Just because I am not in USA right now, doesn't mean that I cannot speak about these matters, besides, clearly I am much more knowledgeable on these issues than you ever were (and probably ever will be).
You do not understand what Constitution is, you don't understand what is constitutional, what is not, you do not understand what Constitution applies to, you do not understand basic economics, you don't understand unintended consequences, you do not know history. But you are of-course within your right not to continue this discussion.
Ha, Federal government has authority to do certain things, but it only exists under the Constitution, which was ratified by the States, and if the Constitution gave an impression to the States, that they were surrendering their rights to the Federal government, they would have NEVER ratified that Constitution.
Federal government IS given certain authority, and it is listed in the document, but of-course again, this is lost on you. The Constitution has been completely abandoned, this is also lost on you.
As to this particular ruling today, here is my scholarly answer to that:
1. The fine in the mandate is now defined as a tax, but since it is not a direct apportioned tax, nor is it a uniform excise tax, it is absolutely unconstitutional, and it should be challenged in court again on these grounds and if the gov't wants to go around this little problem, it will have to change the 16th amendment or add another one, now talking about a direct non-apportioned tax that is levied upon people for failing to buy health insurance.
2. The argument in the ruling that the gov't has authority to apply mandate based on the commerce law - this is again, pure nonsense, as the people who are not buying insurance are not engaging in commerce, they are not businesses (just to clear that little point), they are individuals, but that doesn't matter, it is the ACT of commerce that can be regulated ACROSS state lines, not the business itself nor is it an act of not doing business, nor does that authority apply to commerce that doesn't cross state lines.
I was under the silly impression that it was intended to govern people, not businesses.
- you are under a silly impression indeed, government isn't there to govern people, it's there to protect people's freedoms, but that fine point has been lost on you and many others long ago. Gov't is not supposed to be your ruler under the Constitution, it's supposed to be your servant. Well, long live that idea.
Now, as to your question: general welfare relates to ensuring that the entire Union is in a good social and economic shape, but it's not about individual welfare, it's about the entire union, as in - the collection of States, and you should familiarise yourself with some history of your country (if it is yours, I assume it is, maybe I am wrong), there is always context to everything in the Constitution, it didn't arise from vacuum, so every provision there was a response to a particular problem, and that was the problem the general welfare clause was addressing - States creating artificial barriers to entry, and it's not about businesses, it's about individuals, businesses are individuals, not in the way people are humans, but in the sense that businesses are ran by individuals, so when you set a barrier to entry to a business, you are setting a barrier to entry to a human who is running that business, and general welfare is supposed to ensure that there are no barriers to entry that create artificial disadvantages across State lines and prevent competition.
You are correct, the chief justice talks about taxes, while the remaining ones also add this is justified under the commerce clause.
So it will have to be attacked later on, first on the fact that since it is a tax, it's an unconstitutional tax, it's neither a direct apportioned tax, nor is it a uniform excise tax. Gov't doesn't have ability to tax in whichever way it wants, the taxes still have to be constitutional.
Secondly, as a commerce clause - well this again, assumes that the gov't can regulate business itself rather than act of buying something, so a business cannot be forced to provide a specific product, but the act of selling / buying over state lines can be regulated.
The mandate is way beyond any business regulations, mandate is the exact opposite of commerce - it regulates ABSENCE of commerce.
However you are not a business, presumably you are an individual. Regulating YOUR LACK OF ACTIONS is different than even regulating lack of actions of a business.
Can you be required to work and if you are not working, can you be taxed... oh, sorry... fined for not working?
- tell me, who provided anybody with health insurance before free market capitalism based and industrialisation. Do you know? People went to their local doctors, yes? no? yes?
The poorest in the society always got their charity from somebody, and they knew exactly who was giving them charity, which is the way it should be. Gov't took upon itself to steal from some and give to others, call it 'charity'. It's not charity, people now EXPECT that type of 'charity', they now understand it as their 'right' for some reason.
I do not see it as a right.
It is an entitlement and gov't shouldn't be allowed to do that - steal from some to give to others.
Charity always exists, doctors used to do work pro-bono, churches and other groups took care of people, it was known as charity and it should stay that way.
There shouldn't be an idea that just because you are born, you are entitled to something - you didn't do anything yet to deserve anybody's productivity, anybody's wealth.
The type of system that I advocate is a system where people are served by the free market capitalism, which is the best system known in this world to people to produce the most wealth in this world in the shortest time span.
