4 ms·

That's an absolutely terrible idea.

• philwelch 16y ago
  I anticipate a lot of people would think so (which is why I called it a tradeoff no one would agree to). It would be more interesting to know why you think it's a terrible idea.
  • ezy 16y ago
    Well, for one, it treats poor people like criminals who need to be punished for being poor. Granted, we do that to a large degree in the US now implicitly, but this would be very explicit -- and, I feel, tremendously mean-spirited. More practically, it removes the poor as a voice in their own governance by using what amounts to a bribe. And in practice, it would probably remove most poor people from the voting rolls, because short-term, taking the 10k or whatever to make ends meet is the rational decision over pulling a lever that may or may not have any affect on your particular situation. I think my main objection here is that there is no real guarantee that the extra money, generally, will push people out of poverty and back into enfranchisement -- and if it doesn't work, what you've done is institutionalize bribery and legitimize an explicit oligarchy of the rich.
    • Sisyphus_of_IT 16y ago
      So if you think there's "no real guarantee that the extra money, generally, will push people out of poverty", then why bother giving them extra money at all?