Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: The issues of the day
by
Hunterbunter
on 27/09/2011, 05:07:47 UTC
you're probably in the bottom 80% of the population sharing 15% of the total wealth. http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

That means that 80% of the population will have 15% of the voting power.

i think that's a false conclusion.

that assumes everyone pays exactly the same total % in tax, however i think the wealthy pay far less in percentage terms because they form companies, get bigger breaks, etc.


If it is, then I must have misunderstood the original point:
Here are my suggestions from most favorite to least favorite:

1. For each dollar you pay in taxes, you get to say what it's spent on.

No, I don't think I did. A high income person might pay a 10% tax rate on a $10m salary ($1,000,000 tax), which is still 40-50 times more than if the median wage paid 40% tax. They still pay a lot more in absolute tax, even though it's a far smaller % of their income.

On the surface this sounds nice, but you're probably not comparing how much you earn to the rich. Unless you're on $1m/pa salary, I don't think you realize just how little you have to vote with.

If you give power to money like this, you're going to fight a losing battle, because you're probably in the bottom 80% of the population sharing 15% of the total wealth. http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

That means that 80% of the population will have 15% of the voting power. Do you believe that the people who manage to amass 85% of the wealth will vote for things that benefit you? or that benefit them?

That's an excellent point. It would be better if once a year, each voting tax payer designated what portion of 50 percent of all tax revenue collected went to which programs.

This is a much better solution. It still assumes 1 vote per tax payer, and I would be very interested to see the true power of folk economics at work here Smiley.

Sorry if that's off topic...a different, future friendly education system would be nice.

I'm of the opinion that high school education should be less topic oriented, and more project oriented. At the beginning of the semester, students choose a project which hits several topics (mathematics, science, language, history, etc.), and then, through meetings with counselors, work through their project, which requires team work and research along the way.

Interesting. That would certainly make a lot more sense than the industrial age system we have now. We need a proper modern age update.