Quote Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh View Post
Well, as CR notes somewhere in one of his responses, he was not saying someone had to earn money to vote, simply that they had to receive equal to or less from the government than they earned.
That's cool. Again, answer my original post by answering what "earned" means. How does one "earn" the money and in what ways does one "not earn" money?

The point is NOT to castigate those receiving government funding as "lazy," but to disallow the vote to those with a demonstratable personal interest in government payouts as it would make it too easy for some political party/coalition to buy votes and retain power. I suspect that CR is hoping that self interest would cause those on the dole to try to get off that dole so as to be able to exercise the suffrage. The U.S. Constitution, in its current form, does not allow voting for federal office to be limited in this fashion.
How about instead of punishing those who are simply working in their own self interest when it comes to the gov. buying their interest (which I thought was prided among conservatives? oh wait, this is gov. so for some reason that is unacceptable while CEOs of banks who did on a scale of a 1000 times more magnitude are simply "taking risks" in the market) you make it so the gov. cant buy the publics interest by putting stricter limits on what goes into a bill or even better imo, take that idea of revoking the 17th amendment (direct election of senators) which i agree with and then have it so that all financial bills must be presented in the Senate only instead of the House only.

You also seem to be "under-whelmed" by the means many individuals choose to seek wealth in a service/financial economy. I have a belief in the value of capitalism and the market (albeit regulated to minimize fraud) as the best available adjudicator of who "wins" and "loses." I do not believe that it would be hard to functionally define income for this suffrage approach. You can certainly disagree with it on a "rights" level, but we've had a large arm of government (the IRS) defining income for some time.
Not really in regards to that first sentence. I'm just "under-whelmed" with how the top executives at many major banks and insurance companies operated to get some large sums of money (betting against themselves while buying up and selling crappy bundles of loans while saying they were certified good buys). I don't have a "belief" in the market, that is just as blinding as a belief in just about anything. I know the positives and benefits capitalism and free markets bring to the public and the world at large but I also recognize its many major cons and detriments to the public. And I don't really care about we define income, my entire beginning of the post was about defining "earned".