You really should uncurl your toes. He was trying to construct a military. And he laid down rules that fighting ships needed certain REGULATIONS. Okay, you can curl your toes again.
And in case you haven’t heard, we have a progressive tax system.
Yes, but the penalty isn’t a progressive tax… well I guess it is to some extent, since it’s less for poor people, but it caps at 2.5% of income. If the mandate tax penalty were progressive, the tax percentage would increase as income went up.
So, you agree, with me and George Washington, that the government can force you to buy something?
Then what the fuck are you so upset about?
Yet if he pays for his own bodyguards or goes the Bruce Wayne route, he doesn’t get out of paying for police.
Sorry, no. Healthcare is no different from the military or police. All seek to protect the well-being of citizens and their ability to be free, productive members of society. The only difference is we used to not pay for one of them.
That is a flimsy argument. The court has defined taxes as well as penalties in the past and even defined the different forms of taxation. This tax does not fit any of those descriptions and the court opinion did not even attempt to define this.
Not at all. That does not change the fact that the penalty was described as exactly that and is not even part of the funding mechanism of the act. The court has ruled that there is a legal difference between a tax and a penalty even if the outcome (someone is out of some money) is identical. In fact the court has ruled that some “taxes” are so onerous that they are actually penalties.
Well that’s kinda the point. If, indeed, the mandate is a tax it most resembles a direct tax. If that is the case it needs to be apportioned among the states or it is prohibited. So, yes, they should define what type of tax this mandate is for legal purposes.
What did I base my thinking on? On the fact (this is not one of those matters of legitimate dispute) that a tax penalty and a tax write-off are functionally equivalent. True, I didn’t base my thinking off George Washington’s requirement that people buy guns and medicine (heh heh), but only because I, like, apparently, the Supreme Court, and like Frylock, and like everyone else except a few holdouts, can see that a writeoff and a penalty serve exactly the same purpose, and it’s irrational to to conclude that one is constitutional and the other is not.
From what ruling have you drawn that paraphrase?
The point is not that forcing people to buy insurance is that onerous. The point is that this ruling further damages the constitution and transfers more power from us to our government. The mandate may have been a great idea but having a federal government that can enforce such a thing is not a great idea. If they can force us to purchase a product from another individual under either the commerce clause or the taxing power then there is very little that they cannot do.
The constitution and bill of rights were designed to put limits on the federal government. According to your statements just having the right to vote their asses out of office should suffice. So why did the founders bother going any further than this? They knew full well that an all powerful government can very easily become tyrannical. Many people here don’t seem to care what powers the government has as long as the government does things they want. They never take the time to consider what else the government can do with that power once they have it. This is my problem with the individual mandate. I actually think it is a good thing that everyone have insurance but I fear the power that the government gains by being able to force us to do this.
Again, we know that our founders were okay with forcing us to purchase a product from another individual. That whole argument is brilliantly off the table, unless you’d like to explain why being required to purchase a gun is better than being given the option between purchasing insurance or paying a higher tax amount.
And this mandate? It’s not just some wacky thing the gummint decided to do. It’s what we elected them to do. Obama campaigned on this issue, and we liked it, and so we voted for him. The minority party did their best to keep the American people from having the government we want, but they failed–they failed at the presidential level, they failed at the congressional level, and now they’ve failed at the judicial level. We don’t have everything we want, thanks to Republican obstructionism and Democratic cowardice (and yes, I’m oversimplifying), but we’re much closer than we were before. You’re still trying to limit our freedom by denying us the government we want.
From the dissent:
And I would add that I do prefer to have more freedom from the fear of bankruptcy due to health care costs and the opportunities that affordable care for individuals will bring to the people as they will gain more freedom to leave [del]feudal fiefdoms[/del] dead end jobs.
You know that the Militia Act applied to members of the military and that Congress has broader power over members of the military than it does over ordinary citizens.
You really don’t realize how asinine that argument is? What if we elected members of the gummint to abolish the thirteenth amendment? Would the opposition be trying to limit the freedom of the majority who elected them to do this? Your definition of liberty seems to be letting the government do whatever the majority of people want.
Because taxation is exactly like slavery.
The court didn’t say the penalty is a tax. It said that in some respects it’s not a tax (and Republicans agreed - otherwise the court could not have considered the issue). It said the penalty is Constitutional because it falls within the realm of Congress’ taxation powers.
You must realize how ridiculous that argument sounds. It’s sort of a tax but we won’t define what kind of tax it is…but it falls under Congress’ taxation power. Why? Because the IRS collects the penalty? The IRS collects all sorts of penalties but that does not make them taxes.
You keep telling us that we must realize how ridiculous our arguments sound. Well, yes, I realize how ridiculous they sound, to you. I reject the idea that they sound ridiculous because they’re poor arguments, however; I believe they sound ridiculous to you because of issues inherent in you.
They considered it “not a tax” only relative to the Anti-Injunction rule, and then only because of how specifically that restriction is worded, as I understand it anyway. That’s what RNATB pointed out in another thread. The point being that except for the very narrow legislatively defined “can we rule on this now?” filter, and that rule alone, referenced here…
…it’s a tax. It passes the filter of the Anti-Injunction Act solely based on the fact that the word “tax” was not used explicitly. As RNATB explained, that is simply how that filter works.
But having gotten over the necessary hurdle, SCOTUS (the majority, anyway) has determined that this is unambiguously a tax. If they did not, it would not have been considered constitutional. I think your statement is a little misleading. SCOTUS said unequivocally that this is a tax.
Your general point is true so it’s pure semantics, but you can actually earn income without paying into Social Security. Some pension systems are qualified in such a way that participants do not have to pay into the Social Security system. For example the railroad pension system, and various state/government pension systems have employees who do not pay into social security.
In some states most of the government employees pay into social security and their pension plan, in others very few pay into social security cite:
I don’t find it ridiculous and I don’t see why the Court has to decide what kind of tax it is. That wasn’t the question the justices were considering. They were considering its Constitutionality and five of them agreed that the Constitution allows Congress to do this with the justification that Congress can do this if it can levy taxes. Roberts addressed early in the ruling why this is OK:
“CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Part III–C, concluding that the individual mandate may beupheld as within Congress’s power under the Taxing Clause. Pp. 33–44.
(a) The Affordable Care Act describes the “[s]hared responsibility payment” as a “penalty,” not a “tax.” That label is fatal to the application of the Anti-Injunction Act. It does not, however, control whether an exaction is within Congress’s power to tax. In answering that constitutional question, this Court follows a functional approach, “[d]isregarding the designation of the exaction, and viewing its substance and application.”
[…]
Such an analysis suggests that the shared responsibility payment may for constitutional purposes be considered a tax. The payment is not so high that there is really no choice but to buy health insurance; the payment is not limited to willful violations, as penalties for unlawful acts often are; and the payment is collected solely by the IRS through the normal means of taxation. […] None of this is to say that payment is not intended to induce the purchase of health insurance. But the mandate need not be read to declare that failing to do so is unlawful. Neither the Affordable Care Act nor any other law attaches negative legal consequences to not buying health insurance, beyond requiring a payment to the IRS. And Congress’s choice of language—stating that individuals “shall” obtain insurance or pay a “penalty”—does not require reading §5000A as punishing unlawful conduct. It may also be read as imposing a tax on those who go without insurance.”
[/quote]
I saw, yes. And of course the conservatives who opposed the law generally agreed with this argument.
They said it can be interpreted that way and is Constitutional for the same reason taxes are. That’s not the same as “It is a tax.”