alt Hacker NewsI've been told that American's have a very low rate of passport issuance. I don't know if that's true, but the figure quoted was only 10% of adults hold passports. Is this a really effective way to get people to pay for their kids, or just the appearance of doing something to quiet the voters?
Replies
Presumably it would be very effective for some demographics and not so effective for others. 10% is still a very large group of people. People who would be affected are also probably people who can afford international travel, so the affected are probably disporportionally the group who are failing to pay despite having a bunch of spare income.
As an american it is true that most people don’t have passports - the act of flying internationally is either out of reach economically or culturally. This does give mostly out of touch opression where the margins are the targets and the white dudes will likely get a pass, so the latter.
There’s about 180m us passports, so about half the country has one, about the same percentage as France.
It's possible this might have a significant (not small, not necessarily large) impact on the smaller subset of delinquent parents that might currently have a larger double digit percentage (30% say) skipping to Canada, Mexico, or elsewhere to avoid being chased down.
Or not.
The main point here is that it's not the entire population of regular US citizens that should be looked at here, more the specific behaviour of the subset in question.