Tax and Voting
October 17th, 2012 at 2:00 pm by David FarrarJeremy Connell writes at Stuff:
We should only count the votes of people who paid a positive amount of tax (less any cash benefits), and preferably weight them by that amount. This would skew the decision making in favour of productive, intelligent people, leading to much better outcomes for the nation as a whole.
I don’t support this, but the issues Connell touches on does go to the heart of politics. There are systemic problem when such a huge proportion of the voting population are dependent on the state.
In a very broad sense, the parties of the left that advocate higher taxes aim to get 51% of the country dependent on the state – either through welfare, state jobs, Working for Families, taxpayer funded NGOs, student support etc. That is because it creates a voting constituency in favour of higher taxes, and hence them staying in power.
Likewise parties of the right try to reduce the number of people dependent on the state. They do stuff like promote asset sales, as the more voters who are private investors and the like, the more who support lower taxes etc.
The solution isn’t to restrict voting rights, but to be aware of the dangers of getting a majority of the population dependent on taxpayer funding, because that is how you end up with say 55% receiving most of the taxes, demanding the 45% pay more and more.
Tags: taxation
October 17th, 2012 at 2:08 pm
There are systemic problem when such a huge proportion of the voting population are dependent on the state.
You go Mitt!!
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 2:12 pm
Those that are not allowed to vote will presumably still be able to afford firearms to get their point across.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 2:13 pm
“In a very broad sense” the sky is purple.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 2:14 pm
Funnily I was thinking exactly that the other day and I do support it. Perhaps they should have to forgo the party vote?
“There are systemic problem when such a huge proportion of the voting population are dependent on the state.”
Yep look at Greece. Coming to a country near you when the enevitble happens – you have to say “no”.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 2:16 pm
kipper has a point. All we get for our massive taxes is (relative) “social rest”. The rest we have to pay for, twice.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 2:19 pm
What about an extra vote for tax-positive people?
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 2:21 pm
Freudian slip? This is an accurate description of today’s National Party!
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 2:30 pm
Bit extreme limiting to only tax positive, but Linda’s suggestions seems at least a little more moderate. At least criminals with prison time are now prevented from voting.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 2:31 pm
I support Connell’s proposal. Think how much quicker the vote count would be.
The added benefit is that such an electorate would naturally expand as it supported proposals to widen the tax base rather than narrow it.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 2:31 pm
Manolo @2:21…
Bugger, I agree with you
FFS, what next, cheering on red? FML
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 2:31 pm
fish_boy (145) Says:
October 17th, 2012 at 2:12 pm
Those that are not allowed to vote will presumably still be able to afford firearms to get their point across.
The lefty meme give us your possessions our we will take them. Shall we return the favour get a job stop sucking off the productive or…………and if you consider for a while the productive can afford more death type machines than the poor
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 2:32 pm
I think it would be an interesting experiment. Maybe we could have two houses: One where all votes are equal and one where your vote is weighted by the tax you pay. When it comes to voting for the budget, I think it is ridiculous that voters’ contributions are not taken into account.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 2:34 pm
It’s a good idea for the Right to talk about people becoming too dependent on the State!
It’s a bad idea for the Right to talk about people becoming too dependent on the State!
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 2:38 pm
I think you may want to add a humour tag to this post
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 2:40 pm
a less extreme option would be to let taxpayers direct where their taxes are spent directly off their tax return.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 2:44 pm
If you’d like to make the argument that left-wingers like you want people to become less dependent on the state – and hence on people like you and the parties you support that constantly run to the cries of “what’s gummit going to do about it” – then DPF may well do so.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 2:55 pm
This is exactly what I have been saying to people for the last few years, but that voting in this manner should be for an upper house, with delaying power and perhaps vetoing a budget which increases the deficit beyond an agreed level.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 2:59 pm
I’m not totally in favour of no taxes – no vote simply because no party will ever get the chance to implement it but would be in favour of an upper house elected by taxpayers only with the right of veto for any legislation involving how taxpayers’ money is spent.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 3:08 pm
The biggest looming threat is from the huge baby boomer retirement bloc.
How about state pensions in exchange for voting right?
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 3:11 pm
This is a really dumb idea for many reasons. It disciminates in a number of ways, for example against the young and the old.
People who pay tax/more tax may be good at earning money or lucky at winning lotto but that doesn’t mean they would be better than anyone else at making decisions about running a country, or fairly distributing tax.
It would be bad as making it a vote per union memberskip.
