H.L. Hunt; Political Visionary(?) v. FDR; Father of the New Deal
The idea that a person's worth in society should be measured by the size of their wallet is, to say the very least, not a new one. I'm only going to go back as far as mid 20th century, and examine H.L. Hunt, noted Texas oilman, polygamist, writer, and McCarthyite. At the peak of his earning days, ol' H.L. was raking in about $1m a week in income from his oil wells and assorted other businesses. Things were so flush for Hunt that he sat down one day (well, it probably took more than a day...maybe a couple of weeks) and wrote a "utopian novel" titled Alpaca. I have not read the book so I cannot comment on how utterly awesome it probably is, but I do know that in Alpaca Hunt floated the idea that an individual's number of votes in a government election should be determined by the amount of taxes they pay.
Sounds good right? Makes perfect sense? To take an example, if I (I mean "when I") win Megabucks my income will skyrocket not just in the year I win all that cash but in future years when the interest and dividends from my savings will cause me to pay a shitload of taxes to the IRS. Shouldn't I get something back for all those M-1s, voting machines, and CIA funded lap dances at the Watergate that I have paid for with my hard earned winnings?
Well, maybe it's not such a good idea. The party in power likes to use "averages", not "means", when they make decisions and analyze things, or at least claim to, often without snickering. Take any of the tax cuts signed by President Bush during his reign: the spin coming from the right has always been that the "average" taxpayer does well with these cuts. But really, a better measure is always the mean. Because, to use a very tired and worn out example, if Bill Gates and three inmates in a federal penitentiary are in the same room together in that prison (yeah, I know: not bloody likely, but stay with me for a sec), their average income/net worth/ability to attract chicks like a goddamn NBA player is through the roof. But their mean would be in the crapper: $0 income, $0 net worth, and their mean ability to attract babes would depend on access to "prisonpenpals.com" or whatever damn site women and inmates go to for that kind of hookup.
To further go with this idea of the number of votes being determined by weighted average, let's take (with the approximate population of the entire U.S. being around 300M give or take a few hundred that the National Guard have bravely stopped at our border with Mexico in the last couple of days) the typical American earning on average $40K/yr. And let's take the average yearly income (I have no idea how much he pays in taxes and their is no legal way to find out, but this will do as an alternative) for Mr. Gates, who is safely back in Seattle after that nasty penitentiary episode: let's say $1B, just to lowball but still give the man his props. That means the Bill Gates would get 25,000 votes for each person who makes the average income in the U.S. Or to look at it another way, for each 1 vote Bill Gates gets, the average voter would be allowed to vote .00004 times. With rounding (and you know that they would round, the bastards), the average voter would get 0.0 votes, and Gates, Paul Allen, Dick Cheney, the Waltons and a handful of others would be the only people allowed to vote, Darn, I think with the math even President W. wouldn't make it to the "1 vote" threshhold, since by billionaire standards, well, he ain't no billionaire. As a benefit, think of how this would simplify the nationwide primaries every two years. Hell, instead of renting a jet and traveling the entire 50 states (for Presidential hopefuls), candidates could spend a week in New York, fly to Los Angeles and have half the eligible voters already meeted and greeted!
Now I know that nobody in power is talking about Hunt's ideas as if they are next on the Congressional agenda, but that's what most folks thought about our Social Security system until the last few years. This was before our tone-deaf President decided that with his landslide (landslide?....well, no one tell him about Ohio or he might flip out) re-election of 2004, he had acquired the political capital necessary to make big changes. And that meant "fixing" (really, destroying) the Social Security system that has served the nation so well since its inception as part of FDR's New Deal back in the 30's.
The manufactured "crisis" is covered throughly by Joe Conason in The Raw Deal; basically the Republican Party tried to scare the elderly, the gullible, or some combination of both into thinking that SS was going to be broke within a few years. That is not true and was never true. As far as the younger generation, being told that they could "control" their retirement savings through use of "personal accounts" (although the GOP went through several different nomenclatures for the accounts, each one trying to sound less scary than the last) sounded, well, awesome! The stock market always goes up...except for the last five or six years. And the fact that Wall Street would make many billions off of the fees charged to these accounts that would likely eat up most if not all earnings (you know....like a savings account at any bank in America or any mutual fund held by HR Block) was not brought up too often at the "town hall meetings" run by such trustworthy folks as Senator Santorum during the national debate.
