Perkins made news yesterday when he told an audience in San Francisco that people who pay more money in taxes should get more votes. If you don't pay taxes, you don't get a vote. He went further:
"You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How's that?"Not only is that the antithesis of democracy and the principles on which our nation was founded, but it ignores some inconvenient facts.
If considered in terms, not of actual dollars but percentage of income, poor Americans already pay a higher percent of their income than the wealthy. It also ignores all the ways in which that kind of wealth accumulation through the financial markets is subsidized by the government.
On the other hand, how far are we from descending into a plutocracy? When you consider the amount of money people like the Koch brothers are pouring into trying to buy a Congress that will benefit them at the expense of the poor and middle classes -- aren't we heading headlong into "a society that is dominated and ruled by a small minority of its wealthiest citizens"?
Ralph
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