Democracy has to be as close to one person one vote as possible.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 3:16 pm
I think a better solution would be to educate the population about the waste of time a two party system creates. End the flip-flop of major parties protecting their own interest by implementing a true proportional representation system rather than this half baked electorate/party vote system… The fact MMP seems to be the preferred option from the MP’s tells the voters they need to change the system.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 3:21 pm
That’s a HUGE claim! Hugely speculative also. Requires further explanation. Lots of it.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 3:22 pm
“It discriminates in a number of ways, for example against the young and the old.”
No it doesn’t. It gives them the same incentive to be productive as everyone else.
I agree with Tinman, though, it will never happen along with most other sensible reforms. We are far passed the point of no return when 95% of the population receive more from the State than they contribute.
Short of massive Asian immigration nothing will save us from the inexorable slow slide into idle dependent subsistence.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 3:39 pm
“It gives them the same incentive to be productive as everyone else.”
Productiveness doesn’t necessarily equate to taxable income.
And:
Vote:Young people take time to work their way up the productivity and earning ladders, especialy if getting an education. Many students wouldn’t qualify.
Most retired people would be disadvantaged.
Non-working partners.
Volunteers.
Etc.
October 17th, 2012 at 3:40 pm
i am less convinced in national politics as everyone should be paying some tax, even if its just gst or tax on their ciggies, booze and petrol.
but for local body, hell yes. it is criminal that those people who actually pay property rates have the same voting power as they who do not, but the outcome of the election is to decide how to spend all the property rates money.
If landlords were legally allowed to pass on the direct cost of rates as a seperate line item in the rent to their tenants, and the tenants could see it going up year by year, you would have a massive push towards prudent low spend candidates in local body.
same goes for national politics and the petrol tax, put the actual cost on there, and see if people meekly accept the level of tax on petrol like they do.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 3:43 pm
I’ts untenable and completely undemocratic but part of me is inclined to think: “Shut the fuck up, get a job, then get a vote.”
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 3:45 pm
I detest working for families. It is a nasty horrible redistribution of income from those who earn it to those who don’t .
And, so many get it that it’s tricky to dump.
Any party who promises to phase out interest free studnt loans and wff will be ejected from government.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 3:50 pm
Hm, how about a rule that says you’ve got to have worked (paying PAYE) for 5 years before you can vote? How would that work?
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 3:54 pm
Pete George, they are not disadvantaged, merely disenfranchised. Moreover the remedy is in their own hands.
However it is not going to happen. Much worse will instead.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 4:23 pm
Which you won’t find at Stuff
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 4:25 pm
Those that are not allowed to vote will presumably still be able to afford firearms to get their point across.
Well if you can afford to purchase a firearm, then you can afford to pay tax.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 5:55 pm
Quite right Bevan – we’ll steal the fuckers!
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 5:56 pm
I support Connell.
Vote:As for the loser beneficiaries – buy them all a one-way ticket to Aussie, Afghanistan or somewhere else. You’d recoup the cost within about a couple of days.
October 17th, 2012 at 6:10 pm
yeah, silly me, tom, I always thought that when you claim something you would have the burden of proof.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 7:07 pm
Putting OAP’s to one side, if in the period between elections you have received more benefits than taxes paid then you are not going to vote- end of story.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 7:24 pm
@Megatron – “…if in the period between elections you have received more benefits than taxes paid then you are not going to vote- end of story.”
Vote:Sounds good to me.
The higher the proportion of layabouts who don’t vote, the better.
It’s the old saying – “he who pays the piper calls the tune.”
October 17th, 2012 at 10:35 pm
An eternally relevant refutation of such ridiculous schemes.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 10:39 pm
That was in a different era. He didn’t realise the jackasses would get the vote.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 10:41 pm
So if I am attacked and the police arrest the attacker, and he is tried and convicted, I cannot vote, because I have received more value in benefits from the state than I paid tax that year (these things cost money)?
Or if I get cancer and undergo surgery and get chemo, I can’t vote because the cost of he treatment outweighs the tax I have paid?
The stupidity of some of you transcends the human understanding.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 10:44 pm
“He didn’t realise the jackasses would get the vote.”
Vote:Or become president
October 17th, 2012 at 11:01 pm
Yep Tom I basically agree with that. You should get some credit at birth and can add to it by working, and,subtract from it for social services or if your unemployed. If you die in credit you get to pass,it on to your kids. If,you die in debit it is wiped.
