A Modest Proposal: Limiting the Franchise

[Lemur]

Crazed Rabbit made an interesting proposal in another thread. I don't want to derail that discussion, but CR's proposal is worth more jawing; hence the new thread. Here's the original proposal:

[O]nly half of the people pay any federal income tax. So half get all the services of the government without having to pay for any of it. Those people will always support more government spending.

Therefore, I think the simplest way to cut down on spending will be to take away the vote from people who do not pay more in taxes than they receive in handouts. A corollary would be to prohibit any business that gets more in subsidies than it pays in taxes from donating to any political causes or candidates. We'll still have people who whine for more spending, but they won't be pandered to because they can't vote.

Under my plan though, everyone who pays more in taxes than they get from the government gets to vote. Which means the cutoff would be around 50k a year or thereabouts.

A few thoughts:

This would require a Constitutional amendment, no question, and it's hard to imagine the political circumstances that would allow a mass restriction of the franchise to make it through the amendment process. So clearly this is just a thought-exercise, which is fine. Let's examine it closely.

I fear CR is ignoring the hypocrisy syndrome, which complicates his premise that tax-payers are inherently more responsible than non-tax-payers.

How would we define who "pays more in taxes than they receive in handouts"? Take your average policeman. His entire salary is from the government. Same goes for a schoolteacher. These people have no incentive to vote against taxes, so they fly outside of CR's premise. Do they get to vote?

What about people who work in heavily subsidized industries? Does the farmer who gets massive subsidies to grow cheap corn get to vote? How about the people who work for him? What about truckers, who make free use of our subsidized highway system? A mile of highway can cost anywhere from $5 million to $30 million, depending on location, elevation, etc. This constitutes a colossal subsidy to the transportation business. How do we factor this into the CR proposal?

What about businesses that contract to the government? Do their employees get full franchise? Why?