To the editor:

Everyone gets a vote. Informed or ignorant, interested or apathetic, intelligent or stupid, rational or crazy, good or evil, we each get one vote. But, we can change that. Some have a bigger stake, we’re not equal owners, so why equal votes?

How about an additional vote for every $1,000 of paid taxes? Pay $1,000,000 in taxes and you get 1,001 votes — your original plus 1,000. The April 5 Saturday Column reported 50 percent of Americans live off the government. Pay no taxes and you get just your one unearned vote. The rest get what we pay for, no one getting any more or less than they’ve earned.

That’s how it works in business — corporations vote shares. Business works better than government, markets work better than democracy. Financially successful people are better informed, more interested, more intelligent, more rational and are better people than poor people. Giving more votes to wealthy people works out better for everyone, including poor people, because wealthy people make better decisions than poor people. That’s why they’re wealthy, and the poor are poor.

During the 1902 coal strike the leader of the mine owners, George Baer, wrote: “The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for — not by labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God, in His infinite wisdom, has given control of the property interests of the country, and upon the successful Management of which so much depends.”

It has ever been thus.