From the dissent:
That clear principle carries the day here. The striking case of Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111 (1942), which held that the economic activity of growing wheat, even for one's own consumption, affected commerce sufficiently that it could be regulated, always has been regarded as the ne plus ultra of expansive Commerce Clause jurisprudence. To go beyond that, and to say the failure to grow wheat (which is not an economic activity, or any activity at all) nonetheless affects commerce and therefore can be federally regulated, is to make mere breathing in and out the basis for federal prescription and to extend federal power to virtually all human activity.
From now on, everything you do, or do not do, can be regulated by the Federal Government.
The Government was invited, at oral argument, to suggest what federal controls over private conduct (other than those explicitly prohibited by the Bill of Rights or other constitutional controls) could not be justified as necessary and proper for the carrying out of a general regulatory scheme. … It was unable to name any.
If the concern is that the uninsured impose costs on the rest of the country, the solution is for them to bear the cost of their decisions while opening up the health insurance market for competition.
Do you ride a bicycle? That increases your risk of injury. Since everyone else pays for your injuries, the Federal Government now has the power to regulate whether, when, and how, and which bicycles you may ride, anywhere, even on your own property.
In fact, the Federal Government's bureaucrats now have the power to decide whether your life is worth enough to keep you living for an extra few days, or be able to walk for an extra few years.
You may think the current political authority will always decide according to your wishes, but don't depend on it:
The critics of the capitalistic order always seem to believe that the socialistic system of their dreams will do precisely what they think correct. While they may not always count on becoming dictators themselves, they are hoping that the dictator will not act without first seeking their advice.
…
They forget that a dictator, too, may act differently from their wishes, and that there is no assurance that he will really try for the "best," and, even if he should seek it, that he should find the way to the "best."
This decision serves no other purpose than to strengthen the argument that everyone who supports it must be replaced in the next election so that there is a fighting chance to implement solutions in health care financing that do not depend on intricate central planning bureaucracies.
… the Framers considered structural protections of freedom the most important ones, for which reason they alone were embodied in the original Constitution and not left to later amendment. The fragmentation of power produced by the structure of our Government is central to liberty, and when we destroy it, we place liberty at peril. Today's decision should have vindicated, should have taught, this truth; instead, our judgment today has disregarded it. (emphasis mine)
Sinan, I cannot describe the sickening gut-wrenching feeling of being let down.
ReplyDeleteI wrote a blog post two days ago, expressing my fear that the Arizona decision was a harbinger of things to come.
http://defendourconstitution.blogspot.com/2012/06/latest-betrayal-by-scotus.html
Boy was I right!
Everything we need to know is self evident in history - at least for those of us who are logical, critical thinkers.
I am afraid that this was the fatal blow; and am not hopeful of any meaningful repeal for the below reasons.
http://defendourconstitution.blogspot.com/2012/06/rip-america-it-was-good-while-it-lasted.html
Will America stand up and fight, or have the spirit displayed by our founders long dead and buried? We will see.
There is no guarantee that we will be able to negate this. For the decision's impact is even beyond ObamaCare. Every breath we take is now subject to Federal Government interference, because a court that finds the individual mandate cannot really find any intrusion unconstitutional. It took a little less than a 100 years to get to this point.
DeleteI can envision the bureaucrats coming up with rules like, "Childhood obesity is related to inactivity. Kids who play on their computers are getting fatter, and that increases their chances of diabetes. Therefore, every parent who allows his/her child to spend more than three hours a day on a computer will be required to pay an additional tax of $5,000 a year." I can only feel profound sadness.
BTW, here are clickable links to your excellent posts:
Latest Betrayal By The SCOTUS and R.I.P. America - It Was Good While It Lasted
The way I understand it is that SCOTUS declared that this is a tax. Well we have the same thing in Australia, it's call Medicare and everyone completely accepts that it is indeed a tax. In fact, it's right there on your income tax return, and processed by the Australian Tax Office.
ReplyDeleteSo yeah, it's a tax. Why is anyone surprised?
That's NOT to say I like tax by the way, but if we are going to argue over definitions, we should all accept that this is a tax.
As economist, I agree with you: Anything that forces citizens to do something, even if there is no penalty, is a tax. So, for example, if the town council decided that all window frames in the town should be pink, that's a tax. If the state tells you you must recite a prayer every time you drink a soda, that's a tax. That is, the requirement is economically equivalent to a tax on the people upon whom the requirement is imposed.
DeleteThere are three objections to Obama's behavior in this case:
1) During the primary, he objected to an individual mandate correctly by saying "you can't solve homelessness by requiring everyone to buy a house." At the time, I told my students that he wasn't being honest about his intentions, but they were not listening.
2) While economically, this, is a tax, legally the Federal Government is allowed to impose certain kinds of taxes. It is clear that the so-called tax is not an excise, income, or direct tax, or a duty or a tariff. Therefore, does the government have a right to call what is essentially a fine (which means it is unlawful not to have health insurance), a tax, even if it does not fit any statutory definition?
3) The spirit of the U.S. constitution is to structurally limit federal power over sovereign states. If we assume that the federal government can force its citizens to do anything so long as it does it via a tax that is really not a tax but a penalty, then we nullify the spirit of the constitution.
Now, I am not a lawyer, but an economist. As such, I am only interested in win-win solutions, that centrally planned one-size fits all bureaucratic resource allocation solutions are lose-lose.
That's why I am fundamentally opposed to such schemes even if a chief justice can contort himself not only find something that saves the law's central tenet, but also figures out a miraculous way to uphold the law in a partial way when the law did not contain a severability clause.
I think you have to understand that a piece of paper on its own, will never keep you safe. In Australia, they promised that income tax would only be temporary, just what was required for the war effort, and that was in WWI but they lied, and it wasn't temporary, and we have been stuck with it for 100 years.
DeleteThen in 1942 they needed money for war again, and they pushed through legislation that took away income tax powers from the states and transferred this power to the commonwealth government. There was absolutely no constitutional basis for it, but regardless of that it happened anyway.
http://www.la.org.au/opinion/280710/high-courts-attack-federalism
I agree completely with your point (3) above, but the horse bolted long ago. The power of organized force will always defeat the power of law. Fundamentally, either the power of law is backed by organized force itself or it is backed by nothing at all. The main factor that save economics is that modern warfare requires a strong manufacturing base, but maybe as time goes on that will change.