Would work well to counteract the gross injustices that pervade every aspect of the social welfare system.
Eg your dying of untreatable cancer and have a million dollars of credit. You get to choose to have palliative care worth a million or not and pass the mill to your kids.
Your choice.
“So if I am attacked and the police arrest the attacker, and he is tried and convicted, I cannot vote, because I have received more value in benefits from the state than I paid tax that year (these things cost money)?”
Not the same situation because in a ral world there would be full cost recovery from the crim who would then not ever get the vote back.
Or if I get cancer and undergo surgery and get chemo, I can’t vote because the cost of he treatment outweighs the tax I have paid?
Yep people who work hard and save hard,have every right to spend their money on better medical care for themselves. If you’ve saved and have insurance it may outweigh the costs and you keep the vote.
The stupidity of some of you transcends the human understanding.
Having choice in life is a mighty fine thing. It’s called freedom.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 11:05 pm
In most cases they’re the same people at different points in their lives. When you are young, the state forks out for your education, and when you are old the state forks out for your basic pension and the majority of the medical resources you will consume during your life (most of which are consumed in the last five years of it). All that means is that the rest of New Zealand is dependent upon those aged 20-55. So what? It’s always been like that in one way or another.
And the way that most people on the dole and DPB demand that the rest of society support them is by not bothering to vote in elections. So what on earth are you complaining about?
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 11:20 pm
That is completely crazy. It ignores the fact that most of the welfare state is a form of insurance (it’s just compulsory insurance). ALL insurance is redistributive – that’s the whole point of risk pooling. To penalise those who draw from the insurance pool is ridiculous. This is like saying that my wife can’t get the full payout on my life insurance if I die only ten years into the policy.
This has little to do with the voting situation.
What planet do you live on? In the real world, the capacity of criminals to create such debts massively outweighs their ability to ever settle them. My mother is still receiving a buck a week from some idiot who burgled her shed years ago (and that was a very inexpensive crime in comparison with most).
You don’t get it. It makes NO DIFFERENCE whether the insurance is provided by the state through the tax we pay or privately through fees. It is still redistributive from those who don’t get sick to those who do. Thus, in EITHER CASE a cancer patient is going to take vastly more out than they put in.
Your insane scheme would only be satisfied if we completely abolished insurance. That is quite mad (note, for example, that the dole is just unemployment insurance and is labelled as such in many countries).
Thus, the idea that people should lose their vote if they take more from the state than they put in is simply nuts.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 11:30 pm
Quite right Bevan – we’ll steal the fuckers!
Typical – too lazy to work, but not to riot. Guess there would be no option but to claim self defence then eh Luc?
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 11:39 pm
Uninforcible perhaps but not nuts
Bs about full cost recovery from crims, we just choose not to enforce it.
The list of injustices in compulsory social welfare is mind boggling. If it was more like a real insurance model, where everyone paid the same for the same level of cover, at lleast that would redress some of the injustice.
Vote:October 17th, 2012 at 11:44 pm
“In a very broad sense, the parties of the left that advocate higher taxes aim to get 51% of the country dependent on the state – either through welfare, state jobs, Working for Families, taxpayer funded NGOs, student support etc. That is because it creates a voting constituency in favour of higher taxes, and hence them staying in power.”
In a very broad sense, the parties of the right that advocate enriching them selves at the expense of others aim to trick 51% of the country into voting for them by pretending their policies will make every one better off, while in reality the policies only benefit themselves, their donors and their friends. That is why their supporters can generally be split into two groups, morons and millionaires.
Vote:October 18th, 2012 at 12:34 am
almost unbelievable , deny people a vote and as fish boy says watch us pick up guns, but I do agree with Farrars basic premise that it is all skew with to have more than half the people dependent
Vote:October 18th, 2012 at 3:27 am
Sadly this type of approach is the only way to save the west from gradually falling victim to increasing welfare dependency.
From a purely evolutionary point of view our current system is rewarding lazy breeders living on welfare to the detriment of hard workers who haven’t got the time or money to afford children (2 incomes being nearly essential these days).
Pre-welfare state times saw hard workers being prosperous and fecund and raising more children successfully while non-working types tended not to have surviving children (read angela’s ashes for vision of what it was like just 2 gernerations ago in Ireland). That lead to a strong work ethic being a big evolutionary advantage – and in areas with cold climates where that genetically programmed work ethic had the greatest survival benefit it has held its own against the current benefits of laziness for a couple of generations.
