No representation without taxation?
The rich really are idiots
It seems the rich do not already have enough power. I’m a bit slow getting to this, but from Fortune magazine: “The [social media] exchange began with a provocation from [Shopify chief executive officer Tobias] Lütke: Pension recipients should have their financial futures ‘locked in and guaranteed,’ but in return would be reclassified as ‘dependents’ and lose the right to vote—the same way minors can’t vote. A reply from ‘Eric Thor,’ who claimed to be a retired banking executive as well as ‘armchair economist and policy wonk,’ proposed a sliding scale: zero votes for anyone who pays no income tax, one vote for those earning $1–100K, two votes for $100–200K, scaling up in that pattern to a hard cap of five votes for anyone earning $500K or more. The pitch was framed as fairness—reward ‘representation’ for those who ‘foot the bill’ through taxation.”[1]
The U.S. political system has been transitioning to an aconstitutional broligarchy,[2] a system in which the very wealthy rule and are effectively above the law.[3] The quest for such a system is one major reason high technology overlords have supported Donald Trump. And the Lütke-Thor scheme would be a step, along with the Supreme Court’s rulings protecting bribes (campaign donations) and the ensuing corruption as ‘free speech,’ toward formalizing such a system.
Tax breaks are among the fruits of that corruption and, curiously for those who claim this voting system would be ‘fair’ “‘representation’ for those who ‘foot the bill’ through taxation,”[4] these would-be super-voters often pay little or no taxes at all and therefore are not in fact currently ‘footing the bill.’
The Lütke-Thor scheme would reinforce the notion that wealth implies intelligence, seen so often with the media attention given to figures like Bill Gates and Elon Musk. It would imply that the wealthy are deserving because they ‘earn’ their wealth through ‘hard work’ and ‘merit,’ when in fact it is well known among social scientists that wealth is very often inherited.
The Fortune article notes that “[t]he proposal would invert the founding Ameri[kkk]an principle of ‘no taxation without representation’ into something closer to ‘no representation without taxation’—and specifically, high taxation” but this assumes that the high earnings would in fact be taxed, which would mean high earners would have to give up their precious tax breaks.
We have to wonder why the rich would want such a voting advantage, which I suspect might still be negligible against the votes of the many in the sub-$100,000 bracket, when they already exert effective control of the political system through their money, er um, ‘free speech.’
Finally, in order to preserve anonymity, the Lütke-Thor scheme would require 1) super-voters to cast separate ballots for each of their votes so the ballots could not be recognized through any marking betraying a heavier weighting, or 2) that super-voters record their votes through distinct, possibly less convenient, and certainly more expensive precincts for each tier of super-voting.
That none of this seems to have occurred to Lütke or Thor would seem to bely their claim to merit. Christopher Hayes is unlikely to be surprised.[5]
[1] Nick Lichtenberg, “Why did a $154 billion CEO just endorse stripping most Americans of voting rights—and taking us back to the 19th century?” Fortune, July 27, 2026, https://apple.news/AizP7tY16SaqY8elv8nUHoQ
[2] David Benfell, “It’s an aconstitutional broligarchy now,” Not Housebroken, September 23, 2025,
[3] Gil Duran, “How the ‘Broligarchs’ plan to use Trump,” Nerd Reich, November 25, 2024, https://www.thenerdreich.com/how-thebroligarchs-plan-to-use-trump/; Brooke Harrington, “What the Broligarchs Want From Trump,” Atlantic, November 24, 2024, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/broligarchy-elon-musk-trump/680788/; Lynn Parramore, “How to Disguise Racism and Oligarchy: Use Economics,” Evonomics, n.d., https://evonomics.com/how-to-disguise-racism-and-oligarchy-use-the-language-of-economics/
[4] Nick Lichtenberg, “Why did a $154 billion CEO just endorse stripping most Americans of voting rights—and taking us back to the 19th century?” Fortune, July 27, 2026, https://apple.news/AizP7tY16SaqY8elv8nUHoQ
[5] Christopher Hayes, Twilight of the Elites (New York: Crown, 2012).