If you live in the U.S., you live in this world already. You can sit around and dream about being an arsonist all you want with no repercussions. You can publish a poem about how much joy it would bring you to burn down your house. The latter might cause the police to keep an eye on you, and I don't like your odds with the insurance company if your house burns down, but it isn't illegal.

So you want to live in an oligarchy.

I have no idea what you are objecting to here. Federalism? Choice of law provisions in contracts?

We already do.

You think the wealthiest 10% of Americans voted for Obama?

My wife is a stay at home mom. If she goes back to work in a few years I’ll make at least twice her salary. Should I get complete control of our money now, and twice the power in the future?

Weird that you are grounding this profoundly illiberal idea in a nonsensical empirical claim.

Seems pretty easy to game. Write a law that says all employers must give everyone under 20,000 a 10 million dollar bonus as part of the employment code, tax the bonus and then give back to employers now those making under 20,000 get an extra (10 million - 1) votes.

Idk. What are the actual numbers? Pretty sure he won the wealthiest 10% of states, was on Team Citibank, and had the support of the MSM--so I'm not sure how the wealthiest 10% voted matters. The idea of living in an oligarchy means that it wouldn't.

I guess I meant an oligarchy determined solely by wealth, not by nobility, title, education, or job.

In the 2012 presidential election, Americans with a household income >$250K voted 55/42 for Romney. Obama had an overwhelming 63/35 advantage among voters with a household income of <$30,000.

Put another way, if votes were allocated by income as Indynirish suggested, Romney would have won in an overwhelming landslide.

What's telling about the system is that the numbers above are pretty much tails of the Bell curve.

< $30,00 is the bottom 25%, > $250,000 is the top 5%

Thus the focal point of both parties essentially leaves 70% of the electorate out of the target demographic.

In what universe is the bottom 25% the focal point of Democratic policymaking?

Recently The American Conservative signaled that conservatives have “morals and manners” because of the ‘olden days’ when, as they suggest, people actually had morals and manners.

Signaling an unjust absence of “morals and manners” today which can be rectified by a return to the ‘olden days’.

Is returning to the ‘olden days’ a conservative principal in pursuit of morals and manners?
Or are morals and manners the principles and returning to the ‘olden days’ is the only way to gain them?

How are they planning to build a big enough time machine to hold all those “morals and manners” from the ‘olden days’.

And presumably, you value what she does at home in some way. Whether it is taking care of the kids, cooking, dishes, whatever...you probably attach some sort of value to that.

Now, that said...to go the other way. Since you said stay at home mom...I presume you have kid(s). I'd be willing to lay a stiff wager on how much you value their contribution to everyday and especially long term decisions regarding your household. Either that, or your kid(s) get equal say on what cars to buy, house to live in, and what is for dinner for that matter.

It's certainly the focus of their rhetoric.

Of course there are success stories from people with meager beginnings who made it thanks to initiative, intelligence, integrity and the biggest factor of all (noticeably absent from your list) an absolute ****ton of luck.

Maybe the next Oprah Winfrey got diagnosed with diabetes and is now rationing her care. She's never going to become the next Oprah now.

This would never be a significant obstacle for Meghan McCain, Donald Trump Jr., or a host of other children of the rich and powerful. People like that, barring a rare illness or freak accident, are 100% set for life the day they came out of the womb no matter how little initiative, intelligence and integrity they have.

So while the ceiling for people's success maybe the same for everyone in America (and the probability of reaching it is vastly unequal and mostly due to luck), the floor is absolutely not.

These are my problems with your point #9.

Just look at these charts

This one in particular:

They run on welfare reform and student loan debt forgivness.

If the question is between identity politics vs class politics, then I think Trolly is correct. There are some things that do target the bottom rungs but most of the rhetoric doesn't.
See this pretty good article on the subject which gives a history of how this came to be within the democratic party: The False Dilemma of Class vs Race

I am so confused. Are you arguing that, unless his kids have a say in what cars the family buys, then his stay-at-home (or work for less money) wife must have less of a say as well?

How does that logic work?

Pretty transactional way of thinking about it, but sure, "some sort of value". However, your proposal isn't about people getting votes equivalent to "some sort of value". Your proposal is they gets votes proportional to how rich they are, that a billionaire gets say 10,000 times more say than I do (and infinitely more say than my wife would get). It's fine to support such an on-its-face laughable proposal, but you can't pretend like it is what households do. Households - setting aside sexist traditional structures - tend to treat both partners much closer to equals, more akin to how democracy right now where one person = one vote.

As for kids, well you lose the argument immediately. My two year old doesn't get a say in (most) family purchases because he is ****ing two. Using this as a model to diminish the voting value of adults is nonsense.

1. I agree that draconian legislation can be an excellent behavior modification scheme. But, as you suggest, the cost is great, and people with little regard for their health (or are ignorant of the serious effects of smoking) will find new ways to make themselves sick. For example, smokers tend to also have poor diets and don't exercise. We should perhaps mandate a vegan diet and a two-mile jog every morning?

2. I believe smoking is way down everywhere, and has been declining since the 1960's or so. Due mostly, I believe, to education and increased social stigma regarding smoking.

This is "I object to illegal immigration" part 2, which I of course agree with.

And decriminalizing illegal immigration, and making sure said illegal immigrants receive free health care.

Are there any full on Trump supporters that post here? Maybe bahbah?

Effect of pricing on smoking is very well studied due to the number of natural experiments conducted over the years.

Higher prices do not change consumption significantly among existing smokers nor do higher prices encourage people to quit.

But higher prices do discourage people from people from picking up smoking in the first place and that over time decreases number of smokers and increases social stigma surrounding smoking. The stigma in turn actually does encourage existing users to quit.

This is exactly what you would expect with a highly addictive product.