But inevitable current evolutionary pressures in the form of having more kids if you work less means that the genetically programmed work ethic is being killed off as it is now a disadvantage in terms of having more kids.
So feel free to raise arguments about social justice etc – but it is all just so much hot air. The status quo is inevitably destructive as Mike Judge so eloquently illustrated in Idiocracy. We need something to tip the scales back in favour of hard workers again and make their lives a bit easier – give them more chance to have kids with an increased wealth differential between them and welfare dependants.
Giving them more voting power to limit the burden of welfare recipients would be an effective way of bringing it about, and votes in proportion to tax paid would be a pretty easy and very just tweak to democracy.
Vote:October 18th, 2012 at 3:36 am
I can’t believe so many of you seriously think disenfranchising people is a good idea. Government doesn’t just deal in taxes and the economy, you know. They also make some huge decisions about a whole raft of other things and enshrine their ideologies into law. To deny people the right to vote for the people who will make decisions around what happens in their life is just wrong. For example, you would deny my husband and I the right to vote because while he works full time I only work part time while our children are at school so between us I guess we’re not ‘tax positive’ right now, though assuredly will be again once the children are old enough to be home alone after school. While you would have us disenfranchised, the government is merrily passing laws that affect the education of our kids and under your system we’d have no say in who got to be the government which gets to do that, even though at this point in our lives that is something we are very concerned about. You’re also advocating for a system where the elderly don’t get to vote because they stop being tax positive. So they either have to keep working til the day they die in order to be able to vote for the people who will decide many things about how they live or they have to give up the right to vote even though most of the laws passed will affect them in some way. Keeping voting rights in the hands of an elite (and that is basically what you all want) is a very dangerous slide away from democracy.
Vote:October 18th, 2012 at 5:27 am
I cant believe anyone is dumb enough to give this concept any credence
Vote:October 18th, 2012 at 6:49 am
As I said earlier, I think this limiting voting to tax paying is very dumb, non-democratic idea. But the proposal and many of the comments here reflect something very commonly seen – political selfishness and self interest.
For many democracy seems to be a low priority as they look more at how to get their preferred policies and people promoted. This thread highlights this, but another common symptom is those who want their preferred party (or imaginary ‘perfect’ party) to rule and they want to eliminate all opposition.
We don’t have the best and fairest democracy, self interested parties cling to whatever advantages they can, but at least there seems no chance of going back the dark ages of democracy where mates were all who could vote.
Vote:October 18th, 2012 at 9:13 am
Perhaps only New Zealand Citizens should have the right to vote, and they should not have that voting right until they have achieved that position.
Keeps out Dotcon for example.
Likewise only Ratepayers who are on the Council record should vote as to how their money is spent ?
Vote:October 18th, 2012 at 9:16 am
For most people it is. That is why the welfare state is a vote winner. It’s how the average New Zealander can afford a world class education for their children, first world health care, and a guaranteed income in old age (which would be much more expensive if left to the private market).
Vote:October 18th, 2012 at 9:23 am
Hard to implement but not dumb and a good starting point for discussion on fixing the broken system.
All you bollocks on about self interest etc but who is the humanitarian
– the person who wants to keep the status quo aboard the gravy train to the 3rd world?
or
- the person who wants to turn the train around so aour children and grandchilren have a future here?
Well said urban.
Vote:October 18th, 2012 at 9:30 am
The welfare state is a vote winner because there is nothing else to vote for. We are way down the fork in the tracks to the 3rd world. Perhaps your are happy that your children wont live here?
The welfare state is nothing like an insurance policy for most people – the more you earn the more no hopers you have to pay insurance for. Then you have to pay tiwce because your kids have to get loans to study but the no hopers go for free. What incentive is that in a modern first world democracy?
I can insure my house but I dont have to insure my neighbours house just on the offchance it burns down.
Welfare state “From the cradle to the jail”.
Vote:October 18th, 2012 at 10:21 am
>The welfare state is nothing like an insurance policy for most people – the more you earn the more no hopers you have to pay insurance for.
Surely, with insurance, if you are a low risk, you ARE paying for the no hopers. Because if all your neighbours are claiming for burning their homes due to their carelessness, it puts premiums up for everyone, including you.
Vote:And all the premiums you pay are paying for your neigbour’s house if it burns down and you never claim.
October 18th, 2012 at 7:34 pm
Of course you think that monique, that’s because you’re an authoritarian fascist, judging by all the other bullshit I’ve seen from you on here.
Vote: