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 Monster Rain wrote:
That was in reds8n's sig for a while, if it's not still there.

Thank you!

The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all

Politicians realize the new voters, not being land owners themselves, do not understand you have to pay for what you buy and the voters will not hold them responsible.

I don't know of anyone of 18 years old who doesn't understand that you have to pay for what you buy.

There is a large difference between a conceptual understanding and an understanding of the reality of the situation. Also, I would counter this by saying I know lots of people 18 years old who don't realise what government funding means and why national debt even matters.

Just to make it simple the national dept will never be paid off, the politicians have no reason to because a large number of voters really do not care...as long as the politicians give them free food, free phones, free college Pell grants.....fill in your favorite government giveaway.

Why would you assume people receiving government benefits don't care about debt? You could just tax people more while still keeping the benefits that way the costs aren't so bad.

That tax people more part is where I think you only have a conceptual understanding of the issue. It SUCKS being a slave to the government for several months out of the year when you don't get as many bonuses coming back to you than someone who doesn't have to work their ass off so they can eat.

This country will never get out of dept as long as welfare, food stamps and other handouts exist and those handouts will never go away if people can vote for politicians who will give it to them.

It's better that then having them starve and die cause there's no services to take care of them plus welfare, food stamps, higher minimum wage, etc if managed right can turn some people into contributing members of society who go to work, own property and pay taxes help alleviate the debt.

That's the thing though, people who are on social welfare have a stigmatised interest in keeping those politicians in power as they are the net receivers versus net losers. For instance, if I am feeding you, clothing you, and paying for your medical bills and education you shouldn't get a say in who I sleep with or how much cocaine I snort while doing so.

No one would let someone sit down at a poker table and play without bringing a stake into the game and we still call that gambling. Why gamble with a nation?

Why should anyone without a stake in America get to vote? It was a mistake to change that part of the Constitution…

Every adult male in America actually does have a physical and tangible stake in the country, it's called the draft. If you look up historical suffrage movements the vote was given to the male population regardless of property because they were subject to conscription and the possibility of death or dismemberment in service to the nation. That was the original philosophical and political justification for the expansion of the vote. So your method is correct but your target is wrong, to vote a person must be registered for the draft otherwise you have a disconnect between political power and political responsibility/duty.

Great article in the OP.

It's a point I've tried to make on dakka here a few times before (why countries like Egypt first need basic civil protections, especially on religion, before democracy can operate - because without it that election becomes a live or die affair).

 ThePrimordial wrote:
There's no such thing as true Democracy anymore because Democracy never works well. Socrates proved this to be the case when the people put him to death and the government had no say.
I believe you're confusing true Democracy with a Republic which can actually work correctly. It's well known true Democracy doesn't work well.
Dude seriously this is from sophomore history...

You've gotten your terms confused. Republic simply means that there isn't a monarch. I think you're thinking more of the difference between direct democracy and representative democracy, and then missing the point that the article isn't talking about any of that at all (because it's author is sensible enough to not even bother to tear down as silly a strawman as direct democracy).

Instead, the article is talking about the necessary civil protections and institutions that a society must have in order for democracy to function properly, and that in efforts to reform countries around the world we've often made the mistake of just dumping a democracy on there, without first establishing all those other elements.


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 whembly wrote:
One of the biggest "culprit" is the bajiillion-word tax code that was created at the behest of influential interest groups that tenaciously defends the status-quo.

Not really, you don't get rich by avoiding tax. That idea is basically a fixation of the middle class (because when you're middle class then a nice bit of tax work here or there can make a big difference to your net income). But to a rich person, while tax avoidance is certainly nice and a part of income maximisation, the real meat and potatoes is profitable investment.

I mean, think of it this way - in a world where the top marginal tax rate was 75c in the dollar and couldn't be avoided, then the people who got in on the groundfloor of Facebook would still be richer than God. But the folk who threw all their money at Bernanke would be bankrupt no matter how favourable the tax laws were.

Not that there isn't a great deal of good arguments for tax reform, it's just that tying tax reform to the concentration of wealth is a bit too neat.


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 LuciusAR wrote:
Too much democracy is probably a bad thing. True democracy for example is one where 51% of the population could vote for the other 49% to be shot. Admittedly that’s an extreme example, but democracy can in its own way by tyrannical.

Sure, and that's very much the argument made in the OP's article. It isn't enough to just have democracy, because all that means is that instead of using guns and force to decide who is privileged and who is oppressed, we use a ballot. What's needed is a democracy backed by solid institutions - independant judiciary, basic guarantees of personal freedom and so on.


