Constitutional Do-overs (Mulligans)

I was wondering who would say it first, Silyak.

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What would you do for necessary funds on 16th and why on 17th?

Define necessary. We rely on income tax to fund government because it is somewhat steady compared to other taxes, but we could do without it. A sales tax is much more agreeable. You have to realize also that I would like to see the size and scope of our government halved, so losing a big chunk of funding would be a good problem.

I believe in State sovereignty. The Senate was designed to be chosen by state legislatures to check the power of the federal government. We have seen in the past 100 years that the Senate no longer serves the states. Senators are more concerned with D.C and a national audience than their actual constituency.
An example would be Obamacare. Look at how many state legislatures joined the suit to overturn ACA and their Senators voted for the law. That wouldn’t happen if we got rid of the 17th.

Bring back the [quote=“treco, post:1, topic:228344”]
Articles
[/quote] of Confederation.

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The 16th was passed largely to fund wars as countries around the world were doing the same thing and building large armies. Taxing income had always been considered immoral (along with charging interest on loans). I tend to go by “tax what you don’t want, subsidize what you want”, therefore income tax decreases the incentive to work (“I could go in on Saturday but income taxes will eat up most my time and a half anyway”).

I do see some of the reasoning, though, that prior to income tax the federal government made most of its income through tariffs. Tariffs cause a mess in the economy.

I’d support a national sales tax in exchange for income tax. Look at Europe now… VAT everywhere. Seems to work?

On the average, our government would have made better decisions over the last almost 100 years if the 19th Amendment hadn’t passed. It might be too late to make a difference now if it were repealed. but if it were never passed that would be good.

Everybody claims to agree with democracy, but then calls foul when the result doesn’t agree with them. The criteria for evaluating a system of government should be the quality and efficiency of decisions. Representation is an illusion anyways and is at best a means unto an end. In other words, letting people fill in circles on a sheet of paper (or pull levers or pierce chads) doesn’t make their life better on its own. Life only becomes better if the collective outcome of those voting actions over a long period of time lead to better government. The 19th amendment has not achieved that.

Lest it be interpreted that I am implying women made bad decisions, I don’t agree with that. Women make good decisions for themselves (as do men). The problem is that the stackup of economics, culture, and biology means that women voting in their individual self interests leads to a result that isn’t good for civilization as a whole. Allowing women to vote is what really institutionalized the welfare state and is the force that will cause us to eventually run out of other people’s money.

Men’s self interest is collectively a government of a certain balanced size. Generally, women’s self interest (and particularly single women) is to continuously make government bigger and bigger. They don’t have any particular interest in making government smaller. Thus, allowing women to vote has insured that government will continuously get bigger until we run out of other people’s money. As I said, it’s clearly too late to reasonably expect a repeal and probably too late to make a difference even if a repeal were possible.

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Silyak, I was mostly teasing you. Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

I’m pretty sure the gender gap with women voting Dem at higher rates than men has been going on since at least the Carter era. If you look at big policy areas, I tend to vote more like a man, so I’d personally be happier in the above scenario, where the roll and size of government is smaller. I think a lot of people look to countries like Norway as the ideal, but I’d rather have smaller taxes and be able to stay home and raise my own children, or care for my own elderly parents. That’s really not an option in highly socialized countries.

I don’t necessarily agree, but I appreciate when someone writes a thoughtful post on a topic I’d never quite considered from that angle, so here’s a Like for sharing your thoughts.

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http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~iversen/PDFfiles/LottKenny.pdf

About the article, Raj, the comment about how women see government as insurance in the event of divorce is very true. Women tend to bear the brunt of single parenthood. If you look at poverty in my church community, you will mostly see single women with children, or single women who were stay-at-home mothers but who are now divorced and often disabled, or lack job skills to support themselves. In that case, you could say that the decline of families has caused the rise of the welfare state.

Of course, as we see more people choosing to not marry or have children, maybe that will be less about gender. No spouse, no children, no church community, no savings? Even men in that predicament want big government.

Nah, women initiate 2/3 of divorces. Most of the time these women are still economically better off than they were pre marriage compared to post due to child support and alimony payments

plus you have to ask:

  1. was she crazy and drove away a good man

Or

  1. did she procreate with a loser and has poor decision making skills

The problem with this view is that is used the Constitution to cherrypick whose interests will be represented and whose will not. You don’t like Big Government (however defined), a fine position to take - but the battle for and against Big Government needs to take place in the rough and tumble of democratic politics, not by using the supreme law of the land to create a barrier to entry to certain citizens’ interests.

If we saw some correlation between brown haired men and affinity for socialism, would we restrict brown haired men from voting? No, that isn’t a good idea. Same for women.

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This in absolutely no way comes close to all that matters for “bearing the brunt of single parenthood.”

Her choice of language is flawed in of itself.

Dissolving a marriage leads to single parenthood. She’s framing them as victims of circumstances when it’s not the case

Not really. Women voting is a desecration of the commons type situation. If they all do what is in their best interest, everyone is hosed.

I read it as “people look out for their self interests, women’s self interests are more likely to be of a single parent than men”

Not victims, but statistically planning.

How would you feel about ignoring gender and instead using land/business ownership as a prerequisite for voting?

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I don’t think Puff was referring to the circumstances of a woman becoming a single mother, but the fact that they usually end up with the kids.

That would be excellent if your goal is to roll back entitlements.

Entitlements are never going away (well until the government can no longer borrow money) under universal suffrage

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I see no reason not to do so, but I don’t believe one has the right to take the life, liberty or property of another except in response to a criminal act. The only way it wouldn’t make sense to do so is if I believed a right to vote is the only right that exists.