You could raise the average age of voters simply by raising the average age of voters - only over 21 or even over 30 perhaps, Sam Hooper was one suggesting such an increase.
The more I think about education as a qualification the more problems I see, for one thing it would exclude a lot of the best kind of entrepreneurial people who either drop out or avoid education altogether. For another thing it might encourage more people to go into education just to “get on” in life, i.e. it would be a perverse incentive that might encourage laziness in academia.
Honestly I think restrictions based on being a taxpayer, possibly also having been a taxpayer for a certain length of time are all that’s needed to stop the rot. The biggest problem now is that you’ve got people who are dependent on the state simply voting for more unaffordable state largess, and furthermore politicians have an incentive to make further promises of such generosity, which encourages them to lie to get elected, such incentives are very corrupting.
Realistically we’re not going to see any such changes even considered any time soon though unless something very serious happens, like a major crisis, famines, wars, civil wars etc… I think it is worth keeping the idea of a fundamental re-think alive though, in case of such eventualities.
Yes, someone once predicted that the system would break down once people started realizing that they could vote themselves money from the government. It’s been happening ever since…
You clearly do not know much about the origins of the the 2nd world war. So I will not answer your hysterical response. I suggest you calm down and do some research. It is remotely possible that you might learn something.
Your response to my suggestion that increasing the number of Representatives is clearly fascist. You favor a govt. that pushes your views. I don’t give a shit about efficiency. I believe that more blocking of legislation is actually desirable. We need less laws, not more.
I look forward to your comment on Republican governance. I hope you drop your fascism.
Father_Lode, you do not understand the conventions of debate. You resort frequently to personal insult. An insult is not an argument. You are arrogant, rude, verbally violent, without justification. Also potty-mouthed. You are not the sort of participant we want in this forum.
Whether my co-administrator, C.Gee, decides to bear with your insolence for a while yet, or decides to be done with you immediately, I will accept her choice.
Whether you ban me or not is not important. It does seem like you and C Gee are overly sensitive to brusque and somewhat agrressive debate.
The world is, at this moment, on the threshold of mass starvation, worldwide economic disruption on a scale not experienced by almost everyone alive today.
We are also on the brink of nuclear war, probably with a better than 50/50 chance in 6 months. The level of irresponsibility being shown by western govts. in their dealing with the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is like nothing seen before.
David Goldman wrote an essay a short while ago likening our current status to August 1914. I partially disagree; in 1914 none of the politicians/monarchs had the faintest idea of the catastrophe that was about to unfold, our “leaders” today have no such excuse. They are fully aware of the potential consequences of their actions.
I am a little edgy, I find it it difficult to believe what I fear is actually happening.
Over your life you have seen fantastic changes, changes that have made enormous improvements in life for all humanity. We are now looking at a future where all those changes are reversed, and the lot of humanity (whoever is left) is to live in an unimaginable state of misery.
I will. I am an emotional people-person. I do get upset, I do get short. Sometimes I am not as polite as I should be.
“Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone”.
There are multiple reasons why the UK is the way it is. I believe the existence of the NHS is one of the positives.
Would the UK be better without the NHS?
The British NHS is a disaster. It nearly killed me. I was saved only by the fact that I knew some influential doctors who got me quickly into a private hospital.
It killed a relation of mine - a diabetic - by giving her a sugary drink! The nurses ignored the instructions on the end of the bed. Others I know and know of have died waiting to be admitted. One - a young woman - died after lying three days on a bed in a corridor without seeing a doctor
There are innumerable articles about the filth, the failure, the waiting, the misery - often even the violence of patients and sometimes of staff. True, the doctors and many nurses try to do their jobs well, but are up against administrations that know nothing of medicine but have the power to overrule those with medical know-how.
Every doctor I know who worked for the NHS - five in all - has left it in disgust.
As Liz says, the NHS is socialism. Socialism vividly exhibiting its bureaucratic callousness. There could not be a clearer example of how everything goes bad that is managed by government.
Everything government does, it does badly. Everything. That’s the rule. Even the military. (Vide Afghanistan).
Well, nobody, and no thing is perfect. There are multiple failures in the NHS, but you have to see this in the context of present day British society. There is not a single entity or aspect of British society today that is fit for purpose, from top to bottom it is a total disaster.
