Electoral College
Blomberg forgets that we live under a ‘Representative Democracy’ not an actual democracy. Congress is made up of 535 elected representatives not 300,000,000 voting individuals. In fact, those Congressional seats (and consequently the number of Electoral votes) are now and have always been, awarded based on relative population. The key word there being ‘relative’ as would be related to ‘representative’.
Under Blomberg’s ‘pay to play’ tax system, people would be financially motivated to move to the tax-subsidized states of: New York, Florida, Illinois and California, thereby further exacerbating the population disparity between the big and small states, which would in turn, further increase the tax incentives for folks to abandon the small states.
On the other hand, if states with the greatest populations were proportionately assessed for tax expenditures such as: national defense, low income assistance programs, education and administration, much of Blomberg’s tax disparity would be equalized. Perhaps those living in the big population states should be charged proportionately higher fees for: energy, food and telecommunications & programming services, since they produce so little yet consume so much.
Maybe the founders, who created the Electoral College, understood the value of ‘representative government’ as opposed to ‘a government of individuals’ and perhaps we should have the wisdom to avoid the temptation to tinker with it.
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As a good money saving idea let's just get rid of the electorial college.
Imagine how much less an election would cost if all of the low population states`were eleminated from the process.
We could simply rely on the brilliant minds on the east coast plus Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, California, and Florida to determine who would be elected president.
Jake - more concisely, we could rely on a majority of Amaericans. That's a scary thought to some people - makes you wonder why they hates Americans so..
Dennis - larger states do pay proportionally more for their greater consumption already - what are you talking about. Also, I just reviewed that piece - the word "democracy" isn't even in it.
Also, of the 535 seats, only 435 are based on repsrentative population, the other 100 seats are for the Senate - that's where the skew comes in. Get your facts straight before you embarrass yourself further..
Strange Liam, I wasn't aware that a majority of Americans voted.
Posted by on March 1, 2007 04:45 PM