16-yr-old voters in US?

Oh, that so cute.

Imaginos thinks education union benefit from the current mess the US public school system is in.

Imaginos1892 wrote:In the end, voters decide who pays taxes, how much they pay, and how those taxes are spent. If a substantial percentage of voters don't pay taxes, raising taxes won't affect them directly. They won't have any personal reason not to vote for higher and higher taxes on 'the rich'. They'll vote to spend those taxes on programs that benefit themselves. In other words, 'bread and circuses'.

The people who have to pay the taxes should decide how much, and how they are to be spent. Those with a stake in the outcome.

1) A society is not (or at least should not be) a profit-making enterprise (that is, if it makes a net profit, great, but that's not it's goal). As such, people who for whatever reason cannot contribute financially also have a stake in the system.
2) Eventually virtually everyone pays taxes. Even if you make too little to pay income tax you're going to wind up paying sales taxes, or import and other taxes on products/companies in an indirect fashion. In fact, my understanding is that these used to be the primary taxes in the US, with income tax and other payroll taxes being introduced much later.

This isn't just a matter of principal. A universal franchise has its downsides, but one of its primary advantages is that it gives all citizens a voice and stake in society. If you assume that people will always vote in favor of their narrow selfish interests - which is what the "bread and circuses" argument boils down to - then the well-off, which would have the power in the setup you're proposing, would similarly be motivated to vote in favor of measures which benefit them at the expense of the voteless poor. In the long run, that leads to the rise of what is effectively an aristocracy (especially since, under your proposed system, you could quite logically argue that those who pay more taxes should have a larger say than those who pay less) which takes advantage of the underclass, and said underclass has no recourse but violent revolution.

Furthermore, once you introduce measures which restrict the franchise, you open up the risk of politicians gaming the system in favor of themselves or their party. In case of taxation-based voting, the US is particularly vulnerable, given the way taxation is atomized, with small local authorities capable of raising their own taxes. You already have this problem, although currently it's more gaming registration since actual voting rights are harder to affect under the current system.

Imaginos1892 wrote:The more those costs spiral out of control, the more the government tries to ‘help’ people pay for them, and the completely predictable response from both medicine and education is: “It’s a-rainin’ money! Git a bigger bucket!” The only competition is to see who can raise their prices fastest and get the most of that ‘free’ money.

That's what price controls are for.

Why should he be getting that pension from the government? Didn't he save and invest any money over all that time? Didn't he buy a house? Has he got nothing to show for all that work? If not, why should he be deciding how to run the country when he failed to run his own life successfully?

Well, part of his planning for the future might have involved getting a job with a pension, no? Especially if its a pension for one of those positions which someone has to be do but don't pay that well (e.g. teachers).

"Why should he be getting that pension from the government? Didn't he save and invest any money over all that time? Didn't he buy a house? Has he got nothing to show for all that work? If not, why should he be deciding how to run the country when he failed to run his own life successfully?"

That's the alt right mantra right there. Only those who make money have successfully run their own lives, and deserve to be in society. Just plain wrong in many ways. Very many good people devote their lives to looking after others, and end up with little themselves. The gulf between our values is so wide that I doubt we'd get along face to face.
For what it is worth I did successfully make money and own a number of houses, but don't regard myself as being any better than friends who are pensioners and renting.

Imaginos1892 wrote:US politics is becoming almost entirely a closed system, nearly as insulated from the real world as Weber's Mandarins. There have been other closed political systems — Rome in the 6th century, France in the 18th, Russia in the early 20th. Things did not end well for any of them.

That's what happens when you restrict voting rights, genius. Or when you do nothing to curb the influence of the moneyed class. Or when you let non-human (read: corporate) concerns take precedence over the needs of the electorate. Or when you let generations of politicians get away with gerrymandering and other means of tailoring their electorate to secure reelection. Or when you listen to corporate interests telling you how much better they would be at reaping profit from things that aren't and absolutely, definitely shouldn't be profitable, like health insurance. Or providing health services. Or operating infrastructure.

Annachie wrote:Imaginos thinks education union benefit from the current mess the US public school system is in.

I never said teachers were doing particularly well, but the bosses running those ‘Teachers Associations’ make out like bandits, paying themselves huge salaries to bribe — err, ‘contribute to’ — the politicians that keep them in power. So do all the thousands upon thousands of ’Boards Of Education’ and other redundant bureaucratic deadwood clogging our school districts. Teachers, schools and students must subsist on their crumbs.

In this state, teachers are required by law to 'contribute' to the 'California Teachers Association' and prohibited from forming any other Associations. 'One union to rule them all'.

The E wrote:That's what happens when you restrict voting rights, genius.

That's what happens with 'warm-body' voting when the politicians buy votes with our tax money. The voters they buy don't care what else they do, as long as they get their 'bread and circuses' by 'taxing the rich'.

If your argument is along the lines of "Government is working for the wrong people because the wrong people are voting" and your fix is to exclude a class of people from voting that you believe (but cannot prove)to be the problem, how long before you get excluded from the vote?

The E wrote:If your argument is along the lines of "Government is working for the wrong people because the wrong people are voting" and your fix is to exclude a class of people from voting that you believe (but cannot prove)to be the problem, how long before you get excluded from the vote?

Excellent point.

The trick is finding the right balance between an exclusive aristocracy that disenfranchises the majority and mob rule. A ridgidly defined Constitution that enshrines inalienable rights that protects the minority from the capricious whims of the majority allieviates the problem.