3 ms·

"This is a pretty narrow group." Depends on your definitions. "entrepreneurs who have had an exit in 2012, and little to no income before that" -- Pretty narr

"This is a pretty narrow group." Depends on your definitions. "entrepreneurs who have had an exit in 2012, and little to no income before that" -- Pretty narrow. "People expecting fair treatment from their fellow citizens" -- Not narrow at all. Retroactive law of any kind sucks. As the point of law is to provide rules to guide conduct, "retroactive law" is something of a semantic nullity -- it cannot possibly guide behavior because its guidance is not knowable as people behave. It is little more than than infliction of a legislature on some population, under the color but not the substance of law. Your freedom and property depend on our general refusal to apply such law to you, no matter how much we may want to. Absent that general refusal, you depend on your absence from sets any set of people from which we might want to apply such law. If you are confident that you will be the same as everyone else on all important dimensions, you should be safe without that general refusal. If you've any ambition to be different in any important way, maybe you should consider your interests more broadly.

mturmon 14y ago
This is tinkering with marginal tax rates, not retroactively making peeing while standing up a felony. More seriously, there is a distinction between civil and criminal ex post facto laws (civil, including taxes: generally OK if there is a rational basis; criminal: essentially never due to Article 1 of the US Constitution). For more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law#United_States
- chernevik 14y ago
  "The power to tax involves the power to destroy." John Marshall, McCulloch vs Maryland
WaltFrench 14y ago
“Retroactive law of any kind sucks.” Pretty sure that if our Washington politicos can't reach a deal by 12/31, whatever tax law IS set in 2013 will apply to the entire calendar year. As that will likely mean a significant tax decrease from the current law (under which the “temporary” Bush tax cuts expire), you won't find many people sympathizing with your complaint. Now if you want some sympathy, go with the fact that our state legislature refused to fund essential services, services that the populace wants and needs, due to a minority that blocked balanced budgets again and again. Which led to (a) Prop 30, and (b) the electorate cutting the Republican nihilists off at the knees. Now that we have a respite, let's get the amendment process going so that we no longer need the 2/3 vote in the legislature to pay for what a clear majority of citizens want. And if the people whose incomes have benefitted the most from doing business here would rather set up their entrepreneurial shops in Mississippi or some state that has lower educational commitments (but low taxes!), they just proved that they weren't smart enough to have actually earned that high income, anyway, and just got lucky. Let 'em go. Better yet, encourage them to move to Texas and secede so that they won't have to worry about all the immigrants here, too.

mturmon 14y ago

This is tinkering with marginal tax rates, not retroactively making peeing while standing up a felony. More seriously, there is a distinction between civil and criminal ex post facto laws (civil, including taxes: generally OK if there is a rational basis; criminal: essentially never due to Article 1 of the US Constitution). For more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law#United_States

chernevik 14y ago
"The power to tax involves the power to destroy." John Marshall, McCulloch vs Maryland

WaltFrench 14y ago

“Retroactive law of any kind sucks.” Pretty sure that if our Washington politicos can't reach a deal by 12/31, whatever tax law IS set in 2013 will apply to the entire calendar year. As that will likely mean a significant tax decrease from the current law (under which the “temporary” Bush tax cuts expire), you won't find many people sympathizing with your complaint. Now if you want some sympathy, go with the fact that our state legislature refused to fund essential services, services that the populace wants and needs, due to a minority that blocked balanced budgets again and again. Which led to (a) Prop 30, and (b) the electorate cutting the Republican nihilists off at the knees. Now that we have a respite, let's get the amendment process going so that we no longer need the 2/3 vote in the legislature to pay for what a clear majority of citizens want. And if the people whose incomes have benefitted the most from doing business here would rather set up their entrepreneurial shops in Mississippi or some state that has lower educational commitments (but low taxes!), they just proved that they weren't smart enough to have actually earned that high income, anyway, and just got lucky. Let 'em go. Better yet, encourage them to move to Texas and secede so that they won't have to worry about all the immigrants here, too.