penalties are not taxes

[bigarrow]

Quote from Mav88:

Well first you have to understand that even Roberts knows that, for some goddamned reason he thought he needed to make sure Obamacare passed. Ginsberg knew thsi simple piece of logic, she actually 'dissented with the majority' on the commerce clause because even she didn't call it a tax . Either Roberts flipped suddenly and made shit up, or not even the liberals agreed with him- take your pick.

Ginsburg's argument itself about commerce is dangerous:



does she not understand the word compel? The Air Force buys their planes on the open market, they don't compel anyone to build airplanes. I think these people are just too old, lifetime terms need to be abolished.

Roberts doesn't agree with Ginsburg and vice versa, so Roberts says the penalty is a tax. Are penalties taxes?

Roberts says its just like buying gas and paying tax, but why would buying gas be penalized? Penalties are to discourage something, not raise revenue, but it is a bad example since buying gas is optional. Even more specious then would be calling the income tax a penalty, why in the hell would anyone want to discourage making money? Did Roberts realize that and stop? he could have easily moved from gas tax to income tax.

I can think of a gov't penalty for inaction. Where I live, if I refuse to cut my grass then the city will come do it and bill me $50. We even have a community hotline where you can turn in your neighbor. The city mandates that lawns be mowed, completing the parallel. But is that a tax?

If I mow my grass myself, it takes about $1.00 worth of grass and say $3.00 depreciation on my mower. You would have to calculate my labor cost as well. I do it in my free time when markets are closed (opportunity cost = 0) and I enjoy it so how to put a price on it? Easy, what would I pay you to do it? probably about $10 due to fact I don't think it is very hard.

If the city charged $10 to cut my grass, I'd probably think abouty letting them do it each time, in fact I'd turn myself in sometimes. The fact is that the penalty is designed to discourage that behavior by being high, which is the whole point.

If on the other hand we had a compulsory 'lawn tax' where we all have to pay a tax and government lawn mowers come over and mow the grass, then what are the chances such a tax would be $50 a pop? It could be higher or lower but the fact is that it would not be designed to be punative and most likely it would be lower. The very nature of the two are not equivalent, and if the cost of service is the same or higher than the cost of the penalty then it's not a penalty by definition. Roberts has lost his mind, nobody agrees with him (except piezoe), not even liberal judges or the democrats who emphatically stated this was not a tax.

I agree with the democrats, however Roberts did have some integrity, he admitted it was unconstitutional under the commerce clause. What a tragedy.

What a wonderful story about you cutting your grass as an analogy to the health care ruling. I can't wait for the one where you paint your house as an analogy to illegal aliens.

 

[Mav88]

What a wonderful story about you cutting your grass as an analogy to the health care ruling. I can't wait for the one where you paint your house as an analogy to illegal aliens.

Ricter and Piezoe used storm windows, the chief justice himself used gasoline and cigarette taxes. My analogy is actually more proper since it punishes inaction.

thanks for the dumb comment, great example of a self assured liberal whose brain is shut down by their religion. It helps to have examples.

 

[Mav88]

The Supreme Court’s health insurance decision is hard to swallow on the tax designation
http://www.greencompany.com/blog/index.php?postid=156

Robert, good stuff...

I have some specific comments, but I'll also say that Roberts seemed to forget about legislative intent. When confronted with a 'mirror image tax' he should have looked at legislative intent. Instead he just made things up so he could pass it.

Chief Justice Roberts ruled the ACA mandate to purchase health insurance under the Commerce Clause as unconstitutional, a mini victory for opponents of ACA. In my view, calling it a tax is hard to swallow, though. In this case, I agree with the minority dissent from the conservative justices

It's worse than that. Ginsberg's majority dissent also disagrees with Roberts. That's quite staggering, he acting alone concocted this argument because in his words "when a court confronts an unconstitutional statue its endeavor must be to conserve, not destroy, the legislation.

