Perkins: Rich Should Get More Votes

We’ll just count non-rich people as 3/5ths of a human being.

That seems awful high.

Pressed for examples of how the rich were being demonized, Perkins said that he feared higher taxes. (fm the article)

{monocle pops out}

“The fear is wealth tax, higher taxes, higher death taxes — just more taxes until there is no more 1%. And that that will creep down to the 5% and then the 10%,” he said (fm the article)

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I saw that on Saturday, and wrote the following reply on Facebook:

New crazy voter idea (To battle that stupid $1 per vote rich idiot idea that is quite literally an idea for the rich to finish buying the government in full): Every citizen one vote, plus one additional vote for every 5% of the effective tax rate — but only beyond the capital gains tax rate — that you actually paid. Include STATE taxes in the calculation. The rich would be reduced to an average of 1-3 votes (since most of their income is capital gains), while the middle-class and (due to state tax inclusion) working lower-class would jump to double that. The people that actually shoulder the burdens of society get the benefit.

Mind you, I don’t believe this should be enacted either, but there isn’t a good argument for why we should take absolute taxes paid as a better metric than the percent paid, so it is quite effective in getting idiots to stop prattling off the $1-per-vote nonsense.

You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes.

Sounds like a better system than the one we have: if you give a million dollars to both candidates’ campaigns, then you get all the votes.

GE gets a tax credit of 3.2 billion dollars – their shareholders throw their votes into a negative pool of votes. Then poor people can use those votes. And landlords also have negative votes because the poor tenants pay all the taxes for them.

Conveniently, Perkins’ idea counts out some of the biggest corporations, as I think GE and several other payed zero in taxes last year, and actually got millions (billions?) back in subsidies.

Oh, there’s a simple way to do this. We’ll just count non-rich people as 3/5ths of a human being.

I’ve heard of that idea proposed as a solution to poverty, but as an enfranchisement condition, it still doesn’t go quite far enough to guarantee job creators their fair share of political expression. Since Tom Perkins has demonstrated the ability to top his previous act, expect his next voting system to be based not on the amount of taxes you pay, but on the number people you own.

Taking your idea a step further, jnorris: extra ballots should be dispensed by vending machine, which accept only $1 bills. Since only 1% of the population are eligible to use them, a handful of machines will do, all located in urban poor precincts.

Eric – I go further still. Require that the richest citizen* in the country** must pay for the entire US military budget for the four year term (up front, no cheques) – unless, of course, they can prove that they are not the richest citizen by having them swap fortunes with some other citizen(s). Worked for the Athenians.

@@

Dingo

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* or group thereof

** non-citizen don’t get to vote