In my Jan. 3 column, I projected that Barack Obama would probably NOT wake up one morning this year, slap his forehead and exclaim that allowing welfare recipients to vote is a blatant conflict of interest which is quickly turning this nation into a collectivist slave state (or that, if he does realize it, being a Marxist, he would see any reason to stop it.) <\/p>\n
On the Internet, one \u201cpatrick\u201d responded: \u201cVin\u2019s \u2018point\u2019 is that ONLY people with money get to vote. Can you point out to me where the Constitution says that, cause I musta missed it. … I (used to think) that Vin actually believed in the Constitution; not so much anymore. I realize that this guy is even more on the fringe than the \u2018normal\u2019 Review-Journal self-professed \u2018libertarian\u2019 (closet racist, uber-nationalist, goose stepping, tax dodging, parasite) …\u201d <\/p>\n
Wow. So someone who says those on the government dole or payroll should be allowed to keep on voting despite the fact they obviously have a vested interest in ever-expanding government and ever-higher taxes to benefit themselves is NOT a \u201ctax dodging parasite\u201d … whereas someone who proposes that you should only be allowed to vote if you pay more in taxes than you get back in government salary or benefits IS a \u201ctax-dodging parasite\u201d? <\/p>\n
OK, just wanted to make sure we had that clear. <\/p>\n
The Constitution, of course, leaves voter qualification up to the states, many of which long required property ownership (not wealth, per se) as a qualification for the franchise. <\/p>\n
Why? Our modern youth propaganda camps, if they teach this fact at all, doubtless dismiss it as some kind of heinous trick designed to keep blacks from voting. But since blacks were largely barred from voting before 1865 anyway, why was this requirement in place long before that? <\/p>\n
And since married black families now own homes or land at about the same ratio as married white families, why would such a requirement, re-instated now, tend to have any \u201cracist, goose-stepping\u201d effect — once we discount the family-destroying effect of the government \u201cwelfare\u201d programs favored by Mr. \u201cpatrick\u201d and Mr. Obama? <\/p>\n
In fact, the states long set such a requirement as a wise prophylactic against the famous dictum, attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouse, that \u201cA democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.\u201d <\/p>\n
The original link was to property ownership because (before the income tax) the main source of tax revenue was the property tax (even for the central government, which if in need of \u201cdirect\u201d tax revenues was supposed to assess the states, per capita, as it did to pay off the debt it accrued in conquering the South, 1861-1865.) Thus, anyone who owned real property was a taxpayer, with an obvious vested interest in electing only delegates who would be frugal with the tax revenues. <\/p>\n
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the average modern voter is going to be far less concerned about cynically wasteful or frivolous spending if he or she considers those tax revenues to come \u201cfrom someone else — you know, \u2018the rich.\u2019\u201d This is why a poll asking whether the respondent is willing to write a $100 check right now to fund some arts grant or a bird-counting computer for the local college would likely draw a \u201cNo\u201d vote of 99-to-1, whereas proposing that this be done with \u201cgovernment funds\u201d drawn from some undisclosed, far-away source is far more likely to win a casual \u201cSure, why not?\u201d <\/p>\n
But while the historical arguments thus usually mention enfranchisement based on property ownership, in my Jan. 3 column I offered the refinement that in the early 21st century the franchise might (should, actually) be extended only to \u201cnet tax payers,\u201d to achieve the same result in a world where plenty of people appear quite wealthy, own homes and so forth, but are actually living mainly on taxpayers\u2019 funds, looted under threat of force, removing said recipients from the group who have a vested interest in seeing government limited and tax revenues spent frugally. <\/p>\n
At this point, though, let\u2019s thank \u201cpatrick\u201d for clarifying something that\u2019s been bothering a lot of us. <\/p>\n
Ever since candidate Barack Obama promised he would raise taxes \u201conly on the rich,\u201d we\u2019ve been endeavoring to get the socialists\/collectivists to tell us how they define \u201cthe rich.\u201d They give us hints when they talk about raising taxes on \u201ccouples making $250,000 per year\u201d and so forth, but up till now they\u2019ve declined to answer the question directly. <\/p>\n
Now, on their behalf, correspondent \u201cpatrick\u201d appears to have finally spilled the beans. <\/p>\n
I wrote, in essence, that only those who are net tax payers should vote. Patrick replies by saying \u201cVin\u2019s \u2018point\u2019 is that ONLY people with money get to vote.\u201d Since by \u201cpeople with money,\u201d it\u2019s clear he doesn\u2019t mean some pan-handler who just made $100 standing at the freeway exit with a tin can, we can\u2019t avoid concluding that \u201cpatrick\u201d has thus equated \u201cthe rich\u201d (\u201cpeople with money\u201d) with \u201cnet tax payers.\u201d <\/p>\n
