농촌 과대대표의 헌법적 문제점

Abstract

A lawmaker's realistic goal is to get elected, and to get elected, they need the votes of their constituents. However, if one person's vote is worth two votes, then that group becomes very attractive to politicians. The value of a rural vote is often twice as high as that of an urban vote. Rural areas are overrepresented in parliamentary elections. If there are 2.2 million farmers, that's 4.4 million votes for politicians.
 The problem of rural overrepresentation has been reduced since the 1987 system, when the difference in the value of the vote was nearly six times that of urban areas, but the privileges accumulated over 37 years have been further consolidated by the introduction of several systems through legislative amendments.
 Agricultural insurance, which aims to maximize losses from natural disasters and reduce the risk of growing weather-affected agricultural products to zero, has been subsidized by taxpayers' money to de-risk farmers, while high-tariff imports distort the market by making them uncompetitive and discouraging the urban poor from choosing cheaper imports. The direct payment system also disincentivizes farmers from engaging in “other industries” other than agriculture. If farmers are paid a certain amount of cash in taxpayer dollars just to farm, there is no incentive to try and be selected for other industries or to improve the productivity of the farming they are doing. Farmers get 9% of their insurance premiums subsidized by taxes, they get subsidized by taxes even if the price of their produce falls, they get a direct cash payment for doing their own farming, and they get to sell their produce at 7 times the price of imports, forcing the rural and urban poor to pay higher prices for their produce. Politicians provide low-risk, stable returns to rural farmers and politicians give them special favors. Taxpayers' money buys their tickets.
 As a result, urban and rural people are forced to eat the most expensive milk, bread, rice, eggs, and beef in the world. They are forced to pay high prices for our agricultural products, which are heavily subsidized by taxpayers' money and have lost their competitiveness, and they are unable to eat quality agricultural products from other countries at low prices. It is time to pursue strict urban-rural ‘vote equality’ and reform the system so that the majority of the people are not sacrificed for the benefit of a special group. The Korean Constitution does not allow for special classes, and farmers and fishermen should not be a special class under the Constitution.