Tea Party figure: This whole universal suffrage thing isn't working

Every time I see someone get called out on their bullshit and talk about how “amused” they are to watch people “overreact”, I become a little less tolerant of ideological diversity as it stands today.

Sure, but the important thing is that the idea is defensible in the abstract when detached from historical context. All you need is a little bit of trepanning and you’ll have the necessary degree of cognitive dissonance for that to work.

We should just make the test harder and harder every year so that eventually only the smartest person in the country can pass it and we let that person make all the decisions!

I’ve never been so proud of P&R as in this thread, where LK successfully used “trepanning” as an ice-cold burn without having it feel out of context at all.

Heheheh.

Probably, but it deserves underscoring.

No, since the bank is already the landowner in that case.

Oh, wait, we didn’t think of that!

That clip is a giant bucket of awesome.

Oh, that was a burn?

Can banks vote?

They can borrow votes, then loan votes to consumers. The aggregate those votes into Collateralized Vote Obligations and sell them to others. Then they can take make Vote Default Swap agreements, and then against themselves. Beware the predatory vote lenders and sub-prime votes.

It’s really not. I mean, it’s valid in the sense that you could set up any criteria for voting, in theory. Like in the same way that it’s “valid” to have a society in which only people that are 5’ 8" tall can vote. But it’s not valid in the sense that he presents a rational reason for supporting such a system. The idea that property owners “have a more vested stake” in a community is simply not true. All they have is an asset that non-property owners don’t–a house. So what? Non-homeowners pay the same taxes–even property taxes, which they pay indirectly through rent. They have access to the same government services, send their kids to the same schools, and are obligated to follow the same laws. I can’t think of one specific, rational reason why they should not enjoy the same voting rights as property owners.

Often enough a property owner didn’t even buy their own property. It was either inherited or a spouse purchased it. Some 25 year-old that marries an old rich guy or has dead homeowner parents has more of a right to vote than a renter? It’s both ridiculous and offensive, and I say this as a property owner.

Not against you.

Cause some of them might be poor.

Its a perfectly rational reason if you’re rich and worried about poor people taking your money.

So the only one with voting rights would be banks, since they own the mortgages?

How would that change anything?

Badum-bish!

Voting should be based on paying taxes. And it should be weighted by how much, percentage wise, you pay in taxes. Then you’d have rich people willing to be taxed more in order to have their votes count more… right?

Everyone would get a tax break except the rich.

Fortunately for the rich, they could add all sorts of loopholes so they don’t pay anything anyway.

Actually, I can’t reference them right now, but I do recall that property owners do statistically take a greater interest in their communities. More likely to get involved with local government or other affairs like this. I suspect it has to do with the idea of property value and a real concern about the welfare of this place they’re mostly (we’re talking about average homeowners, not investors or developers) stuck in. Renters don’t have the same sense of rootedness or investment.

That this should have a damn thing to do with voting rights is idiotic. Most renters would rather be owners. It’s not by choice, usually, that they’re not but economic realities. Disenfranchising the poor because they’re poor is just asking for my boot in your ass.

Almost all banks are corporations. Since the new Supreme Court thinking is that corporations are people, of course they can vote.

Y’know, when the Founding Fathers used the word ‘property’ it included, y’know, slaves. I’m just saying. It’s a valid thought experiment. Would the repealing of the 13th amendment fix the economy? It’s an interesting thought. Slave-owners would probably have a more vested interest in the community. And other communities. Where they could acquire more slaves. So slave-owning would increase our sense of global community. So there we go, we’re solving the economy and world peace. And hunger, since we’re getting so much more cheap farming done. I just don’t see the downsides, folks.