The kind of world I advocate is the world where everybody is so productive that they don't have a problem paying for their healthcare out of pocket, that's my preferred method, but I will never advocate a welfare world.
Ha ha ha, so based on 'interstate commerce' then gov't can regulate any business for any reason it desires. Makes me happy not to be an American at this dark hour.
I admitted no such thing, dumbass. Equal opportunity laws do not increase minority unemployment no matter how much Faux Noise you watch.
- of-course you did, you specifically admitted that this is not a rights violation, you said - "it should be illegal then", but you admitted that company doesn't violate any rights of anybody by offering a product to a specific set of people, say to men only.
Now, I don't watch 'Faux Noise", or whatever, you Americans, enjoy on your TVs there, but "equal opportunity" acts exactly as a barrier to entry for those very people, who are supposedly gaining from such laws.
I wouldn't hire anybody who is protected by government as a group, so I would be limited to young white men only in USA, but this carries with itself another risk - being sued for discrimination for NOT hiring, exactly the same thing as this ACA here with a mandate, being fined for NOT buying something.
So I wouldn't do business in USA anymore, though I actually did do before I moved it to Asia.
If the penalty is lower than monthly payments, only a fool would not cancel his insurance immediately. The 'no preexisting conditions' clause turned this from insurance into something else altogether, that's not insurance, and paying a fine is probably going to be cheaper than paying premiums.
Ha ha ha, he shouldn't buy any health care insurance product, he should opt out to pay fines, the bill will still be on the US tax payer, and he'd forgo EVER paying for any type of insurance. That's because insurance is no longer insurance with the 'no preexisting conditions' rule in place.
If he is poor enough, he can just live on a subsidy forever, great incentive for people to never try and improve their circumstances.
When gov't passes a law that says: you have no right to discriminate against your customers on your own property and you don't have the right to free association, then it's NOT any addition of any rights, it's a destruction of rights and it's one of the reasons doing business in USA is so expensive that nobody wants to - litigation based on gov't entitlement/obligation laws.
Oh, that wouldn't happen to you because you're a white male.
- it should bother the minorities much more, that after the misnamed civil rights act their situation only worsened, as they used to have much lower unemployment before that law passed. A law like that... what would it do to those, who get this entitlement for a lawsuit... I wonder, do the employers modify their behaviour and decide NOT to hire minorities because firing them would be a LITIGATION CAUSING EVENT?
Yeah, people don't modify their behaviour based on laws... wait, they do. People, who otherwise wouldn't ever in their lives think about their employees in terms of 'white or black', 'men or women', once the government passes a law that says that one of these choices comes with an increased risk of a lawsuit... Well, lets put it this way. Prior to 1964 unemployment among young blacks (ages 16 to 25) was lower than in the white population in the same age group, it was under 15%.
I am an atheist, you dumbass, and here is a free advice for you: buy your own insurance...
unless you are in USA, then you don't need to buy health insurance, just pay the fines, it'll be cheaper than paying premiums, the gov't will subsidise it for you.
1. Obama said he wouldn't raise taxes, yet here it is.
There are 2 types of taxes that are Constitutional:
1. Excise tax. This must be uniform. 2. Direct tax. This must be apportioned.
Excise tax must be on sale of a product, but not on not buying a product.
Direct tax, like capitation tax must be apportioned, but they absolutely cannot apportion this among states so that states can pay their share based on their population.
So it's not being levied on anything, not excise. It's not a direct, it can't be apportioned.
It's not a legal tax. It's not a tax on income, it's not a tax on a transaction. It's a tax on a non-transaction.
I guess once you accept into the propaganda of 'living breathing document', you can accept anything.
you are not a capitalist, you are a tyrant, that's all that you are, with a huge control issue.
By the way, instead of accusing me of 'propaganda', why don't you try and come up with a logical rebuttal to my comment, but you can't do it.
You can't do it, because it is only 100% correct.
Once the fine for not having insurance is lower than insurance payments for a time period, and especially once the fine is lower than the amount that insurance would have to pay out in case of emergency, people would be suckers to have that insurance and pay for it.
Nothing, that has the words "no pre-existing condition" in it can be called insurance.
Insurance by definition is a way to MAKE A BET, and a bet against a situation cannot be made, once it is already known that the situation is here now.
Nobody can buy car insurance to cover their accident once they had the accident - that's a preexisting condition.
The people who like that aspect of this Act don't understand that it is no longer insurance, don't understand that this is yet another tax and a stimulus package and that it will become even expensive this way over time than what it used to be.
