Three conclusions from the Russian parliamentary elections

[jolly-roger.livejournal.com]

1. Civil servants do not have to pay direct taxes
It is absurd to collect taxes from government employees to pay them a salaries from these taxes.

2. Only payers have to decide what they pay for.
Only those who pay taxes, should participate in elections because those who elect authorities indirectly manages the budget.

3. Civil servants should not vote
Civil servants are always more likely vote for something that increases the public budget to expand the field of its possibilities. So they always seek to impose higher taxes. There is a conflict of interests.

Comments

Never thought I'd find myself agreeing with a parliament, let alone a Russian one

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

This is what's coming out of Russia these days? Holy Hod, if so, they've a better grasp on their government than Americans do on theirs.

Re: Never thought I'd find myself agreeing with a parliament, let alone a Russian one

[jolly-roger.livejournal.com]

Background for these thoughts was we have huge part of citizens who work for state. More than half of all employed. They have decisive influence on election results and moreover they count the votes and count it for their employer interests. In my opinion this is the cause we have had such elections' results for a last 20 years and that is why we had such falsified elections last week.

Unfortunately this is only my opinion. Most of Russians think they votes were stolen but don't understand the cause.

Re: Never thought I'd find myself agreeing with a parliament, let alone a Russian one

[http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/]

What I hear you saying is that they should disenfranchise more than half of all employed Russian citizens. Am I misunderstanding you?

Re: Never thought I'd find myself agreeing with a parliament, let alone a Russian one

[jolly-roger.livejournal.com]

Nothing out of the ordinary qualification. We already have age and criminal one. So 30% of all population already can't elect or be elected. I'm not talking about natural rights I'm talking only about elect and be elected. Classical democracy in ancient Greece had much more qualifications. Otherwise hand we have ochlocracy instead of democracy.

[ghoststrider.livejournal.com]

Political rights vs. civil rights--I'm impressed that another Livejournaler sees the distinction. I'm still grappling with it myself, but it's an interesting idea.

Don't think I agree with just disenfranchising government workers, though. It tickles my inner libertarian radical, but that's just stupid.

Re: Never thought I'd find myself agreeing with a parliament, let alone a Russian one

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

It's not surprising that you'd be on the "People who disagree with me shouldn't get to vote" bandwagon.

Re: Never thought I'd find myself agreeing with a parliament, let alone a Russian one

[jolly-roger.livejournal.com]

Did you find anything illogical in my statements?

Re: Never thought I'd find myself agreeing with a parliament, let alone a Russian one

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

illogic has nothing to do with it, it's a very common and short-sighted belief.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

While I don't get the context here...

1. Civil servants do not have to pay direct taxes
It is absurd to collect taxes from government employees to pay them a salaries from these taxes.

I've come around to agreeing with this on principle. Seems kind of strange to be paying people with the same money they're paying.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

It seems kind of foolish to pay someone and then take it right back, all the while incurring transaction costs in both directions.

[lions-wings.livejournal.com]

I think context would depend a lot there.

The first thing that occurs is to drop salaries a bit to reflect "real" salaries, which means that some of your work force (groundskeepers, janitors, food servers, the daily basics jobs,) would probably fall below the minimum wage.

What about the difference between state vs. federal employees? What if a state employee is paid by money granted the state from a federal fund?

[jolly-roger.livejournal.com]

It would be logical that state employees shouldn't pay local taxes and federal shouldn't pay federal but in practice this could be too complicated and much easier just to exempt them all from any taxes.

[lions-wings.livejournal.com]

It may be easier, but if I get hired to, say, cross-reference county census information, no actual value is added to the federal government and it doesn't make sense that they give me that proportion of my pay.

Without a corresponding, enormous drop in actual salary, that also inflates the worth of a position, and would probably make it difficult to both get into civil service (with much more risk of corruption because each position becomes so much more valuable) and out (tax records are absolutely broken when you move to a new job, pay is harder to translate, etc.)

[jolly-roger.livejournal.com]

Why do you think those positions will be more valuable? Nothing really changed from employee point of view. Gross salaries drop down to market level and became same in net value.

[lions-wings.livejournal.com]

State and federal taxes both are a pretty big incentive, and since one is much larger a bite than the other, one type of civil service will be much more valuable than its counterpart. If we're doing both it makes the immediate earning position a lot different.

[jolly-roger.livejournal.com]

We have two options here: either exempt them all from any taxes or begin from federal workers and federal taxes only.

[redheadrat.livejournal.com]

Problem comes when there are additional sources of income within the household. Does person's low paying job in city council complete take him out of tax pool? Or is his compensation for working for government not taxable? Basically, it is much easier to have one FLAT tax for everyone.

[jolly-roger.livejournal.com]

Much easier but cause conflict of interests.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Private citizens are more likely to vote for something that is,in their own best interest, therefore they should not vote.

[http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/]

People that like chocolate ice cream are more likely to vote for a tax on rocky road ice cream; therefore, we should not allow chocolate ice cream lovers to vote.

[musicpsych.livejournal.com]

I was going to bring this up, too. All voters have their own interests to vote for. In fact, that's why taxing these public employees is so important - because if tax rates go up, the chunk that is taken out of their salary will increase as well.

[jolly-roger.livejournal.com]

As I have written they would not vote so it would not matter

[jolly-roger.livejournal.com]

In interests of private citizens nothing about take more money from people. I don't see any conflicts of interests in your example.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

I believe you don't, and that's why you're wrong.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Look at it this way. You are assuming all public spending is bad and therefore you assume anyone who may possibly not want to as having bad interests and therefore want to disenfranchise them. Very undemocratic.

[jolly-roger.livejournal.com]

At this way I am only assuming all public spendings were forcibly taken before.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Are you?

[jolly-roger.livejournal.com]

About democracy: http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1272315.html?thread=101356795#t101356795

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1272315.html?thread=101357051#t101357051

[musicpsych.livejournal.com]

Number 2 is problematic because if people pay different amounts of taxes, should the people who pay more money in taxes get more influence?

[jolly-roger.livejournal.com]

In my post I assumed that we have to either exempt them from taxes or not but I also have more sophisticated option. We could give to private taxpayers possibility to choose tax rates voluntary, indeed starting from certain value, and give them vote rights as many as bigger tax rate they chosen. Example: you chose to pay 20% income tax and get 2 votes, or chose 30% and have 3 votes. Dependence may not be linear.

[redheadrat.livejournal.com]

So if I am rich, I give everyone of my low paid employees 1% of my pay so to reimburse them for extra votes they buy to vote in my favor.

Rights should be equal.

[jolly-roger.livejournal.com]

They take your money and vote whatever they want. Who said that rights should be equal, are people equal?

[redheadrat.livejournal.com]

And when the polling place numbers don't match my numbers, I fire everyone.

[jolly-roger.livejournal.com]

You'd need to have your own polling place especially for your workers to have all the numbers and you'd need to afraid of being charged with fraud.

[redheadrat.livejournal.com]

Where is fraud?

[jolly-roger.livejournal.com]

bribing of voters is a fraud

[redheadrat.livejournal.com]

It is not bribing, it is a voting day bonus.