6 ms·

> I'm all for rural representation, but people in rural areas essentially have their vote count more than people in cities, right? Yeah but maybe that's a good

• sacheendra 7y ago
  The property taxes example doesn't seem right. Cost of a small apartment in NYC is equal to the cost of several acres of farmland. Proportional property taxes would impact both demographics similarly.
  • Mirioron 7y ago
    The city dweller isn't earning money off of their land.
    • klyrs 7y ago
      Naturally, this means that farmland should be taxed more, not less. /s But no. Land owners make money extracting rent. The difference is that farming is subsidized.
• danaris 7y ago
  The plurality of the geography of NY State may be agricultural land, but that is not the same thing as saying that the majority of its people are farmers. If you cut NYC off from the rest of the state, yes, you'd have a majority-rural population, and probably a red state—but not majority farmer and farm workers. I live and work in rural NY State. For every farmer out here, there are dozens of teachers, janitors, computer programmers, hairstylists, restaurant owners & workers, and every other type of profession you have in hamlets, small towns, and non-mega-cities. And yeah, there are a lot of people here who don't want property taxes to go up. They don't want any taxes to go up, because they're rural Republicans who have bought into the line that taxes are bad hook, line, and sinker. But as rural Republicans, they mostly don't even make much noise about wanting taxes to go down. The signs you see along the side of the road are clamoring to repeal gun control laws that prevent violent criminals and the mentally ill from purchasing guns. Just because New York City has enough population to drown the rest of the state in doesn't mean that we should give the rest of the state disproportionate power.
  • reallydude 7y ago
    "doesn't mean that we should give the rest of the state disproportionate power." Is it in the best interests of all the people to have proportionate power? I believe so. The EC is an abstraction, which philosophically and practically takes choice away from individuals. Population centers having more power than rural areas (even when they are the geographical majority, otherwise) is a proxy for land-owners having more power. While, ironically, land-owners (like farmers) often tend to be poorer than city-dwellers in absolute terms, I don't believe they should have some sort of relative power difference.
    • munk-a 7y ago
      Can you clarify this? It appears you're both advocating for same and different power simultaneously.
      • reallydude 7y ago
        I wasn't trying to be obtuse. I'm not sure what's confusing. Is it in the best interests of all the people to have proportionate power? I believe so. I don't believe they (rural vs metropolitan citizens) should have some sort of relative power difference, despite their relative wealth and land-ownership differences. That's not important to me, philosophically. Best I can do to clarify.
    • danaris 7y ago
      I think it's also important to remember that (to the best of my knowledge) the majority of farmland is not individually owned: it's run by large agricultural companies. So the "land-owners," or at least, the owners of the companies that own the land, also live in the cities, and are themselves among the vastly wealthy.
• baddox 7y ago
  > Yeah but maybe that's a good thing. Only if you start with the assumption that different individuals voters should have different amounts of political influence, which the NPV movement is explicitly rejecting. > Otherwise you have a situation like New York where NYC gets to dictate everything since it's super high population density even though the majority of geographical NY state is farmers. So the farmers get screwed over by the interests of the city folk who have never even stepped foot out of the city. I think the problem here is that you're portraying it as if cities or states are the agents making decisions, rather than individuals. Obviously the electoral college establishes states as the agents making decisions in Presidential elections. The NPV movement seeks to make individuals the agents that decide Presidential elections.
  • nitrogen 7y ago
    An individual voter in Wyoming should have more say over what happens in Wyoming than an individual voter in New York. Given the geographic clustering of opinions, it is not adequate to give every individual equal say over every area.
    • azernik 7y ago
      The solution is federalism, which we already have; a Wyoming voter controls the Wyoming state government, which has power over things that are purely internal Wyoming concerns.
      • umvi 7y ago
        What incentive do rural states have to stay in the union if the federal government is controlled by populous state bullies? Wouldn't it be better for them to fragment into separate-but-open-border-countries like the EU?
        • baddox 7y ago
          Probably roughly the same incentives any state has ever had to join and remain in a federation. Things like free trade and movement among states and a combined military. One of the incentives to remain in a federation should not be the ability to disproportionately influence the federal government compared to other member states.
• munk-a 7y ago
  I don't think this is a valid reason to continue with the electoral college - but it might be a good reason to slowly dissolve the concept of states and instead let local and national politics interact directly - the state level is where the needs of different localities are being erased more than the national level. Local politicians should be concerned with their locality - national politicians should be concerned with the nation and making sure that no localities are presented with problems beyond the scope of their power... the state sorta does both - but it also serves to mask local issues within the state's representation up to the national level. It's why I'm rather fond of the house and less fond of the senate - as a former Vermonter I had intensely good representation at the national level - I had one house rep and two senators which were concerned with representing me specifically - but when I resided in MA our rep was concerned with local issues but the Senators were more focused on pushing forth agendas that the state-house was pushing out... so the representation of individual localities were lost on those senators.
  • dantheman 7y ago
    Do you think the federal government is run better than state governments?
• CPLX 7y ago
  Another way of looking at it is to note that New York City is the most important city in the history of world civilization, and the global center of media, finance, culture, commerce, fashion, and art, while the rest of the state is mostly stripmalls and like a few dozen people plus a confusingly located NFL team, so maybe we should let the millions of people living in the city run things?
  • godshatter 7y ago
    There are rural concerns that cities don't really care about, should they be ignored?
    • CPLX 7y ago
      They should be considered proportionally to the amount of people affected.
      • JoeAltmaier 7y ago
        But their lives are so different. For instance: gun control. Rules for millions of people crowded into a pressure-cooker city, vs rules for folks living a mile apart with varmints, police protection an hour away, hunting, are reasonably very different. Same for zoning, licensing, inspections, on and on. Rural residents often get saddled with metro rules that make no sense.
        • lonelappde 7y ago
          Great example. Cities are prevented from having sensible gun control because rural voters who don't care about their needs* prevent it. * But love cashing their welfare checks sent from urban citizens.
          • JoeAltmaier 7y ago
            Those 'welfare cheats' are feeding you.
• chillwaves 7y ago
  High population density = more people, more voters. Yes, I think thier opinion should count more than the less people, less voters of the rest of the state. Land doesn't (shouldn't) vote. > too bad, the city folk are in charge now. You mean democracy? You mean 1 person 1 vote? You mean the majority? This is what you have a problem with? Go ahead and state that view, but let's be honest about what you are saying. You think somehow people should be punished for population density. That their votes should be worth less, person for person, than a rural vote. Why.
  • Bellyache5 7y ago
    The United States is not a democracy. It is a republic.
• lonelappde 7y ago
  The government is by, of, and for the People, not the dirt they walk on. The tyranny of the minority who sit on emptier ground is not a sacred value.
• saalweachter 7y ago
  > For example, city folks are more likely to vote for increases in property taxes - not that they care too much since they only have a tiny apartment - but it hits the people outside of the city with lots of land (for farming) really hard. Firstly, property taxes are levied at the town(ship) levels in New York State. Secondly, property taxes are levied on the assessed property value of the property in question, which will be $1-5000/acre for agricultural land, so an $800,000 Manhattan studio will have the same assessed value of up to 800 acres of farmland. Thirdly, property taxes on farm land are fully deductible business expenses, while property taxes on your primary residence is not. Finally, it doesn't come through in text, but allow me to spend the next seven minutes laughing on the floor at the notion that city dwellers are blase about their property taxes going up.