Misguided populism and selective taxation
"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." - Thomas Jefferson
David Boaz has written a great post explaining why selective taxation, like we saw yesterday as the House passed a 90% tax on AIG bonuses, is a form of tyranny:
Everybody’s angry. But anger doesn’t make good law. And there are real questions about both the wisdom and the legality of such legislation. Bloggers like Conor Clarke, Megan McArdle, and Eugene Volokh have asked if the bonus tax is legal or constitutional. And thank goodness for bloggers who ask the questions that members of Congress and print journalists seem to ignore!I saw some of the speeches by members of Congress yesterday. It wasn’t about taxpayer money being involved, because the bonuses make up a fraction of the TARP money, and if it really was about the taxpayers, each of them need only look in the mirror to see the real reason our dollars are being waste. It was an opportunity to bash business by playing on this misguided populism that has taken hold in our country.The bloggers wonder if after-the-fact taxes on specific people violate the constitutional ban on bills of attainder and ex post facto laws. (Ex post facto = after the fact.) Good questions indeed. But they should go further and ask, Are laws like this tyrannical? Ex post facto legislation isn’t just bad because it’s unconstitutional. It’s unconstitutional because it’s bad. (Nate Silver did raise these broader questions, arguing that the bonus tax bill was like the congressional intervention into the Terri Schiavo case: quite possibly legal and constitutional, but “it represented a gross overreach of the chamber’s authority, and ultimately undermined, at least a little bit, the rule of law.”)
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The rule of law requires that like people be treated alike and that people know what the law is so that they can plan their lives in accord with the law. In this case, a law is being passed to impose taxes on a particular, politically unpopular group. That is a tyrannical abuse of Congress’s powers. And in addition, it is retroactive legislation, changing the law upon which AIG and its employees had relied. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 62, “It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws . . . undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.”Selective taxation is tyranny. Ex post facto legislation violates the spirit of the liberal order, even if a particular piece of legislation can be “structured” to pass constitutional muster.
People need to stop and realize that if we allow our government to do this to people receiving these bonuses, what makes us think they won't do it to us.
Comments
More freedom gone but this time it has concrete ramifications. This time it is not just the repression of a right it is confiscation of ones material possession
What will be next?
"You made too much money last year so we have decided to tax what we feel is excess at the lawful... because we passed the law...90 % rate.
Your home is much too big for just two people so we are going to tax you at a rate we feel is justified .... "no we are not taxing your neighbor who has the same size house because there are 6 people living in that house"
We see you have two cars AND a boat.. We .... the government ... believe that to be an excess so we have decided to tax you at a rate of 30% per year of the value of that boat.... What you have owned it for 6 years? Then we will make the tax retro active... Well go ahead and sell it you still owe the tax...
Our records indicate you and your wife went to Europe last year... and by the rules we enacted this year you owe the government 500.00 international travel tax.
That is not an approved necessary medical procedure it is elective so according to the recently enacted government controlled medical system
you can only have this done if you pay the excessive medical treatment tax of 1200.00 dollars.
I know these examples sound absurd but do you not think what the House of Representatives and Senate is doing to the men and women at AIG is absurd.
The government has selected a particular group of citizens to use as sounding boards for their next election and I can only pray that the folks in their district will not be as gullible as the candidates believe them to be.
I know Mr. David Scott who is supposed to represent my district will enjoy another term but hopefully we will not have to see him after that ....
Our government is OUT OF CONTROL and unless you make your voice known YOU NOT ONLY COULD BE YOU WILL BE NEXT
Buy guns and bullets and hide them well
Don Henderson
Posted by: Don | March 20, 2009 09:26 PM
How is it that so many intelligent and well informed Americans see exactly what is happening, yet there is a paralysis to act.
We bemoan a Republican Part devoid of conservatives. We see a power-grip of Socialists in both houses of Congress.
What we have, here and now, is another manifestation of the historical refrences of tyranny. George S. Patton called Hitler a "paper hanging son of a b***ch." Worthless paper money haslong been called hanging paper.
Is there question where this is going? Are we as a nation too blinded to recognize a repeat of history?
Posted by: Larry Stanley | March 21, 2009 11:27 PM
It shows in the voter apathy of the past elections that our nation is filled with those who don't care. They don't realize that history is repeating itself and we have a new paper hanger. The voices of reason in our nation see the truth and they try to spread the word but it seems the message is falling on deaf ears. They are as the deer in the headlights, they won't see it coming until it's too late.
Posted by: The Doctor | March 21, 2009 11:44 PM