Billionaire: Rich Americans Should Get More Votes

The legendary venture capitalist, Tom Perkins, told Fortune magazine that only those who pay any taxes should be allowed to vote and that the wealthy should get more votes since they pay more taxes.

During the interview by Adam Lashinsky of Fortune, Perkins was asked for a “60-second idea to change the world” and responded: “The Tom Perkins system is: You don’t get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes. But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you should get a million votes. How’s that?

These latest comments came just three weeks after Perkins stirred up controversy comparing the treatment of America’s 1% to that of persecuted Jews in Nazi Germany in a letter published by the Wall Street Journal.

Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its “one percent,” namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the “rich.”

[…]

This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendant “progressive” radicalism unthinkable now?

Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, was a series of coordinated attacks against Jews in Nazi Germany and Austria on 9–10 November 1938. This attack resulted in the death of 91 Jews and the incarceration of over 30,000 in concentration camps and is considered by many historians to be “a turning point in the Nazi campaign to exterminate Jews, during what become known as the Holocaust, in which an estimated six million Jews were killed.” source

You can watch a clip from CNN below, followed by the full interview.

Billionaire: Rich Americans should get more votes – Paul Begala and Reihan Salam discuss Billionaire Tom Perkins remarks that America’s rich should get more votes.

Tom Perkins: The War On The 1% – (See comments at 1:03:00.)

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