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Chapter 11
The Demos Issues

The two greatest dishonesties of our current government are 1) a crooked electoral system that overwhelmingly favors the election of wealthy and wealth-serving people as president, senators, and representatives and 2) the use by these people of their offices to create self-serving, wealth-serving laws, rules, and practices, much to the detriment of the rest of the populace.

The creation of an honest electoral system in the demos corrects the first problem. The demos electoral system results in a president that has been elected by a broad, moderate cross-section of the electorate and in a senate and a house that demographically resemble the entire electorate in body, mind, interests, and pocketbook.

One might think that would be enough, that this new, improved president and congress would much more honestly represent the entire electorate and create an inclusive, equitable society than they do within our current plutocratic government. But the members of any elite political body, however well selected, may be tempted toward self-interest and plutocracy. Therefore, they should not be entirely trusted with our most important issues, particularly since a body such as the demos with its consensus democracy makes it convenient and easy for the electorate to reserve these important decisions for itself.

That is why, along with the three electoral issues, as insurance that plutocracy is overcome with certainty and our nation cannot backslide into it, I removed nine crucial economic issues—including the sole power to tax at the federal level—from the representative branches of government and placed them directly into the hands of the entire electorate within the demos.

Refreshing your mind once more, the twelve demos issues are:

Election of the president
Election of senators
Election of representatives
Overall federal tax rate (which, over time, determines the size of the federal government)
Division of the tax burden among three tax revenue sources: corporations and businesses, personal incomes, and inheritances
Corporate and business tax scale
Personal income tax scale
Inheritance tax scale
Hours in the workweek
Minimum wage
Amount of federal debt or savings
Portion of federal tax revenue for the military, healthcare, other entitlements, and all other government functions

Note the complete absence of all of our complex and subtle religious, philosophical, moral, ethical, and esthetic issues. They are left to other areas of our government and society. Note also that none of the demos issues target specific groups of people. The issues are blind, so to speak, with respect to race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, etc.

While campaigning for political office in the demos and while deliberating with each other about candidates’ platforms and proposals, members of the electorate may discuss any issues, however complex. But, while this discussion makes all of us aware of the true (and often divided) mind and will of the electorate, none of it results in the creation of law. The demos only creates law when its members vote on its nine economic issues.

As you will see from later discussion, there is one action the demos would be able to take that could treat businesses or individuals differentially. In distributing the burden of taxation the demos could scale tax rates in such a way that businesses with larger annual gross revenues, people earning larger annual incomes, or people inheriting larger estates would pay taxes at a higher rate than businesses with smaller revenues or people with less income or smaller inheritances. Although our current tax system is shot through with loopholes and evasions created by and for the unscrupulous few, our society has long embraced as a principle of fairness that the more one has benefited economically by living, working, and doing business in our nation the larger the tax burden one should bear even to the extent of bearing a higher tax rate. This is called a progressive tax rate.

However, there also exists contrary argument and the proposal of a “flat tax” wherein everyone pays at the same tax rate. The demos issues dealing with the distribution of the tax burden are constructed in such a way as to allow the demos by its consensus to set a more progressive tax rate or a flatter tax rate.

Each of the nine economic issues included in the demos will now be discussed in its own chapter. These will be followed by a chapter discussing the three electoral issues.

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Chapter 11 The Demos Issues

Chapter 11
The Demos Issues