Home › Forums › Controversial Topics › A Modern Orthodox Critique of Uri L'Tzedek › Reply To: A Modern Orthodox Critique of Uri L'Tzedek
About whether the poor should vote, you may be surprised by this, but the taxation systems in the most “socialist” economies (such as Scandinavia) are actually pretty regressive. The poor pay tons of taxes there, because a large proportion of revenues are produced through sales and VAT taxes. Regardless, universal suffrage is here to stay. I don’t think any Torah critique of it (if such a thing really exists) would ever be convincing enough to do away with it and restrict voting rights; there’s probably a good counter-argument anyway.
I mean, when the Orthodox become the majority in Israel (which will happen sometime in the next few decades), do you really think they’d say, well, we’re going to implement halacha now, and only the well-off can vote? No way. Everybody should have a say in elections. It’s a settled question, at least until Moshiach arrives (and by then perhaps elections will be unnecessary because there won’t be any problems for governments to worry about.)