Gov't will be subsidising some and guaranteeing everybody else, who didn't buy the 'insurance' plan yet, because gov't will be the entity on the hook to pay for the coverage after the fact.
The people who like this Act completely don't understand what this is going to do to their economy, well, nothing changed.
"General welfare" does not equate to 'personal welfare'.
General welfare is supposed to be achieved by ensuring that States do not create barriers to entry against each other, so one state shouldn't be able to prevent a person from driving in the State unless that person got a driver's license from that specific State.
Unfortunately the federal gov't not only failed to uphold and protect the Constitution at least since 1900, but it also is clearly incapable of carrying out its direct duties - preventing States from erecting barriers to entry to businesses.
So a State declaring that a lawyer or a financier or a doctor or an engineer, etc.etc., needs a professional license FROM THAT STATE even if he already has a professional license issued in any other State - well, that's a direct failure of the Federal gov't to discharge its duties.
No, not happy. Why would you want to make certain types of products illegal exactly? What is your thinking pattern?
Here is a privately created company, with private savings, private investment, it doesn't TOUCH YOU, it produces a product and markets it to a certain group of people, whoever they are, and they are able to provide the best product for that group of people at the lowest prices.
Here comes you and here you says: you can't give these people this great product they want to buy, because it violates my ability to be a prick.
1. Gold is a real resource, not printed by men, it's scarce enough to be mostly inflation neutral, it requires actual work to be done in order to be extracted, and thus there is work attached to its value.
It has intrinsic properties that make it a good store of value - people always exchange for it. Model-T Ford cost 20 ounces in 1914, today a car can be bought for about that much, a cheap car can be bought for a fraction of that, so gold not only keeps value, but it grows in value because of the productivity in the economy.
Gold is not subject to human desire to print it, it is non-volatile, it's safe to handle, not a gas, not radioactive, not poisonous, not explosive, easy to melt down, turn into bars, coins, any small parts. It can be stored for long periods of time, retrieved, and it is still unchanged. It is easily recognised, it's easy to test, it's universally desired.
Sure sure, eventually we may come up with better alternatives, who knows, but for now I will put my bet on gold as opposed to any paper, any and all fiat money disappeared on this planet over time, gold is still here.
By the way, once a gov't wants to gain control over money, it introduces wage and price and capital controls, including controls over gold transactions, that's done for a reason - gov't understands these simple principles, you seem to dismiss them, well, it's your loss.
The answer you're giving me as to how you know these things is.... you have a theory!!!! Your theory involves this and that and it makes sense to you,and that's how you know.
- it's history, it's not a theory that comes out of sitting in a closet, thinking about how the world should work. That's how the Krugmans of the world operate. Austrian school of thought operates on understanding history and human behaviour, and we have plenty of examples to look at and everywhere we look, we see that it is a real world model.
Keynesians would have you believe that unemployment and rising levels of inflation are incompatible, so they avoid looking at simple counterexamples of stagflation (USA had that in the seventies). Monetarists believe in gov't controlling the interest rates and setting 'targets', thus denying the market to set market interest rates, and when this leads to inflation and hyper-inflation, well, I guess the 'wrong people' were in charge of government, so if only we can find those 'right people'.
Again, in my country of origin they thought they have conjured up the 'right people' and they destroyed the economy by running it command style - totalitarian socialism, no market, no individual freedoms, but plenty of statists, statisticians and plenty of gov't spending. Well, all spending was government spending.
USA OTOH has added to the world's history a period of time, when moderate deflation combine with lack of government regulations created the most productive nation on the planet, turning a former afterthought to the European countries into the biggest producer, exporter and thus creditor nation. All of that happened without gov't regulations and without income or corporate taxes, without any type of fake gov't insurance, without money regulations, without fake interest rates, printing of cash, without stimulus and bailouts, with almost no gov't spending.
All that infrastructure built by private interests, simply because they wanted to make a buck. Today China is the best approximation to that type of economy unfortunately, and they are doing it without even absolute protections to the individual rights, but at least they violate the rights of individuals to do business so little in practice, that the Chinese economy still pulled more people out of poverty over 30 years, than the rest of the world combined over the last century.
BTW., if you think I can't reason, you don't have to argue with me, what would be the point, right?
You can now cancel your insurance and wait until you really need it before you buy into that 'insurance' plan that you need, because clearly your fine will be lower than the cost you'd incur paying either for that condition or for your monthly 'insurance' payment. (more details here)
This is not insurance, unless it's unclear, this is just a tax. The concept of insurance ends where 'no preexisting conditions' rule begins.
