What about membership in the New York Athletic Club? That'd be a pretty good proxy.
But please explain why you think that what you say is true. If the (Republican) U.S. Government, in the 1920's, hadn't moved to break up the holdings of the heirs of J.P. Morgan, who were discovered by a Congressional inquiry to control or beneficially own 20% of everything that was worth anything in the United States, how far do you think the concentration would have gone by now, 75 years later?
How do you think we would be better off under such a regime, which even as late as the 1920's, had successfully resisted labor syndicalism's demands that the people who ran Morgan's companies for him equitably share with the workers the great productivity of their labor? Milton Friedman said it on national television: if there had been no labor-syndicalist movement, there would have been no middle class. How well off do you think you'd be, if you were still working for 1920's wages? I think $60/week was common then, as a good wage. How would you send your kids to college, so they could break out of the "lower class"?
I don't think I agree with you, sorry. Too many of McDonald's descriptors of "conservatism" have altogether too much to do with preserving privilege, classism, and perquisite. Or do you think that everyone outside the charmed circle of Fortune 500 heirs and heiresses should be re-proletarized? Bat that one around for a while -- it's implied by your statement of preference.
It wasn't a "statement of preference." It was an observation. I'm not a constitution writer, nor a system builder, and have zero interest in that sort of thing. But, if I were "the king," dictator or tyrant, I'd take the Constitution we have (after purging it of every Amendment other than the original ten) and I'd say, "Here it is, kids: The law of the land. Them's the new rules, so don't you go messing them up." That is to say, I like the Constitution of the United States that the Framers wrote, exactly as they wrote it, just fine, and deeply resent how little it is respected these days.
Notice that under "my regime" the determination of qualifications for the exercise of the franchise are left to the several states.
I don't see how the labor movement per se and exercise of the franchise per se are necessarily related or mutually interdependent. It seems to me there are sources of social power that do not depend on the ballot box for their effectiveness. Though I have noticed that, these days, it is fashionable to politicize everything.
And what we seem to have gotten from that is endless, one-size-fits-all rules for specifying just about everything in human life. One key by-product of the universal franchise seems to have been the creation of a mass, totally homogenized, and highly regimented society.
I've got to go to work now, though there's more I'd like to add. Maybe later. Thank you for writing, lentulusgracchus. best, bb