Surprising Number of Americans Would Give Up Vote for a Pay Raise

Would you give up any of your rights for a pay raise?

I could see someone genuinely afraid of guns giving up their Second Amendment rights, perhaps. I knew a guy with a big house who referred to the place as a “mausoleum” after his divorce; he might have taken a pay raise in exchange for quartering troops. That’s about all I can personally imagine, and both have reasons.

However, according to a story in the New York Post earlier this week, a surprising number of folks would take a relatively meager pay raise in exchange for giving up their right to vote.

“More than a third of surveyed American workers (34.98 percent) say they would give up their right to vote in all elections for life in exchange for an immediate pay increase, according to a new LendEDU survey released Tuesday,” the Post reports. “This backs a recent Credible report that found half of millennials said they would give up their right to vote if it would mean their student loan debts were forgiven.”

This isn’t some massive bump in salary we’re talking about here. The survey didn’t ask that.

“LendEDU proposed 16 scenarios to 1,238 employed Americans where giving up something would result in an instant 10 percent annual bump in salary,” according to the Post.

As alarming as it is, it also tells us something important. People these days just don’t understand how important our rights are. No wonder so many are willing to forgo their Second Amendment rights: they’re also willing to give up the rights which the Second Amendment protects.

Somewhere along the way, someone failed these people.

Someone miseducated them about how their rights must be held tightly and dear; that they were fought for over the course of millennia. They were paid for in more blood than we can comprehend. They’re worth far more than a 10 percent raise.

The fact that I have to even say this makes me weep for our nation.