There is an essential issue with Warren’s plans which is often ignored. This issue applies not just to Warren but to most plans of most of the candidates.
The plans will not be enacted unless 50 — or more likely 60 — Senators agree to them. Whether Scotus would approve of a wealth tax is irrelevant if the Senate doesn’t approve.
And Sanders and Warren understand that many of their plans will not become law anytime soon. Is it dishonest of them to speak of these plans? Of course not. Voters want to know what the candidates’ visions are, even if realizing those visions will be tough.
Should Warren replace “I have a plan for that” with “I have a plan for that, but it probably won’t become law” ? Don’t be absurd. Informed voters already know that. And the equivocation would only confuse and irritate low-information voters.
The Justices of the Supreme Court are lawyers whose names are attached to the majority decision in Sebelius. It’s just a matter of how long you and others are going to deny the plain language of that decision. I invited you to come up with a reasoning consonant with that holding that the proposed wealth tax is Constitutional and you have completely failed to do so. And the article you are relying on failed to do so as well. That was the entire point of the article which you apparently continue to fail to grasp. Also, why exactly do you believe Professor Johnson is a Constitutional Law expert? (hint: look at the title he holds you quoted earlier and look very carefully and see if the word Constitutional appears anywhere)
Therefore since both Sanders and Warren represent the far left Marxist component of the Democratic Party they should be immediately disqualified this cycle.
Why nominate a Marxist when they can’t pass anything?
Biden is the best possible nominee to win/defeat Trump.
I’ll never get used to the fact that so many people are persuaded that spending tax dollars on programs to improve conditions for public is the same thing as Marxism.
Repair roads and bridges? Marxism!
Educate the young so our country can compete globally? Marxism!
Provide health care to American citizens? Marxism!
It is a thought-terminating cliche, and I guess lots of people are vulnerable to having their thoughts terminated. My best explanation is that those with racist inclinations get riled up at the thought that “those people” will benefit. “Those people” are lazy non-contributors who don’t deserve anything, and these proposals aren’t ideas to make the country stronger by helping the public be healthier and more effective, but just cynical ploys to buy votes.
Isn’t that it? People just plain cannot judge policies on their merits and instead have to blind themselves to really seeing them by ceasing thought and changing the subject to Marxism. Because they can’t just come out as racists, nor can they explain the problem with public-positive policies via honest debate. Easier to oppose a fictional Marxism than to admit they want a system that perpetuates an underclass.
I don’t think any of these candidates are perfect, but what will it take to get people to confront the reality of the proposals instead of retreating into propaganda fantasies?
Yes, me being the only one between the two of us who possesses any relevant degree and knowledge on the topic makes me the arrogant one. More fine logic on your part. And how exactly is posting quotes from a SCOTUS decision an attempt to get you accept my authority? See that’s called a legal cite and it’s the standard practice for proving a legal point, in this case by citing the highest authority we have in our legal system. Meanwhile you read an article, don’t understand it, and keep mistakingly citing it as authority for your own argument which even the author doesn’t agree with. How many completely wrong posts are you going to make before you start to figure this stuff out?
I have ZERO relevant degrees or knowledge on this topic … but that cite above that septimus provided does seem to written by someone who does. He may just be Calvin H. Johnson, John T. Kipp Chair in Corporate and Business Law, University of Texas, but he writes under the banner of the American Bar Association. So those of us without relevant degrees or knowledge tend to take it as expert opinion more than random guy on MB, given that we know nothing about your qualifications, as you say …
Reading around it seems like there are experts, I suspect more qualified than you, who are not 100% sure of what way the current court would rule, with some hedging based on how exactly the law was written. I am too ignorant to argue it myself, but again, the ABA taking a stance holds some weight in the minds of ignorant folk like me. Whether or not it is would be something decided when SCOTUS rules on a specific version of it, and not before. Even those as ignorant as I am know that.
Which would only happen if such a law got through congress. So we likely won’t get an answer.
