Tax and Voting

Jeremy 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.