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One Solution to Poverty

Matt Metz 10/6/15

Here’s a way to solve poverty in the United States without spending a single tax dollar. This proposal is effective, simple, and eliminates the middleman.

First, we need to understand that the United States of America is a corporatocracy, not a democracy.

In a constitutional democracy, citizens run the country by electing representatives who look out for the people’s best interests. But we know that isn’t happening. Our politicians instead look out for the best interests of large, well-funded, and powerful corporations, and special interest and trade groups. These include the oil and gas industry’s American Petroleum Institute, large banks and financial institutions, and the National Rifle Association. 

Politicians look out for these organizations for one simple reason: these groups get the politicians elected. How? By contributing billions of dollars to the campaigns of candidates who look out for them, and we all know that it takes billions of dollars to get elected because votes are purchased through advertising. In essence, votes from the electorate are being purchased by large corporations.

My proposal is simple. Let’s be more above-board  and direct by simply allowing corporations and special interest groups to literally purchase votes, eliminating the politicians’ campaign groups, media consultants, and television advertising from the process.

It would work like this. “Mr. Jones,” a representative from JP Morgan Chase would say to ordinary citizens, “how much would it cost to purchase your vote so that we can get our pro-banking candidate elected? How does $1000 sound to you?” The citizen might reply “Well, that’s a nice offer, but I already have an offer from Exxon/Mobile who is willing to pay me $1500 to get their oil-and-gas candidate elected. You’ll have to do better.”

Eventually, citizens would end up with cash (which would be tax-free for me and of course a tax-deduction for the large corporation), and the corporations would end up with their candidates in office, which is what they’ve been doing for years. We would have eliminated the media consultants, campaign managers, and television networks from the process and put money directly into the hands of the electorate. As a side benefit, we would no longer be barraged with political calls during dinner and offensive prime-time television advertising.

Wealthy people, who don’t need this extra money, would keep their votes and cast those votes themselves (arguably for the large corporations, anyway); the people at the bottom of the economic ladder, who need the money and otherwise likely wouldn’t even vote, get additional, needed income. And of course now EVERYONE’s vote counts.

Everybody wins.

So let’s recognize that votes are already being purchased; let’s just change the process to put the money into the hands of our needy citizens instead of other large corporations and politicians.


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