Since the days of Goldwater, there has been a faction of the conservative movement that desires to basically eliminate the entire Social Security system; the attitude being that folks need to save up enough during their working years for their golden years. "Stand on yer own two feet" so to speak. And in the end, finally the nation did get to its collective feet. Not to endorse this massive scam to take away much needed income by the elderly, disabled, or survivors of both but instead to say "No way". "No goddamn way".
But as far as H.L. Hunt's strange schemes.....who know what lurks in the hearts of Republican men? Only Rove and Cheney know for sure.
Sounds good right? Makes perfect sense? To take an example, if I (I mean "when I") win Megabucks my income will skyrocket not just in the year I win all that cash but in future years when the interest and dividends from my savings will cause me to pay a shitload of taxes to the IRS. Shouldn't I get something back for all those M-1s, voting machines, and CIA funded lap dances at the Watergate that I have paid for with my hard earned winnings?
Well, maybe it's not such a good idea. The party in power likes to use "averages", not "means", when they make decisions and analyze things, or at least claim to, often without snickering. Take any of the tax cuts signed by President Bush during his reign: the spin coming from the right has always been that the "average" taxpayer does well with these cuts. But really, a better measure is always the mean. Because, to use a very tired and worn out example, if Bill Gates and three inmates in a federal penitentiary are in the same room together in that prison (yeah, I know: not bloody likely, but stay with me for a sec), their average income/net worth/ability to attract chicks like a goddamn NBA player is through the roof. But their mean would be in the crapper: $0 income, $0 net worth, and their mean ability to attract babes would depend on access to "prisonpenpals.com" or whatever damn site women and inmates go to for that kind of hookup.
To further go with this idea of the number of votes being determined by weighted average, let's take (with the approximate population of the entire U.S. being around 300M give or take a few hundred that the National Guard have bravely stopped at our border with Mexico in the last couple of days) the typical American earning on average $40K/yr. And let's take the average yearly income (I have no idea how much he pays in taxes and their is no legal way to find out, but this will do as an alternative) for Mr. Gates, who is safely back in Seattle after that nasty penitentiary episode: let's say $1B, just to lowball but still give the man his props. That means the Bill Gates would get 25,000 votes for each person who makes the average income in the U.S. Or to look at it another way, for each 1 vote Bill Gates gets, the average voter would be allowed to vote .00004 times. With rounding (and you know that they would round, the bastards), the average voter would get 0.0 votes, and Gates, Paul Allen, Dick Cheney, the Waltons and a handful of others would be the only people allowed to vote, Darn, I think with the math even President W. wouldn't make it to the "1 vote" threshhold, since by billionaire standards, well, he ain't no billionaire. As a benefit, think of how this would simplify the nationwide primaries every two years. Hell, instead of renting a jet and traveling the entire 50 states (for Presidential hopefuls), candidates could spend a week in New York, fly to Los Angeles and have half the eligible voters already meeted and greeted!
Now I know that nobody in power is talking about Hunt's ideas as if they are next on the Congressional agenda, but that's what most folks thought about our Social Security system until the last few years. This was before our tone-deaf President decided that with his landslide (landslide?....well, no one tell him about Ohio or he might flip out) re-election of 2004, he had acquired the political capital necessary to make big changes. And that meant "fixing" (really, destroying) the Social Security system that has served the nation so well since its inception as part of FDR's New Deal back in the 30's.
The manufactured "crisis" is covered throughly by Joe Conason in The Raw Deal; basically the Republican Party tried to scare the elderly, the gullible, or some combination of both into thinking that SS was going to be broke within a few years. That is not true and was never true. As far as the younger generation, being told that they could "control" their retirement savings through use of "personal accounts" (although the GOP went through several different nomenclatures for the accounts, each one trying to sound less scary than the last) sounded, well, awesome! The stock market always goes up...except for the last five or six years. And the fact that Wall Street would make many billions off of the fees charged to these accounts that would likely eat up most if not all earnings (you know....like a savings account at any bank in America or any mutual fund held by HR Block) was not brought up too often at the "town hall meetings" run by such trustworthy folks as Senator Santorum during the national debate.
Since the days of Goldwater, there has been a faction of the conservative movement that desires to basically eliminate the entire Social Security system; the attitude being that folks need to save up enough during their working years for their golden years. "Stand on yer own two feet" so to speak. And in the end, finally the nation did get to its collective feet. Not to endorse this massive scam to take away much needed income by the elderly, disabled, or survivors of both but instead to say "No way". "No goddamn way".
But as far as H.L. Hunt's strange schemes.....who know what lurks in the hearts of Republican men? Only Rove and Cheney know for sure.
posted by joe sweeney at 7:24 PM
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