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 Wolfstan wrote:
Could that be down to most of the population have very similar political beliefs? If so then I can believe that you would get a Democracy that works in the way that people imagine a Democracy should work. Many countries, including us in the UK and the US have too many diverse views and opinions for Democracy to work in the way we all imagine it should work.

I'd argue the opposite - that for stuff that really matters there is a hell of a lot more consensus than in previous generations. Wasn't that long ago that there was a genuine debate between political parties over basic economic structures. The need for the welfare state was genuinely debated, and on the other side socialism, actual real honest to God socialism meaning state control of the means of production socialism, was a position with a politically relevant level of support in the general population.

And the way we got through all of that, and came out the other side with a kind of consensus was through repeated elections.


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 Wolfstan wrote:
For the simple reason that you can't please everybody, all of the time. If the diverse opinions made up a fraction of the overall percentage of a population, then it's likely it can be ignored or it's not such a big deal. If you have 20, 30 or 40% of the population with a fundamental difference of an opinion, then their views have to be taken into account. I'm not saying it's bad, but it sure as hell won't make it a plain sailing Democracy.

There's a strange idea that government is only successful when everyone is happy with absolutely everything that is going on right at that moment. That's just not a useful measure.

Instead, I'd say government is successful when most people are happy enough that the whole system remains stable, and that it produces effective enough governance along the way.

In that sense, it isn't an issue if 40% of people have a fundamental difference of opinion, only if 40% (or 20%, or 10%) have such a strong difference of opinion that they cannot tolerate living in that place, and either leave or begin to attempt some kind of effort to force change (terrorism etc).

Then compare the UK to Egypt. In the UK there's a lot of talk about how bad the other side of politics is, but ultimately people do nothing but vote, and campaign for their side. In Egypt, there's enough at stake that people are dying.


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 whembly wrote:
I'm not trolling... taxation isn't ABOUT social engineering. It's the tax LAWS (with the bevy of exemptions, loopholes, rebates, etc..) is the social engineering aspect.

Nah. In terms of a description of what tax is, you can't get a description that's any more universally accepted than Adam Smith's 4 canonss;

1) Canon of Equity
2) Canon of Certainty
3) Canon of Convenience
4) Canon of Economy

The first one listed (and there's a big reason its the first one) is equity - and that doesn't mean everyone pays the same - by Smith's argument people should pay according to how they benefit from the system - earn lots of money pay lots of tax.


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 NeedleOfInquiry wrote:
If you want to see where America is going look to Zimbabwe, once known as the bread basket of Africa... They did forced land reform where the government took the land and democratically gave it to lots of its voters who knew nothing about farming. Less than 5 years later there was mass starvation...The country changed from being the bread basket of Africa to just being a basket case...People do not care for what they have not earned…

Trying to argue that events in Zimbabwe have any kind of relation to democracy is well, kind of deranged.

Why should anyone without a stake in America get to vote? It was a mistake to change that part of the Constitution…

They have a stake. They live there, their life and livelihood is staked on the success of that government. The idea that you only have a stake when you have assets is crazy.

Democracy is too precious to leave in the hands of someone who has not earned it....

Democracy is so precious that once you start talking about who is and isn't allowed to be part of it you've already completely fethed it up. Democracy only works when the state is stable enough that people don't mind losing a vote and waiting out a government they don't like for 3 or 4 years.

Once you get to the point where its okay to start denying people the vote for something as nebulous as 'not having earned it', well then you've got real stakes on the table, and democracy won't hold.

Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

 NeedleOfInquiry wrote:
Now look at the chart.........

The Public Debt

The U.S. gross debt amount from 1800 to present.

Your first mistake there is in looking at debt in raw numbers, instead of being a percentage of total GDP. Simply put - $1,000 debt to a person earning $100,000 is nothing at all like a $1,000 debt to a person on food stamps, and it's the same thing for countries - when GDP is 14 trillion the level of manageable debt is wildly different to what it was in 1865 and the GDP was much, much lower.

Politicians realize the new voters, not being land owners themselves, do not understand you have to pay for what you buy and the voters will not hold them responsible.

In the post war period only two US presidents left office with larger debt to GDP ratios than when they entered - Reagan and GW Bush. They suffered those budget blowouts because they put in place lower taxes, which were very much supported by the wealthy - the people with land that you think are somehow more fiscally responsible with government dollars.

But they aren't, and as a result your theory just doesn't work at all.

 NeedleOfInquiry wrote:

In 1815 it almost doubles.

Per your chart, 1810 is an anomaly.

 NeedleOfInquiry wrote:

The Public Debt

Is not the same thing as gross debt.