You should submit that you don't know what "constitutional" means.
Constitution is not there to tell a business how to behave, it only defines what the government is and what it is authorised to do.
A person murdering you, for example, is NOT unconstitutional, it's a criminal offence, but he didn't "violate your right to live", because between him and you, you never had anything resembling a concept of a 'right'.
A 'right' is a concept that only has meaning within the relationship between you (individual) and the collective (government).
A business that creates a particular product for a particular customer cannot do anything that is 'unconstitutional'. By the way, that business cannot do anything that is 'constitutional' either.
I understand you love replying nearly to all of my comments, but here is why I never reply back (this will be the exception). You assume that the mob can steal from the productive people (you can call them rich) indefinitely.
That's patently false, the rich are moving their savings, investments and productivity somewhere else, eventually USA will be in the position that USSR was in - all productivity disappeared, whatever could be stolen was stolen, the individual became completely subservient to the collective, but there was no wealth, no real wealth, no things people actually want in their lives created.
Eventually, you see, you run out of people to steal from. Sure, USSR put shackles on people, built the 'iron curtain' - nobody could leave. But it only acted as a dis-incentive to work, people did plenty of things (many of which were illegal), but nobody really worked. So who are they going to steal from? The answer - they'll be stealing from themselves, as they will be missing something, they'll be missing the wealth and productivity that free market allows.
They'll be missing everything - from good food, to good clothing, to good medical care, to good TVs, to anything and everything.
Some will keep living better than others though, those who'll be in power, and thus the system will change to something worse for everybody, while keeping the worst parts of the system that exists today - corruption.
It's not going to be good for the people, those very people in that very mob. People who are productive and want to work to improve their lives will leave.
Right, or you can SAVE some money while working and attempt to start a business without asking anybody for any loans.
Of-course if you do get a loan and start a business, you'll either succeed or fail, but while you are supposed to pay the loan back with interest, unless you can pull it off, it's not your money you are risking - it's the money of the investors.
And thus you are risking some of your collateral (hopefully the banks aren't stupid enough to give you a loan without any collateral) and you are risking a bunch of your creditors' cash.
So when was it that slave owners gave their slaves money to start business while risking losing that money?
So the SCOTUS once again, lives up to its name of an activist court, it is activist, because it takes a completely unconstitutional idea and declares that it is Constitutional. What else is new.
Now, what this decision means is that people should cancel their health insurance unless they want to be suckers.
Are you a sucker?
If you are not a sucker, you'll cancel your health insurance and you won't have it until you absolutely need it, at which point you can come to a health insurance company and become a 'client', because they can't deny you for any pre-existing conditions.
Of-course this means that insurance is no longer insurance. Insurance is not there to take care of your bills for you because you can't whenever you feel like it, it's there so that you can bet a monthly payment that you will need the insurance, while insurance is willing to take the opposite side of that bet as long as it has enough people in the pool, everybody will have coverage when they need it. It works because the pool allows insurance to have actual assets.
Government doesn't have assets of-course, so no gov't insurance is real.
OTOH gov't just introduced a new tax - you have to buy insurance or you'll be fined.
BUT as long as the fine charge is LOWER than whatever the condition you will be in, when you actually NEED insurance, you are coming out of this ahead, way ahead.
So for example - if your insurance bill is 1000 USD/month, and you visit a doctor 4 times a year, then it means your visits cost you 12000, or 3000 per visit.
Now, I remember I sometimes came to Buffalo Medical Group or Rochester Centre and paid out of pocket. Normally a charge is just over a hundred bucks, but there was time the charge was around 3500, but I always paid out of pocket.
So those can be prices for normal, regular things, visits, check ups, whatever.
However a case of cancer can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars, most people don't have that money for this, so they want insurance to cover it.
But if insurance cannot deny pre-existing condition and if the fine for not having insurance is lower than the cost of this pre-existing condition and in fact the fine is lower per year than actually buying insurance for that year, then it makes absolute sense to choose to pay fines and not insurance fees.
In fact the fines will be very low initially, and they will be going up all the time, because of what I am talking about - people will choose to take a fine as a financial hit and will skip buying insurance until they must.
This is a recipe for disaster, but at the same time it is just another STIMULUS PACKAGE.
This is a stimulus package. The insurance companies will have their money one way or another - either people will pay monthly, or gov't will pay to the insurance to subsidise the costs, while charging nominal fines to the uninsured that are caught.
But that's just a stimulus - more fake money will be created to pay for this, and Obama needs this for his reelections.
