Posted on 08/01/2007 6:22:03 AM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
When I speak on college campuses, students often ask what can be done about the "problem" of young people who don't care enough to vote. I always say that I don't see it as much of problem "because most of you don't know anything yet. I'm OK with you not voting!" The students laugh, but I'm not joking.
It wasn't until I was about 40 that I started to believe I had acquired a good sense of what domestic policies might serve people well. (I still have no clue about international affairs.) I only started to think I knew what ought to be done after years of reporting and reading voraciously to absorb arguments from left and right. The idea that most voters vote without having done much of that work is, frankly, scary.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Of course not.
But this is an excellent article.
I cringe every time I hear someone try to shame the public into voting, because ignorant people should just stay home on election day. Same for voter registration drives: if a citizen doesn’t have enough interest to register on his own, I don’t want him voting casually and probably for the wrong candidate or cause.
The numbers of this aren’t as crazy as you think because it’s not about wealth, it’s about tax, which most of the very rich do their best to minimize.
This idea is close to Neal Bortz’s where you get one vote if you paid $0-10,000 in taxes, two votes if you paid $10,001-20,000, three votes for $20,001-30,000 and so on up to a max of five votes. After that, no more votes. I like his because it max-es things out after $50,000 while, at the same time, treats voting like shareholder voting: You only get to vote if you have a “vested interest” in the company.
I’ve always felt there should be a test to vote. Who is your Senator? Basic “jaywalking” questions.
The machinery of Government is the most powerful and dangerous apparatus mankind has ever built. That most of the people voting are as ignorant as they are and yet are allowed to ‘steer’ this machine is like putting a drunk blind man (apologies to the sight deprived) behind the wheel of a semi-.
Perhaps there could be other multiplers as well, such as extra votes from serving in the military.
Similar to this "Rock the Vote" effort you always hear of every summer before a Presidential election. "Rocking" the vote is MTV-speak for "get out and vote against Republicans."
No way. The problem is that the test would be done by whom? The gubmint. That makes it unacceptable. It actually makes it a repugnant idea in my opinion.
For the most part, as the first paragraph of the piece indicates, the problem is self correcting. Apathy can be quite hygenic to the process.
After listening to the economic ignorance on FR, I wouldn't be stunned at all.
The red blue map is no mistake. Most people get their politics in their mother’s milk and it is reinforced by their associations. They never think things through, because that would make them social outcasts.
The problem is not knowledge of economics. GOP views it at the wholesale level and Dems view it at the retail level. Sure, salaries for the average working Americans is higher than his grandparents, but his grandparents can buy a home, car, and raise four kids with the woman staying home. Can an average American working family do that?????? In grandparents generation, a person who graduates high school can go into a factory and make a good living after five years and willing to do overtime to increase his weekly paycheck. As long as his company is profiting, he will have a job. Today can a worker make the same assumption. In grandparent generation, Korean War and Vietnam, our domestic production base was so strong that we can produce the steel to armor all our tanks, and bullet production to meet our wartime needs of our army and allies. In the war in Iraq, we could not produce the steel needed to make the armor kits for the HMMVV because the Chinese produces 90 percent of it and they were not giving it to us ahead of their customers, and yes we even ran out of bullets when we had to bring National Guard units up to par before deployment, and we had to go to South Korea and Taiwan to buy bullets to make up our shortfalls as our sole ammo factory needed time to ramp up. American workers are not ignorant about economics, they may not know the formal book theories expouse by globalists and free traders, they know by looking around. Global and free trade for the worker involves the movement of the factory overseas or bringing in the factory from a foreign country. The only people who makes huge amounts of money on this is the people who finances the deal, the people who negotiate and sets up the contract for the deal, the people who reviews the finances of the deal, the stockbroker/investor who is about to make a killing on the stock as labor costs drops from the move, and last and not least the CEO of the company involved. The person who must survive the changes and has the most financial distress and risks in the process is the American worker. Don’t believe me, look at up state New York (manufacturing) versus New York City (financial center). Globalists and free traders blame the demise of upstate on government regs and high taxes, but somehow these factors did not chase away the Wall Street companies. Even if New York state reduces the taxes down to historical lows overnight, Wall Street cannot get American manufacturer workers to accept Red Chinese salaries, thus the factory is still leaving, unless they can get illegal immigrant to do the jobs Americans will not do.
Americans have bigger homes, more cars, more expensive, safer cars.
Can an average American working family do that??????
Did the average family really do that back then? Or was it a small portion of families?
In grandparents generation, a person who graduates high school can go into a factory and make a good living after five years and willing to do overtime to increase his weekly paycheck.
Hmmmmm......maybe only families who worked in manufacturing? What % of the workforce was that? Do you expect that aberration (most other manufacturing in the world destroyed by WWII) to happen again? Would it be worth it so that HS grads can make good money?
American workers are not ignorant about economics,
A lot of them are.
BTW, formatting is your friend.
During the Clinton-Dole campaign, I had this woman at work agree with most all my right-of-center tirades.
After the election, I asked her who she voted for. She replied “Climton”. When I asked her why, given her previous agreement with my positions, she replied, “Oh, he’s such a handsome man!”.
1950’s, 1960’s and even 1970’s. Raised in a blue collar town with third generation Americans of Italian/Polish descent. If you were willing to work, pay your dues, and the company made money, you had a job and future. That is for high school grads. The only thing holding one back from being well off was laziness. Good paying jobs with overtime were plenty. If you do not believe me, ask your grandparents, older family members. My father was a foreman in a printing plant, and he raised four kids, put all four thru state college, and my mother worked part time as a seamstress to supplement the family income when we were in high school. We had a 4 BR 1.5 Bath, central AC colonial house in central NJ and one car in the family. Became two cars when I was in high school. Today I am 49 years old so you have a timeline for comparison. Can an average high school grad command the same standard of living today?????
Have you read Sowell’s “Basic Economics” book?
If so, what is your impression. If not, I’ll give you mine :).
That’s an idea that sounds perfectly reasonable to me. It’s the old “starship troopers” vote.
I knew someone that voted for Clinton because he thought he was “supposed to vote for who he thought was going to win”.
That still hurts my head to try to think about that reasoning.
Yeah, those union jobs were great. It's easy to make money when there is no competition.
Can an average high school grad command the same standard of living today?????
Of course not. Other countries have industry that hasn't been destroyed in a long war. Now to make decent money, most people need a college education. Sorry that the world has moved forward. Here's a hint, the world will keep moving.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.