The Monarchy, the Crown, Parliament, Civil service (both central and local), The police and justice system, education, the military, the media, and on and on. Britain is an example of a former leading world power going the way of ancient Greece or Rome.
This is a nation (UK) soon to be dissolved. The prevalent attitude at all levels is “we can’t be arsed”.
I have no doubt that the NHS shortened my Mother’s life, and my Brother’s, although his ailments were certainly self-inflicted.
Why did this happen?
It was a deliberate policy of population replacement carried out by the Westminster/Whitehall cabal.
Britain is well on the way to becoming a 3rd world country because it has been (deliberately) inundated by mass 3rd world immigration.
And don’t give me the nonsense about Britain being 85% white indigenous British, it isn’t, and it hasn’t been for decades.
The UK is in appalling shape today (see my comment below).
By universal health care I particularly mean ending the employers mandate to provide health insurance. This has crippled US industry and caused massive job losses, and the loss of the technical capability that accompanys the closure of industry.
The US spends twice as much as other advanced economies on the health care sector, largely because the industry has controlled Congress for decades, for, statistically, no better outcomes.
It is also a fact that approximately 75% of the US population is already provided health care through the public purse: Consider Medicare, Medicaid, The VA, civil service coverage at Federal, State and Municipal level.
The system is a mess, but the most important thing to fix is the employers mandate, it is a massive burden on US industry.
Big government solutions are always a burden because they are inefficient, nothing has demonstrated this more clearly than the COVID-19 response.
In a genuinely free market those few who were actually seriously ill would have sought treatment (mostly very vulnerable people), and cheap already available treatments would have been dispensed to them, the rest of the population would have been left alone. Not only were the expensive jabs unnecessarily forced on the majority through coercive measures, there was also a lot of additional waste in the process as well, for example:
If waste on that scale went on in a private company it would very soon be out of business. These last 2 and a half years have illustrated above all else that government should not be given responsibility for healthcare. The biggest problem I see with healthcare in the US is regulatory capture, the FDA needs to be abolished. If voting was restricted to only those who paid taxes they would soon start voting against all the waste and corruption.
You say you are a businessman (therefore you understand that things have to be paid for), and you complain about paying taxes, yet you want a wasteful big government solution to the problem of healthcare, it makes no sense.
The employers mandate was put in place in WW2 as a “temporary” measure when the US workforce was being massively expanded. It is a disaster; bear in mind that most large companies do not get insurance, they are self-insured, and handle claims through SISCO (self insured services company). As the workforce ages and eventually retires (with continuing health care benefits) the rise in overhead costs becomes completely unsustainable. I mentioned GM in a separate comment, GM is now a pension and health care benefit distributor that happens to make a few vehicles on the side. From the world’s leading industrial conglomerate it has sunk to a corporate corpse. Other companies have avoided the health care costs by outsourcing their manufacturing, not necessarily to China either. A company I worked for, briefly, outsourced its compressor manufacturing to Finland, not a low wage economy.
There are some issues that are naturally in the purview of govt. at one level or another, whether it is Municipal, State, National or International. Private capital will never clean up pollution, construct national or continent wide transportation networks or get to the Moon, and many other things.
In any society above the most basic survivalist, authority is essential.
The response to Covid-19 is best understood as a pillaging of the population through treatment mandates, combined with largely successful efforts to suppress cheap effective treatments, with the aim of maximising profits of pharmaceutical companies and health providers, who control the politicians through their campaign contributions, and media through their advertising dollars. It may be the perfect storm in that the jabs may significantly reduce the human population, thus relieving govts. of many of their problems.
The answer to all this govt. malfeasance is better oversight and control by the populace, not a wholesale destruction of society through privatisation of authority.
I am a business man, and I am most of all a realist.
When Eisenhower was being prepped for his Presidential campaign in 1952, a group of republican big-shots wanted him to include in his platform a promise to end social security, then only a decade or so old. His response; run on such a policy and you will never win another election!
The same with the NHS in Britain, any party who ran on dismantling the NHS would not get a single seat.
Likewise any party who attempted to gain power in the US by dismantling, SS, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. would get nowhere. That is a reality.
Another reality is universal suffrage; there is no going back to the qualified vote in any form whatsoever. That is another reality.