Chief Justice Roberts raised the popular argument that the government already assesses cigarette taxes as a financial disincentive to smoking, and he likened that to a tax incentive to purchase health insurance. In his opinion, Justice Roberts refers to tax penalties being a financial choice vs. mandates and other more severe government penalties, like jail time. In all due respect to our eminent Chief Justice, for many Americans digging into their pocket book for this health insurance penalty during a recession is pretty severe, too.

Sin taxes are attempts at behavior modification, but Roberts' argument uses fallacy of the excluded middle, I can avoid cigarette taxes by not smoking. Roberts also makes the arbitrary assumption that mandates are determined by the severity of the financial penalty, a fact you point out. This is not logical, even the storm window folks would agree with that.

Our tax attorney says “People who do not pay for insurance are more likely to use emergency rooms, which are government supported. So, it's permissible to tax them, just as it is permissible to tax companies which emit pollutants into the air.” (Indeed; I agreed with this concept when I wrote my tax idea “Social Tax” years ago.) Our tax attorney also points out that “There are many taxes that do not apply on earned income. For example, cigarette taxes and gas taxes.”

If we can tax them, why not just bill them when they use the ER? are we also gonna pretend that they can afford the taxes? guess who is going to end up paying.

President Obama is a constitutional attorney and scholar. I’m guessing he probably knew his mandate was safer cast as a tax. I wonder if he knowingly sold it to Congress and the American people with some deception in this context. Many Americans (including myself) don't accept new tax hikes easily, especially when Congress and the President sell them with marketing deception, making back room deals, and not listening to the American people.

I disagree with the scholar part, he hasn't written anything scholarly, which is how you would define such a person. Of course they knew, but recall his campaign promise not to raise taxes on the middle class. Democrats had to deceive the american people in order to do this, and even then they had to do it with reconciliation.

So you fall into the Roberts is right camp by the looks of it. I ask the following question then, by Robert's own theory a tax that get too high turns into a mandate. Where is the boundary? Some folks around here want 90% marginal income tax.

 

[OccupyThis]

Quote from bigarrow:

What a wonderful story about you cutting your grass as an analogy to the health care ruling. I can't wait for the one where you paint your house as an analogy to illegal aliens.

Ask Krugman.

 

[Ricter]

Quote from Mav88:

Ricter and Piezoe used storm windows, the chief justice himself used gasoline and cigarette taxes. My analogy is actually more proper since it punishes inaction.

thanks for the dumb comment, great example of a self assured liberal whose brain is shut down by their religion. It helps to have examples.

Not sure who brought up storm windows (re tax incentives) but it wasn't me.

 

[bigarrow]

Quote from Mav88:

Ricter and Piezoe used storm windows, the chief justice himself used gasoline and cigarette taxes. My analogy is actually more proper since it punishes inaction.

thanks for the dumb comment, great example of a self assured liberal whose brain is shut down by their religion. It helps to have examples.

No religion here Opie, atheist and part time malcontent.
You're the one with your brain shut down. I'm the one who can see both sides to this issue.
It was a close decision because both sides do have good arguments.

 

[OccupyThis]

Quote from bigarrow:

No religion here Opie, atheist and part time malcontent.
You're the one with your brain shut down. I'm the one who can see both sides to this issue.
It was a close decision because both sides do have good arguments.

What are both sides?

 

[OccupyThis]

 

[Mav88]

Not sure who brought up storm windows (re tax incentives) but it wasn't me.

you didn't initially bring it up, but you followed on piezoe's point but arguing something like storm window deductions were good because they made us stronger, or something like that.

 

[Mav88]

No religion here Opie, atheist and part time malcontent.
You're the one with your brain shut down. I'm the one who can see both sides to this issue.
It was a close decision because both sides do have good arguments.

You subscribe to the leftist religion, impulsively you mock anything that opposses it. You just proved it, there are actually 3 distinct 'sides' that I have been discussing. A black and white religious thinker always has 2 sides: us and them.