Of-course in the long run, this plan will help to dismantle the very socialistic economy that Obama stands for, and that's the only redeeming quality of this ruling today.
Help me out here. What do you think stops the consolidation of corporate power? What do you think stops banks from getting too big to fail and monopolies from forming ?
- competition and absence of laws that prevent competition.
You have a successful company building widgets, I am looking at you and I want to repeat that success. I take my savings or I ask a number of people to participate, we start producing widgets. If it is true that my hunch is correct and that I can be more efficient than you, I start making profits.
If we are successful enough, we can either sell our company to you, a good exit strategy, or we can run it ourselves.
The more successful you are with your widget production, the more profits you make, the more incentives other people see to enter the same market. If they are right, and if they can produce cheaper, better, whatever, they'll be your competition, this forces the market prices to drop, so you'll lower your prices.
If we are all wrong, and you are already at the edge of efficiency that economy of scale allows you to have, then we'll likely lose in that game, so you have an economy of scale that is best at providing the customers with widgets, so customers are best served with just your company, but normally there is space for more than one company in the market and there is one or two or a few biggest economies of scale and a few smaller players.
People love to bring the false example of Standard Oil to show that gov't destroyed a monopoly, but they don't realise that by 1911 Standard Oil had 150 competitors and it provided the lowest price since 1869. In 1869 SO had 4% of the market, and one gallon of refined oil sold at 30 cents.
By 1899 SO sold one gallon of oil for UNDER 6 cents (5.9 or 5.8), so in 30 years the prices dropped by over 80%.
Once SO was broken up, prices never went down again, indeed they started gradually going up.
The problem is it's not their money, its their investor's money because we deregulated the banks from having to separate investing from savings.
- gov't shouldn't be in business regulating banks and money in the first place, it's the moral hazard of gov't intervention that created this problem.
FDIC is a huge part of the problem - it's a moral hazard of fake gov't guarantee. Fake, because there are no assets there to guarantee anything, it'll be bailed out by the Fed once the time comes. Moral hazard, because it means ppl don't care who they are lending their money to. That's right, giving money to a banker means lending him your money, unless it's a deposit box basically, where you pay fees to keep your money in that box and you don't want anybody to loan that out.
Banks used to be just in business of keeping your money for a fee and only lending it out and investing it if you agreed to that, and you wouldn't have to pay the monthly fees then, you'd make a few percent, the bankers used to be safe keepers and investment managers, that's all, that was their function BEFORE the gov't took over and created all the moral hazards of the Fed (fake money, fake interest rates) and later FDIC (moral hazard of people not caring who they are lending to).
We permitted AIG to say that their derivatives were not a form of insurance and thus evade the regulation which exists to insure that insurers are themselves good for the debts under all circumstances. This was clearly a situation where AIG should have been regulated but they gamed the system to get out of it.
- gov't shouldn't be allowed to regulate businesses, including insurance, which is just another business.
There is nothing special about insurance (or health care or education for that matter) that requires gov't there. Gov't got into insurance business, creating a huge and impossible to compete with system - a system based on non-existing reserves and fake money.
How can an insurance company compete with an entity that PRINT
History proves you wrong. 19th century US couldn't self correct itself and it got destroyed by people gaming the system.
- well, you just said something that made absolutely no sense at all. 19th century, especially the time after the gov't trying to push paper money onto everybody because of war, was the time when USA created its economy, USA became world's largest producer, exporter and creditor nation, which of-course took huge amounts of savings, investments, competition, innovation, infrastructure building, all done in private sector, all done in free market - market free from government intervention.
1800 to 1913, dollar gained value by a factor of 2. 1913 - 2012, dollar lost almost 99% of its value.
You clearly don't know anything on the topic, so bugger off.
I know that in the real world 'gaming the system' is irrelevant to the health of the economy, because it is limited to the people who are involved, and in the free market there are no 'too big to fail' banks, there are no monopolies, there are economies of scale, but no monopolies. In the free market somebody CAN game the system, they can steal your money, but they can't keep at it for too long, as people discover the problem they just stop dealing with that individual or business.
This is the polar opposite when gov't is involved - it doesn't matter if you figure out that the gov't is stealing, you can't stop dealing with the gov't, you can't stop SS, you can't stop Medicare, you can't stop undeclared wars, you can't stop EI, you can't stop Medicaid, you can't stop welfare state, you can't stop labour laws and business regulations, you can't stop income taxes, etc.etc.
