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I don't think it's ridiculous at all. I never said it would be illegal, I said it would demonstrate a lack of care and consideration -- like Prohibition (also p

I don't think it's ridiculous at all. I never said it would be illegal, I said it would demonstrate a lack of care and consideration -- like Prohibition (also passed legally, without doubt).

notahacker 7y ago
And the original constitution's treatment of tax apportionment expressly acknowledged slavery as a legitimate practice. So perhaps a constitional amendment process can do good things too! Back in the real world, the federal government has always used its constitutional entitlement to tax people, and despite your clearly bad faith insinuations, the Sixteenth had absolutely no impact on its [in]ability to take the possessions of the poor whenever it saw fit or implications for search warrant seizures. What the amendment actually did after nearly two decades of careful consideration and public debate was remove an odd quirk in the constitution whereby in the eyes of the Supreme Court the federal government could directly tax individuals and companies as much as it liked, but only if the total amount contributed from a state was proportional to its population (which made assessing direct taxes based on variables like incomes and corporate profits rather than fixed things like the right to vote difficult). If your definition of the difference between a "liberal republic" and an "authoritarian state" is based on whether the constitution mandates that the quantity of direct tax collected in each region is proportional to its census counts, you really, really don't understand the concept of liberty.
- tathougies 7y ago
  Hmmm... I don't think I ever argued against an income tax. I only argued against a personal property tax, pointing out that the government is typically very happy to take from the poor, even without any law making it explicitly legal (see the civil forfeiture cases). My main point so far has been to urge the utmost caution in these laws. It is certainly not something to enact simply because we want to make Mr Gates less wealthy. That is a bad reason to open the flood gates.
- ahazred8ta 7y ago
  No, the 'odd quirk' was that it explicitly required that the tax money from each state be earmarked, held in a separate fund, and only spent in the same state that the tax was originally collected from. FWIW you could buy stuff in each state and send it to DC, but you couldn't use the money to pay salaries in DC. Partly it was intended to prevent a donor state / receiver state situation - https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-states-are-givers-and-which-are-takers/361668/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-s...

I don't think it's ridiculous at all. I never said it would be illegal, I said it would demonstrate a lack of care and consideration -- like Prohibition (also passed legally, without doubt).

notahacker 7y ago

And the original constitution's treatment of tax apportionment expressly acknowledged slavery as a legitimate practice. So perhaps a constitional amendment process can do good things too! Back in the real world, the federal government has always used its constitutional entitlement to tax people, and despite your clearly bad faith insinuations, the Sixteenth had absolutely no impact on its [in]ability to take the possessions of the poor whenever it saw fit or implications for search warrant seizures. What the amendment actually did after nearly two decades of careful consideration and public debate was remove an odd quirk in the constitution whereby in the eyes of the Supreme Court the federal government could directly tax individuals and companies as much as it liked, but only if the total amount contributed from a state was proportional to its population (which made assessing direct taxes based on variables like incomes and corporate profits rather than fixed things like the right to vote difficult). If your definition of the difference between a "liberal republic" and an "authoritarian state" is based on whether the constitution mandates that the quantity of direct tax collected in each region is proportional to its census counts, you really, really don't understand the concept of liberty.

tathougies 7y ago
Hmmm... I don't think I ever argued against an income tax. I only argued against a personal property tax, pointing out that the government is typically very happy to take from the poor, even without any law making it explicitly legal (see the civil forfeiture cases). My main point so far has been to urge the utmost caution in these laws. It is certainly not something to enact simply because we want to make Mr Gates less wealthy. That is a bad reason to open the flood gates.
ahazred8ta 7y ago
No, the 'odd quirk' was that it explicitly required that the tax money from each state be earmarked, held in a separate fund, and only spent in the same state that the tax was originally collected from. FWIW you could buy stuff in each state and send it to DC, but you couldn't use the money to pay salaries in DC. Partly it was intended to prevent a donor state / receiver state situation - https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-states-are-givers-and-which-are-takers/361668/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-s...