NationStates Jolt Archive

Actually, I'd rather this become an issue for individual nations to decide, but until that point...

I think we should consider going back to the old system of voting... if you don't own a home or land, are you less of a citizen since otherwise you are merely living on the land, rather than actually owning part of it. This would encourage people to maintain steady jobs and lifestyles, rather than sucking off welfare, making more than minimum wage for free... (there are situations where welfare is genuinely needed--but generally, no...)

The downside would be that for a time, the middle class would dominate votes... but they do at the present time anyway, so this change wouldn't really be much of a problem.

"Ownership" show a more vested interest in the well being of a neighborhood, community, city, state, or nation. Those who are content to "live off" the nation and not actually contribute to the progression of the nation would be just as willing to "live off" any other nation or even switch to "a better host nation" and therefor are less likely to have the best interest of the Nation at heart, as opposed to "self interest".

Everybody above the legal age (whatever that may be in your individual country) should be given the right to vote. Why should landowners, who don't represent the country, have a say over how the country be run?

"Ownership" show a more vested interest in the well being of a neighborhood, community, city, state, or nation.

Spoken like a true representative of the land-lords and bosses. It is not the non-propertied classes that turn your cities into wastelands. It is the slum-lords who try to make a little more money by letting their properties become death traps and the industries that abandon their factories to chase profits elsewhere. The big property owners care nothing for community or the neighborhoods, they care for money and power.
AFoFS UN Council