The good thing about the free market is that it is stronger than any government and any given economy, so eventually everything rebalances and the offenders (nations, countries, economies) will be crushed and then rebalanced again, so it is a self-correcting problem in the long run.
The bad thing is that instead of trying to fix it by allowing the free market to work and run a normal course -recession, depression, recovery, the gov't wants to prevent any of these restructuring activities from taking place, it's political suicide, so the gov't fights the free market forces the only ways it knows how: fake money, fake low interest rates, wars, totalitarianism.
Eventually all of it will crush, but unfortunately it will cause massive damage before it's restructured, the longer the gov't continues propping up its fake economy, the worse the crush will be and the longer the recovery will take.
As to what Free Market is - it's only a matter of not having government regulations, capitalism, individual freedom, respect for private property. Free market means market free from government meddling.
I was born in a place that was antithetical to the free market - former USSR. The system was fighting the market forces for 75 years, eventually it crushed of-course, and the recovery is taking a very long time.
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I am pretty certain you can refuse based on race as well, for example there are 'black' scholarships, there was a funny/sad story just a little while ago on this, a white student got a scholarship intended for blacks only, he got it based on merit, but they never saw him before he showed up to receive it, he gave it back though.
Just because I am not in USA right now, doesn't mean that I cannot speak about these matters, besides, clearly I am much more knowledgeable on these issues than you ever were (and probably ever will be).
You do not understand what Constitution is, you don't understand what is constitutional, what is not, you do not understand what Constitution applies to, you do not understand basic economics, you don't understand unintended consequences, you do not know history. But you are of-course within your right not to continue this discussion.
Ha, Federal government has authority to do certain things, but it only exists under the Constitution, which was ratified by the States, and if the Constitution gave an impression to the States, that they were surrendering their rights to the Federal government, they would have NEVER ratified that Constitution.
Federal government IS given certain authority, and it is listed in the document, but of-course again, this is lost on you. The Constitution has been completely abandoned, this is also lost on you.
As to this particular ruling today, here is my scholarly answer to that:
1. The fine in the mandate is now defined as a tax, but since it is not a direct apportioned tax, nor is it a uniform excise tax, it is absolutely unconstitutional, and it should be challenged in court again on these grounds and if the gov't wants to go around this little problem, it will have to change the 16th amendment or add another one, now talking about a direct non-apportioned tax that is levied upon people for failing to buy health insurance.
2. The argument in the ruling that the gov't has authority to apply mandate based on the commerce law - this is again, pure nonsense, as the people who are not buying insurance are not engaging in commerce, they are not businesses (just to clear that little point), they are individuals, but that doesn't matter, it is the ACT of commerce that can be regulated ACROSS state lines, not the business itself nor is it an act of not doing business, nor does that authority apply to commerce that doesn't cross state lines.
Cheers.
I was under the silly impression that it was intended to govern people, not businesses.
- you are under a silly impression indeed, government isn't there to govern people, it's there to protect people's freedoms, but that fine point has been lost on you and many others long ago. Gov't is not supposed to be your ruler under the Constitution, it's supposed to be your servant. Well, long live that idea.
Now, as to your question: general welfare relates to ensuring that the entire Union is in a good social and economic shape, but it's not about individual welfare, it's about the entire union, as in - the collection of States, and you should familiarise yourself with some history of your country (if it is yours, I assume it is, maybe I am wrong), there is always context to everything in the Constitution, it didn't arise from vacuum, so every provision there was a response to a particular problem, and that was the problem the general welfare clause was addressing - States creating artificial barriers to entry, and it's not about businesses, it's about individuals, businesses are individuals, not in the way people are humans, but in the sense that businesses are ran by individuals, so when you set a barrier to entry to a business, you are setting a barrier to entry to a human who is running that business, and general welfare is supposed to ensure that there are no barriers to entry that create artificial disadvantages across State lines and prevent competition.
Here is the text, 193 pages, I went through it quickly.
You are correct, the chief justice talks about taxes, while the remaining ones also add this is justified under the commerce clause.
So it will have to be attacked later on, first on the fact that since it is a tax, it's an unconstitutional tax, it's neither a direct apportioned tax, nor is it a uniform excise tax. Gov't doesn't have ability to tax in whichever way it wants, the taxes still have to be constitutional.
Secondly, as a commerce clause - well this again, assumes that the gov't can regulate business itself rather than act of buying something, so a business cannot be forced to provide a specific product, but the act of selling / buying over state lines can be regulated.
The mandate is way beyond any business regulations, mandate is the exact opposite of commerce - it regulates ABSENCE of commerce.