If this is true, than we can conclude the statement \u201cI will raise taxes only on the rich\u201d has a meaning identical to \u201cI will raise taxes only on those who are already net tax payers.\u201d <\/p>\n
Posit a couple of retired federal workers, aged 57, living together in a modest $700,000 house in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington City and collecting dual federal pensions worth $250,000 per year. Living with them is a grown daughter — an unmarried schoolmarm on the government payroll — and a grandchild attending the public schools. The value of their federal pensions, the teacher\u2019s tax-paid salary, and the welfare benefit accruing to them as the taxpayers fund their grandchild\u2019s education EXCEED anything this family pays in taxes. <\/p>\n
Therefore this entire family are \u201cnet tax recipients,\u201d NOT \u201cnet tax payers.\u201d Under my proposal, they would NOT be allowed to vote to bolster the ranks of the tax-and-spend crowd. <\/p>\n
On the other hand, posit a struggling young couple living on a couple of acres of cold and rocky ground in Idaho, in a small shack with no central heating or indoor plumbing, growing potatoes and home-schooling their two kids. Because they refuse the proffered welfare \u201cbenefit\u201d of government day care\/schooling, the property taxes, sales taxes and excise taxes they pay on their tires and gasoline DO exceed any tax-funded \u201cbenefit\u201d they receive from the government. Thus, this struggling couple ARE net taxpayers, and WOULD be allowed to vote under my hypothetical proposal. <\/p>\n
Yet according to \u201cpatrick,\u201d this struggling family of home-schooling potato farmers is \u201cricher\u201d than the retired government employees in the $700,000 house — unlike the government retirees, they \u201chave money.\u201d After all, the struggling potato farmers would be allowed to vote, and \u201cpatrick\u201d informs us that under Vin\u2019s hypothetical plan \u201conly those with money would be allowed to vote.\u201d <\/p>\n
In \u201cThe God of the Machine,\u201d which I included alongside \u201cAtlas Shrugged\u201d and \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d as a book whose eventual return to popularity will be a harbinger of better times, in her chapter on \u201cThe Fatal Amendments,\u201d Isabel Paterson explains (right after she explains why the federal government must limit entry across the border, \u201cotherwise the nation cannot remain in being\u201d): <\/p>\n
\u201cThe component states … must retain a legitimate control over admission to the state\u2019s body politic, to preserve their political entities. This is the power to admit to the franchise. Race, color, or previous condition of servitude are irrelevant. They ought not to be considered disqualifications. The correct qualifications lie in local residence and allegiance and real property. Only in these requirements can a moral principle be found. . . . It must be attached to immovable local property. Liquid capital will not do.\u201d <\/p>\n
(Ms. Paterson\u2019s footnote: \u201cThe ownership and residence in a slab shack with a potato patch is a SOUND qualification for the vote, while ownership of every share of stock in the Standard Oil Company is not.\u201d — end footnote.) <\/p>\n
\u201cThese qualifications are moral as well as material, being all within the competence of the individual; a responsible person can fulfill them by his own choice and efforts. . . .\u201d <\/p>\n
Limiting the franchise to \u201cnet tax payers\u201d would give us a \u201cgovernment by the rich\u201d? What in hell do we have right now, with the bankers of Goldman Sachs and the privately owned Federal Reserve still setting the nation\u2019s disastrous (but oh-so-beneficial to them) economic policies for their docile and obedient front man Mr. Obama, just as they did for their docile and obedient frontmen Messrs. Bush and Clinton? <\/p>\n
The government pledges to \u201craise taxes only on the rich.\u201d They decline to tell us precisely who they mean. But I suspect \u201cpatrick\u201d is absolutely right about who they mean: <\/p>\n
Us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In my Jan. 3 column, I projected that Barack Obama would probably NOT wake up one morning this year, slap his forehead and exclaim that allowing welfare recipients to vote is a blatant conflict of interest which is quickly turning this nation into a collectivist slave state (or that, if he does realize it, being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,5,25,37,9,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-elections","category-history","category-readers-write","category-taxation","category-welfare"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-6R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2951,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions\/2951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}