pays in hidden taxes passed to us via prices for goods & services ...

that said - even if we DID have a way to do that - the “rich” also consume and pay these taxes - likely a lot more that the rest of us do. Add to that the fact that the top 25% of taxpayers already pay 87% of all income taxes (2009 stats!) and I doubt seriously that us “small guys” would have much of a voice.

87% is more than sufficient to change the constitution at will.

[hedgetrimmer]

The country is being like a company. That’s why its so screwed up.

Corporatist fascism is the name.

No individual rights can exist.

It is the death of America.

[MrB]

I think “his” system was

if you pay “net” taxes, you can vote (once).
if you don’t, you don’t vote.

[Vineyard]

Originally - to be a voter, you had to own land. (The interpretation was such that very few people could not vote.)

But a landowner has “skin in the game”. A taxpayer has “skin in the game”. If there was a flat tax that applied to all taxpayers, then voters could decide to raise taxes - with everyone paying the increase, or the voters could decide certain government programs aren’t worth the taxes and therefore decide to abolish those programs.

A “Constitutional” program would be much as our Founding Fathers established. And taxes would be similar to the Tithe of the Old Testament, where all were expected to give 10%. They did not ask for “progressive” rates of tithe.

[allmendream]

Yes, because poor people don’t love their children and wish them a better future! They have no “skin in the game” and little interest in bettering the nation, I mean if they cannot even better themselves! I cannot stand to live in a nation where Paris Hilton doesn’t have greater electoral power than a nurse or school teacher. /s

[Why So Serious]

No! I would encourage them to become taxpayers. There are net-takers and net-givers. Net-takers are a burden. The reason we have a problem in this country is because of what the government gives away. Stop the give away, and don't let people receiving the give away vote.

You are assuming that the 90% would stay here. A lot would go back to where ever it is that they came from

[Why So Serious]

You said, ... 87% is more than sufficient to change the constitution at will.

Do you know what it takes to change the US Constitution?

Not so. The constitution change has to come from the states. Soros does not pay state income taxes in all 50 states.

[jaydee770]

>>...If you pay into the system you get a vote, the more you pay the more votes you get. AND if you do not pay, if you only use the goods or services provided by the country you do not get a vote...<<

It matters not — whoever was allowed to vote in your scheme would *STILL* vote themselves gifts from the public treasury in countless imaginative methods (grants, regulation, loopholes, etc).

So, your voting scheme would simply shift the “root-cause” around, not eliminate it.

The Problem is that the FEDERAL is allowed to dangle the carrots that trigger human nature to vote with a hand held-out. This would not happen if the FEDERAL were accurately constrained to their constitutional mandates & limitations. Reverse Wickard v. Filburn and (hopefully) the rest of the unconstitutional dominoes will begin to fall as well.

But none of it is gonna happen. The perversion of the commerce clause will continue to allow the FEDERAL to dream-up ever more imaginative ways to dangle those carrots and our self-centered society will continue it’s pavlonian response. Guaranteed.

[jaydee770]

*pavlovian