We do know that gov't has already crossed the line of unconstitutionality long ago (and the courts too), they did fine a farmer for NOT engaging in commerce.
However you are not a business, presumably you are an individual. Regulating YOUR LACK OF ACTIONS is different than even regulating lack of actions of a business.
Can you be required to work and if you are not working, can you be taxed... oh, sorry... fined for not working?
is this the society you advocate for?
- tell me, who provided anybody with health insurance before free market capitalism based and industrialisation. Do you know? People went to their local doctors, yes? no? yes?
The poorest in the society always got their charity from somebody, and they knew exactly who was giving them charity, which is the way it should be. Gov't took upon itself to steal from some and give to others, call it 'charity'. It's not charity, people now EXPECT that type of 'charity', they now understand it as their 'right' for some reason.
I do not see it as a right.
It is an entitlement and gov't shouldn't be allowed to do that - steal from some to give to others.
Charity always exists, doctors used to do work pro-bono, churches and other groups took care of people, it was known as charity and it should stay that way.
There shouldn't be an idea that just because you are born, you are entitled to something - you didn't do anything yet to deserve anybody's productivity, anybody's wealth.
The type of system that I advocate is a system where people are served by the free market capitalism, which is the best system known in this world to people to produce the most wealth in this world in the shortest time span.
The kind of world I advocate is the world where everybody is so productive that they don't have a problem paying for their healthcare out of pocket, that's my preferred method, but I will never advocate a welfare world.
Ha ha ha, so based on 'interstate commerce' then gov't can regulate any business for any reason it desires. Makes me happy not to be an American at this dark hour.
I admitted no such thing, dumbass. Equal opportunity laws do not increase minority unemployment no matter how much Faux Noise you watch.
- of-course you did, you specifically admitted that this is not a rights violation, you said - "it should be illegal then", but you admitted that company doesn't violate any rights of anybody by offering a product to a specific set of people, say to men only.
Now, I don't watch 'Faux Noise", or whatever, you Americans, enjoy on your TVs there, but "equal opportunity" acts exactly as a barrier to entry for those very people, who are supposedly gaining from such laws.
I wouldn't hire anybody who is protected by government as a group, so I would be limited to young white men only in USA, but this carries with itself another risk - being sued for discrimination for NOT hiring, exactly the same thing as this ACA here with a mandate, being fined for NOT buying something.
So I wouldn't do business in USA anymore, though I actually did do before I moved it to Asia.
If the penalty is lower than monthly payments, only a fool would not cancel his insurance immediately. The 'no preexisting conditions' clause turned this from insurance into something else altogether, that's not insurance, and paying a fine is probably going to be cheaper than paying premiums.
Ha ha ha, he shouldn't buy any health care insurance product, he should opt out to pay fines, the bill will still be on the US tax payer, and he'd forgo EVER paying for any type of insurance. That's because insurance is no longer insurance with the 'no preexisting conditions' rule in place.
If he is poor enough, he can just live on a subsidy forever, great incentive for people to never try and improve their circumstances.
Do you think that if an insurer was for "Whites Only" that it would be okay?
- of-course it is OK.
It is a private business, it doesn't VIOLATE ANY RIGHT OF YOURS, you have already admitted that much, your memory can't be that short.
When gov't passes a law that says: you have no right to discriminate against your customers on your own property and you don't have the right to free association, then it's NOT any addition of any rights, it's a destruction of rights and it's one of the reasons doing business in USA is so expensive that nobody wants to - litigation based on gov't entitlement/obligation laws.
Oh, that wouldn't happen to you because you're a white male.
- it should bother the minorities much more, that after the misnamed civil rights act their situation only worsened, as they used to have much lower unemployment before that law passed. A law like that... what would it do to those, who get this entitlement for a lawsuit... I wonder, do the employers modify their behaviour and decide NOT to hire minorities because firing them would be a LITIGATION CAUSING EVENT?
Yeah, people don't modify their behaviour based on laws... wait, they do. People, who otherwise wouldn't ever in their lives think about their employees in terms of 'white or black', 'men or women', once the government passes a law that says that one of these choices comes with an increased risk of a lawsuit... Well, lets put it this way. Prior to 1964 unemployment among young blacks (ages 16 to 25) was lower than in the white population in the same age group, it was under 15%.
Today it's over 50%.
I am an atheist, you dumbass, and here is a free advice for you: buy your own insurance...
unless you are in USA, then you don't need to buy health insurance, just pay the fines, it'll be cheaper than paying premiums, the gov't will subsidise it for you.
so is this an excise or is it a direct tax then?
