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Comment by fosco | Hacker News Reader

Anyone have thoughts on exams that require a passing grade to serve in Congress? I.e. demonstrate certain levels of knowledge in order to participate in certain conversations with new bills listing requirements at top thereby eliminating the ability to vote if that Congress person has not met the minimum?

I realize this may be a bit off topic but my thought is that if more people in Congress (or other agencies/departments/commissions) understood technology they may behave differently, same goes for other areas.

Thoughts?

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Aside from being unconstitutional (http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/1/essays/5/...), it’d be undemocraric and tyrannical. If people wanted to be governed by people who had more book learning they’d elect them.

Sure, unconstitutional and undemocratic. But I don't see that the "undemocratic and tyrannical" argument applies any more to a test requirement than it does to the existing constitutional age requirements for holding office.

Ignoring the fact that this is never going to happen, it also is a unrealistic expectation. Not everyone can be a expert on everything but has to trust their colleagues and staffers on how to vote on some issues.

The problems with Congress isn't stupidity (not that they aren't stupid), it's corruption. There's no quiz for that.

Beyond that, considering the history of tests as a precondition for participation in American politics...funny that it comes up as often as it does. Plus, if there was a test, isn't that something that'd quite possibly be on it?

Is there any evidence that there's corruption in US congress?

Call if what you will. If Congress is serving corporations rather than the people that could lead to trouble.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States

American democracy is designed to elect a geographically representative legislature. I wish it could also elect an ideologically representative legislature.

Currently, I really appreciate how Senator Ron Johnson is fighting to give small business the same preferential tax treatment given to corporations by early drafts of the tax bill [1]. And you guessed it, he's doing it because he spent much of his career as a small businessman, unlike most congresspeople [2].

I have no idea how to achieve more of this, I don't think an exam would help at all!

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/us/politics/senate-tax-bi... [2] https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/biography

That's not what Ron Johnson is doing at all. The changes in pass through rates are, quite literally, the worst part of the bill.

Large businesses (C Corps) pay corporate tax and then when shareholders profit from their shares (either via dividends or cap gains) they pay individual income taxes.

Small businesses (LLCs and S corps) don't pay corporate taxes but individual shareholders pay individual income taxes like above.

What this bill does (and Johnson is trying to do more of) is create a whole new system for shareholders of LLCs and S Corps so that they don't even pay regular income taxes but a new tax at an even lower rate.

This isn't giving preferential tax treatment to small businesses that corporations already get. It's creating a whole new thing that shouldn't exist in the first place.

One should view with great suspicion any limit on anyone's access to government. Limits are easily bent to suit the will of whomever is in power.

If Congresspeople aren't doing a good job, it is on us attempt to convince our representatives to change their minds. If that fails, it is on us to vote them out, and to convince others to vote in superior candidates.

A more practical approach would be to have an aptitude test for general voting (higher score means heavier weight for the vote). Additional requirements could be added to gate voter eligibility such as having paid more federal taxes than consumed via welfare in a given year.

All of these would, however, be unconstitutional, including the original proposal in the thread.

Wow not only wildly unconstitutional but given the wild imbalance in educational outcomes and just raw availability of educational resources anything like that is pretty much a new round of Jim Crow laws. And why spend any resources improving the education of this new second class groups because even if you slightly improve their lives their votes are worth less. Just an all around horrible idea.

they are democratically elected, this would be questionable.

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