Absolutely. Only they would give themselves big tax refunds right after election day.
I think I’d first take a look at wealth distribution, salary vs. hourly wage, single- or double-income home and general class issues before looking to owning a home as a causal factor.
Of course, any reasonable academic study would probably have taken it into account, so I might be tilting at windmills.
It doesn’t really matter why it’s true though, if the correlation is valid enough. The tea party guy could still use it as a criterion for voting. I wonder, though, if most tea partiers own property. Anyone know?
I could buy that it’s a relevant causal factor for what we can abstractly define as more community investment, if only from my own anecdotal experience. It’s just that when you use it as a filter for voting you are missing the forest for the trees on a scale so absurd that there’s almost a component of genius in its idiocy. Almost.
Clearly the solution can be derived from the infallible wisdom of our founding fathers. Full votes for the land holding gentry. 3/5 votes per renters and other transients. Their votes of course cast by the Corporate entities that own their slave asses.
Post-housing bubble/crisis, I’d say that many property owners are just as likely to be poor! ;)
On the ridiculousness of the Tea Party, yes. I didn’t read it as targeted at you at all.
Which sounds suspiciously like “wealthier people should pay a bigger chunk of taxes since they have more to lose”.
(personal note)
This is awesome. This is like the seed for a George Carlin-quality routine. Kudos to you, sir.
To further the thought experiment of land-owning granting voting privileges, my first thought would be to parcel a piece of land into 1"x1" plots that I would sell to people who wanted to vote. Which would make the whole point of the system meaningless.
Taxation is about money, voting is about rights. The fact that you see any equivalence between those two statements concerns me.
Ask Meg Whitman how well that works now.
Clever verbiage.
I disagree that taxation is “about money”. Taxation is a use of money, but is “about” supporting the general social structure while properly balancing property rights: how much money does society say someone should be obligated to contribute to the welfare of the whole. Thus the facile argument that a rich person has more to lose, hence ought to pay more taxes. The “have more to lose => pay more” equation strikes me as quite similar to the “own property => vote” opinion by the nutter quoted in the OP.
Note: I’m not saying higher income folks shouldn’t pay more taxes. I’m saying this particular argument, which has been made here on QT3 many times over the years, is specious.
First off, taxation is about money. Or property. Or material wealth. However you want to phrase it. The key distinction I was going for is that people can have varying amounts of wealth and that’s just fine. Variances in rights however are a big big problem.
Second off, there’s nothing facile about the argument that those on top of society are benefiting most from society, and thus their fair sure of societies maintenance is going to be much higher than those on the bottom.
If that was the key distinction you were going for, it was lost on me in your previous one sentence reply. ;) Of course there should be no variance in the application of rights with the most strict and rare exceptions. Further, paying taxes is not a right any more than voting is an obligation, so equating the two would be ignorant on many more levels than just that.
In any case, I still disagree that taxes is about money. It is about effectively governing a social structure.
Sure there is.
Define “those on top of society”: income? asset wealth? political power? celebrityship? corporations? natural persons?
Define “benefitting most from society”: welfare and health care recipients? federal grant recipients? how to compare the benefit a working class farmer with 50 acres receives vs. a high-income tech guru with an apartment, from military, police, and fire protection?
Define “fair share” (note: without assuming your conclusion in the definition). Is fair share only measured by the check written to Treasury? Does someone who spends half his giant paycheck buying goods in local stores contribute more or less of his fair share than someone who spends it on a foreign car, and so which still “owes” more of his fair share? Should a full-time soldier owe less taxes since part of his “fair share” comes from his daily duties? What if he’s a top-tier general who further has both power and a healthy paycheck? What about his wife?
You’re using a whole bunch of emotion-laden terms (I acknowledge it is not your fault they are this way) that quite over-simplify the complicated issue of how to best calculate a tax structure. Hence, facile.
Actually, the argument is quite complex due to the factors that you brought up. The phrasing is facile.
After the bank forecloses on them, they wont be property owners anymore, so problem solved. :)