I am not a lawyer but I am well aware that other non-lawyers are bad at extrapolating precedence and usual don’t research or mention counter-precedent. I have put you in that category for the time being. If you can’t find a lawyer going on record agreeing with you on the weight of court history, that tells most of what I need to know.
Wow. What kind of counter precedent do you expect for a SCOTUS decision? Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? Have you read the plain, unambiguous holding I quoted from Sebelius that specifically mentions that taxes on the ownership of Real and Personal Property are direct taxes subject to apportionment? And have you figured out yet that Prof. Johnson is advocating for the Court to overturn Pollock and its progeny and that he isn’t arguing that a wealth tax is Constitutional under current precedent as you keep claiming?
FWIW Fox summarizes some of the varying interpretations including taking into account the plain language of Sebelius (and seeing as supporting the constitutionality of the proposal) here.
If the Director of Tax Policy at the Cato Institute thinks there’s wiggle room on a wealth tax, that’s a pretty good signal that you should stfu, DirkHardly, about the obviousness about its unconstitutionality.
Got a cite for that? Because if you are referring to the same article I read the author barely addresses the Constitutional issue and proposes one possible avenue of “wiggle room” without any in-depth legal analysis. And that proposal is quite different from the wealth tax envisioned by Senators Warren and Sanders.
Also, the author is an economist and possesses no legal credentials that I can see. Gosh, that’s probably why the vast majority of the paper addresses the economic aspects with a few paragraphs devoted to the Constitutional issue. Do you somehow believe that either Prof. Johnson’s article (which you continually misinterpret) or an article by the CATO Institute is even a meaningful legal citation? Let alone one superior to a SCOTUS decision?
You really just don’t get how this works at all do you? Maybe you should consider your own advice, at least then you’d stop continuously posting embarrassingly wrong stuff. And regardless, I’ll take the clear words of the Supreme Court over anyone since they’ll be the ones deciding.
Strange thing. The ABA comes to a opposite take than you and the vast majority of available analyses state, after having read Sebelius, that it is very far from clear how SCOTUS would rule, some quite informed experts on the Court in fact seeing Roberts, the likely key decider, as having very much NOT showing “his hand with respect to the true meaning of ‘direct,’ noting only that the court ‘continued to consider taxes on personal property to be direct taxes’ as late as 1920, after the 16th Amendment was passed.”
Given the consensus of available learned opinions (who have read the same rulings you have and likely more) out there settles most into NOT SURE it seems to me that CarnalK is not embarrassing himself at all.
Anyway. It does seem reasonable to conclude that Warren’s main source for funding for her many plans might not pan out. Magic 8 ball says “future is murky.” What would her back up plan be? If she portrays her plan as being a for sure thing to pass muster then she is being dishonest and I’d hope she has some other plans to fund things …
Once again, the ABA posting an opinion piece is not an endorsement of that view. On what possible basis did you believe that it was? And you have cited the opinions of a few of the hundreds of legal and specifically Constitutional scholars in this country. On what basis do you believe that those opinions represent a majority or even widely-held viewpoint? Lawyers use CYA language and avoid absolutes as a learned reflex. That’s because one can never truly predict how one human being, let alone nine, will act. But that doesn’t mean one can’t make a reasonably certain prediction when all the available evidence is one-sided.
Because Roberts didn’t just mention the history of the Court’s direct tax jurisprudence. He applied it specifically to the Shared Responsibility Payment by noting it was not a tax on the ownership of Real or Personal Property and thus not a direct tax that needed to be apportioned. It was an essential issue before the Court and the Court showed no sign whatsoever of moving away one iota from existing precedent. How much more direct a statement of the law do you and those authors require?
And again, you have a “consensus” that amounts to a minute fraction of the Constitutional scholars in this country and quite frankly many of the arguments I’ve seen are disingenuously incomplete, biased, and logically flawed. If you would like me to detail exactly how I’d be glad to do so in another thread. But regardless, any argument that an unapportioned wealth tax on Personal Property would survive a Constitutional challenge depends on the Court disposing of 120+ years of precedent and an unapportioned wealth tax on land and buildings would require discarding 220+ years of precedent.
