Quote Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name View Post
Alright I see your point, and I recognize that you are not advocating paying to vote or suffrage rights based on wealth. However what I am trying to get at is that if you inject any amount of realism here you can easily point out that the vast majority of those who are not paying more then they are receiving are going to be naturally lower wealth people then the upper wealth people, so it naturally (you could say de facto) creates suffrage rights based on wealth since there is not an equal amount of "free loaders" as many conservatives would label them throughout each wealth class.

Also I generally challenge the idea that paying more to the government then you are receiving makes you any more qualified at setting the US on the right course when it comes to fiscal responsibility. I'm sure the bank executives and every wall street investor, broker etc... with his or her hand in the pot jumped on the idea of $700 billion of free government bailout money without any restrictions or oversight.
Well, you're preaching to the choir about bailouts for the financial institutions. The best that can be said of these bailouts is that they attenuated and stretched out time-wise the damage. It's a tough argument whether a short horrific collapse or a slow dismantling is the more painful route to recovery -- lots of folks hurt either way. To the extent that fraud was committed by some Wall Streeters, there are people needing a bit of time in jail as well as asset confiscation.

Yes, in a de facto fashion, using government largesse v tax assessment will likely screen out a higher percentage of lower-income persons. They are screened out, however, not because they are lower income but because they have a vested interest in pushing for higher benefits for themselves at the expense of other taxpayers. How would you address that concern?