DOES OUR GOVERNMENT ADEQUATELY "SUPPORT" OUR CONSTITUTION?

Ican, As your local mechanic I must inform you that directed tax vouchers for charity probably will never fly without one heck of a head wind. The head wind is what caused the problem in the first plase!

Re the both of your last few posts. Sounds like a pissing contest to me. I have an electric fence that makes pissing contests much more sporting. C'mon down and we'll try it I'll referee!

It would be hard for me to imagine a system worse than the one we have now for "relieving the plight of the wretched"

It kills personal initiative. In this county a family of five will collect about $1800 a month in cash, food stamps, medical insurance, food banks, discounted produce, legal aid, and transportation vouchers.

Check my figures Ican. This works out to about $11.20 per hour for one person 40 hrs a week.

Thank you. Your argument is persuasive. I stand by my criteria for interpretation, so the evidence you supplied compels me to accept the logic of your argument.

My conclusion that government transfer of money from some to others is unconstitutional still remains intact, however. But now I am reduced to the argument that the federal constitution does not delegate to the government the power to do that. In the above, Butler v. United States (1936) supports my claim, but Davis v. Steward Machine Co. (1937), and Davis v. Helvering (1937) and subsequent decisions contradict my claim.

ican711nm wrote:

Thank you. Your argument is persuasive. I stand by my criteria for interpretation, so the evidence you supplied compels me to accept the logic of your argument.

Although we've had occasion to disagree, ican, I have not found you to be unreasonable or ungracious in debate, and I appreciate that.

I just want to make sure I understand this part of your argument: you're not suggesting that all forms of income taxation are unconstitutional, are you? I take it that your major contention is that the unequal taxing of incomes is unconstitutional, right? In other words, if citizen X and citizen Y both pay a flat 10% income tax, that would pass constitutional scrutiny, whereas if citizen X paid 10% and citizen Y paid 20%, that would be unconstitutional. Is that accurate?

Yeah, I remember writing words expressing almost that same sentiment a while back.

Stick with him for a while, Joe. He grows on ya!

Some day, if you see this thing through, I hope words expressing that same sentiment come from someone else just starting a cyber discussion with Ican.

And I hope you get as big a chuckle out of them as I just did yours.

Frank Apisa wrote:

Yeah, I remember writing words expressing almost that same sentiment a while back.

Stick with him for a while, Joe. He grows on ya!

Some day, if you see this thing through, I hope words expressing that same sentiment come from someone else just starting a cyber discussion with Ican.

And I hope you get as big a chuckle out of them as I just did yours.

Well, Frank, it's true that I don't have the kind of history that you have with ican, so I can only go by my own experiences.

In general, I find myself disagreeing with ican on most points, but he has actually raised some issues in this thread that have, at least, made me stop and think -- and, as I've pointed out elsewhere, my main reason for participating in forums such as this is for my own benefit, not for anyone else's. So, to that extent, I appreciate ican's arguments, even if they only end up being "fruitful errors." Moreover, I find that I get the most out of these discussions by giving the other person at least some credit for intelligence, rather than replying to their postings with a laconic, unenlightening "bullshit!" -- a response that, I'm afraid, says more about the subject than the object of the taunt.

Ican, to cut off their water or at least slow it as much as you can. ...

... Although I sympathize, and I BELIEVE that you are correct, I won't bet too much on the "unconstitutionality" arguement. Rationality often has little to do with the human condition. You'd probably do as well with a "God commands" type of arguement

Somehow us rational folks have to do better in pointing out the costs and pitfalls of irrational actions. Best, M

The 16th Amendment does not specifically grant the government the power to vary the rate of tax with the value of the income.

It is well recognized that Article I, Section 8 required excise taxes to be uniform throughout the United States, but that same requirement was not placed on taxes. The reason uniformity was not required of taxes is because it was understood that the amount of tax would vary with the value of the thing taxed (e.g., property).

However, it was not understood that the rate of tax would vary with the value of the thing taxed. That's a power assumed by the Congress in adopting the first income tax law and not a power granted by the amended constitution.

It is also true according to various sources that those who drafted the 16th amendment fully intended to adopt a tax rate that depended on the value of the thing taxed. But this was not generally inferred to be implicit in the 16th amendment by those who adopted the 16th amendment.

However, even if a uniform 10% income tax were to be adopted, I claim for the reasons given above that transfer of money from some to others is unconstitutional.

However, even if a uniform 10% income tax were to be adopted, I claim for the reasons given above that transfer of money from some to others is unconstitutional.

Consider the following seemingly bazaar theoretical case. Suppose all gross income/revenue were taxed at the flat rate of 10%. Further suppose that 50% of that tax revenue is returned in equal amounts by the government to 100% of the tax payers. That would in effect cause those who paid more total tax than others to end up paying a net higher tax rate (even though it be less than 10%) than those others.

Now limit that equally distributed return to 50% of the taxpayers. That would mean that 50% of the tax payers would net a lower tax rate than the other 50%.

The constitution, after all, is not a legal code, and there was no expectation that it would go into the depth and detail that would be found in a code. After all, the 16th Amendment is one sentence long (the shortest amendment in the constitution): the federal tax code, in contrast, runs into the hundreds of pages.

I am no expert on either the adoption of the constitution or the 16th Amendment, but I find it difficult to accept this claim. The insistence on uniformity for duties, imposts, and excises was due, I would imagine, to the fear that some states might end up being declared "free trade zones" -- to the detriment of other states not so designated.

It has been a long time since I've had occasion to look at tables of import duties, so I'm not sure if you're right here. But again, I'm not sure it's particularly important. Various good were taxed at various rates: in general, luxury imports were taxed at higher rates than staple imports, manufactured imports taxed at a higher rate than unfinished imports. And goods from some nations were uniformly taxed at a higher rate than those from other nations (e.g. silks from France might be taxed at a higher rate than identical silks from Great Britain).

The 16th Amendment only dealt with income, so there was no question about the "value of the thing taxed," since the thing taxed was uniform for everyone: money. And the value of money was, conveniently, expressed in terms of money. So I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at here.

The fact is that the first income tax -- enacted during the Civil War -- was a progressive tax. It imposed three tax "brackets" -- Incomes between $600 and $5,000 were assessed at 5 percent; incomes between $5,000 and $10,000 were taxed at 7.5 percent; and incomes over $10,000 were taxed at the maximum rate of 10 percent. The first income tax after the enactment of the 16th Amendment was also progressive, with seven tax brackets: from 1 percent for incomes between $3,000 and $20,000 to a maximum of seven percent for incomes above $500,000 ... Progressive taxation, in other words, was not something unfamiliar to the drafters and adopters of the 16th amendment. Indeed, many of the same congressmen who voted on the amendment voted to approve the first internal revenue act. And if we're operating under an "original intent" standard of constitutional interpretation, we have to give a good deal of deference to the actions of those lawmakers who approved a progressive tax structure in the immediate aftermath of the 16th Amendment's ratification.

Continuing from my previous post:

...

please explain the basis for this claim. Are you suggesting that the "general welfare" clause does not authorize these kinds of transfers from one taxpayer to another? Is it a due process argument, based on the Fifth Amendment? Is it something else?

which taxes, in particular, impermissibly transfer money from one taxpayer to another? Is it just the social security tax? Or are there more?

I would support the "unconstitutionality" lawsuit, but unhappily I know that with enough money and time I could prove to the satisfaction of some courts that you were fornicating with a dog in downtown Houston at high noon.

The same judges that just disenfranchised all California voters would also decide your fornications. They will also decide your constitutionality plea. There, now don't you feel better, and more secure.