Tom Perkins, one of America's seemingly endless supply of idiot billionaires, says people should get a number of votes equal to the number of dollars they pay in taxes. I wanted to write a snark about that, referencing the old Texas billionaire [or maybe, back then, he was only a millionaire] who put forward a "serious" proposal that each person's vote should be weighted by his wealth [I don't recall he mentioned women.] But I could not recall his name. My brain says it is "Howard Hunt" but neither Google nor Wikipedia confirms that. [I keep being referred to E. Howard Hunt of Watergate infamy.]
Does anyone recall?
Howard Hughes?
ReplyDeleteYou could trace this all the way back to John Adams's draft for the Massachusetts constitution, which required larger property holdings for those voting for the upper house.
ReplyDeleteJames Schmidt is of course right about the general principle, but I am looking for the person who actually said, one dollar of wealth for one vote, one billion votes if you are a billionaire. Not Howard Hughes. I have it in mind that he was from Texas and that he was the head of a big food company. Hunt Foods?
ReplyDeleteThere was a character in Catch-22 who said something like that.
ReplyDeleteEver since I read The Great Transformation a couple of years ago I've been seeing signs of the return of feudalism everywhere. Thanks for alerting me to this (I guess).
I would suspect Texas oil tycoon H. L. Hunt 1889-1974 (who was the inspiration for J R Ewing character on Dallas), owned the East Texas oil fields, had a net worth of a billion at death (1/147th of US GDP at the time). Political activist and general SOB. LOL.
ReplyDeleteHaroldson Lafayette Hunt, who even reduced his theories to writing in a couple of books describing a utopian state called Alpaca.
ReplyDeleteDid some digging. "
ReplyDeleteWhen I was an undergraduate, H. L. Hunt, leader of the Hunt clan (and supposed Kennedy assassination conspirator), proposed on his radio show that one dollar – one vote would represent true democracy."
The writer is Michael Perelman on a blog called https://michaelperelman.wordpress.com/2011/08/
So there's a reference. Don't know how he documents that. Hope this helps.
Doesn't answer your question, but as I'm sure you remember, John Stuart Mill was a fan of weighted votes. That rascal.
ReplyDeleteH.L. Hunt described the dollar voting plan in his novel Alpaca.http://www.amazon.com/Alpaca-H-L-Hunt/dp/B0007EEXP2
ReplyDelete