As far as CarnalK embarrassing themselves, maybe you missed all the other stuff they got ridiculously, laughably wrong over the course of this discussion. Like continually misunderstanding an article they thought supported their position when it made no such conclusion. Or asking about counter-precedents (whatever that means) when discussing a SCOTUS decision. Stuff like that.
Am I correct that a federal tax on states proportional to their population would be constitutional? And that states can impose wealth taxes? How about imposing a $1000 per-person federal tax on all the states and advising (wink wink) that a wealth tax might be a way for states to raise the money.
A per-person tax would fall most heavily on poor states which — coincidentally? — are the states that vote most strongly for the kleptocrats. Maybe that fact might increase sentiment for a constitutional amendment.
Although I’ve argued on Warren’s side in this thread, I don’t think I’d clicked the link until just now. Here’s the money quote:
Get it? Millions losing their homes wasn’t a problem. The real threat to the economy was that Wall St. investment bankers wouldn’t be able to afford new Maseratis — they’d have to keep driving their old Ferraris.
When the hen-house is in danger, policy makers turn to the foxes for advice! It may be hard to blame well-intentioned leaders like Obama: High finance is confusing. Reading Naomi Klein’s writings may give a handle on the problem.
Suppose I bet $1000 at the roulette wheel, win, and the casino offers me $1050. “There! You made a profit!” Am I supposed to be grateful? But that is exactly what your argument here distills to.
Where’s my Maserati? I didn’t get one, but boy the taxpayers sure bought a lot for the same fiends who drove the economy right to the brink.
The banks were never in jeopardy. The Federal government could always have stepped forth as the capital funder of last resort. Taxpayers would have profited hugely, while the fiends were taught a moral lesson. That didn’t happen.
There were simple programs that would have allowed homeowners to stay in their homes until the market stabilized. That didn’t happen. Instead their homes were sold for a pittance to rich speculators in cahoots with the banks.
I remain a centrist and think many of Warren’s plans go much too far. But it’s sad to see so many other centrists endorse right-wing Wall St. disinformation.
Assuming you’re at least somewhat serious, a tax on the person would be a Capitation Tax and presumably Constitutional. Of course past instances of such taxes, were wildly unpopular because they are inherently regressive (also many instances were Poll Taxes which is a form of Capitation Tax, but that’s a separate additional issue). I don’t really see the political will for members of Congress to impose a $1000 per person tax on their constituents regardless of income or means. And I have serious doubts that those constituents will gladly bear this burden in pursuit of proving a larger point about Federal Tax Power. And that burden wouldn’t just fall most heavily on poorer states, it would fall on the poorest people everywhere. The phrase “political suicide” comes to mind.
Also, I’m not sure your vision of the tax’s implementation is correct. A Federal direct tax has to be apportioned by construction and effect but that doesn’t mean that Congress would essentially send each state a bill for their share of the tax based on population and paid from the state treasury. Since a Capitation Tax applied equally to every individual across every state is inherently apportioned, it would presumably involve each person simply paying their $1000 share directly to the IRS.
And if a Federal Tax on the person is just that, on the person and not on the states, then why would the states have any involvement whatsoever? I suppose they would be responsible for paying the tax on behalf of Wards of the State but other than that I would imagine the states would distance themselves as much as possible from the resulting backlash. But there would certainly be no reason for the states having to “raise their share” by implementing their own wealth tax as some sort of object lesson.
But that’s pretty much what Democratic centrism means: oppose discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., give a minimum wage increase every now and then to keep the proles happy, but leave the moneymen in charge.
ETA: Democratic centrism is only incidentally about finding common ground with the WWC or whoever. It’s always overwhelmingly been about finding common ground with rich people who are willing to donate to the DNC/DSCC/DCCC/DGA/etc.
— are the states that vote most strongly for the kleptocrats. Maybe that fact might increase sentiment for a constitutional amendment.