1. Obama said he wouldn't raise taxes, yet here it is.
There are 2 types of taxes that are Constitutional:
1. Excise tax. This must be uniform.
2. Direct tax. This must be apportioned.
Excise tax must be on sale of a product, but not on not buying a product.
Direct tax, like capitation tax must be apportioned, but they absolutely cannot apportion this among states so that states can pay their share based on their population.
So it's not being levied on anything, not excise.
It's not a direct, it can't be apportioned.
It's not a legal tax. It's not a tax on income, it's not a tax on a transaction. It's a tax on a non-transaction.
I guess once you accept into the propaganda of 'living breathing document', you can accept anything.
you are not a capitalist, you are a tyrant, that's all that you are, with a huge control issue.
By the way, instead of accusing me of 'propaganda', why don't you try and come up with a logical rebuttal to my comment, but you can't do it.
You can't do it, because it is only 100% correct.
Once the fine for not having insurance is lower than insurance payments for a time period, and especially once the fine is lower than the amount that insurance would have to pay out in case of emergency, people would be suckers to have that insurance and pay for it.
Nothing, that has the words "no pre-existing condition" in it can be called insurance.
Insurance by definition is a way to MAKE A BET, and a bet against a situation cannot be made, once it is already known that the situation is here now.
Nobody can buy car insurance to cover their accident once they had the accident - that's a preexisting condition.
The people who like that aspect of this Act don't understand that it is no longer insurance, don't understand that this is yet another tax and a stimulus package and that it will become even expensive this way over time than what it used to be.
Gov't will be subsidising some and guaranteeing everybody else, who didn't buy the 'insurance' plan yet, because gov't will be the entity on the hook to pay for the coverage after the fact.
The people who like this Act completely don't understand what this is going to do to their economy, well, nothing changed.
"General welfare" does not equate to 'personal welfare'.
General welfare is supposed to be achieved by ensuring that States do not create barriers to entry against each other, so one state shouldn't be able to prevent a person from driving in the State unless that person got a driver's license from that specific State.
Unfortunately the federal gov't not only failed to uphold and protect the Constitution at least since 1900, but it also is clearly incapable of carrying out its direct duties - preventing States from erecting barriers to entry to businesses.
So a State declaring that a lawyer or a financier or a doctor or an engineer, etc.etc., needs a professional license FROM THAT STATE even if he already has a professional license issued in any other State - well, that's a direct failure of the Federal gov't to discharge its duties.
No, not happy. Why would you want to make certain types of products illegal exactly? What is your thinking pattern?
Here is a privately created company, with private savings, private investment, it doesn't TOUCH YOU, it produces a product and markets it to a certain group of people, whoever they are, and they are able to provide the best product for that group of people at the lowest prices.
Here comes you and here you says: you can't give these people this great product they want to buy, because it violates my ability to be a prick.
1. Gold is a real resource, not printed by men, it's scarce enough to be mostly inflation neutral, it requires actual work to be done in order to be extracted, and thus there is work attached to its value.
It has intrinsic properties that make it a good store of value - people always exchange for it. Model-T Ford cost 20 ounces in 1914, today a car can be bought for about that much, a cheap car can be bought for a fraction of that, so gold not only keeps value, but it grows in value because of the productivity in the economy.
Gold is not subject to human desire to print it, it is non-volatile, it's safe to handle, not a gas, not radioactive, not poisonous, not explosive, easy to melt down, turn into bars, coins, any small parts. It can be stored for long periods of time, retrieved, and it is still unchanged. It is easily recognised, it's easy to test, it's universally desired.
Sure sure, eventually we may come up with better alternatives, who knows, but for now I will put my bet on gold as opposed to any paper, any and all fiat money disappeared on this planet over time, gold is still here.
By the way, once a gov't wants to gain control over money, it introduces wage and price and capital controls, including controls over gold transactions, that's done for a reason - gov't understands these simple principles, you seem to dismiss them, well, it's your loss.
The answer you're giving me as to how you know these things is .... you have a theory!!!! Your theory involves this and that and it makes sense to you ,and that's how you know.
- it's history, it's not a theory that comes out of sitting in a closet, thinking about how the world should work. That's how the Krugmans of the world operate. Austrian school of thought operates on understanding history and human behaviour, and we have plenty of examples to look at and everywhere we look, we see that it is a real world model.
Keynesians would have you believe that unemployment and rising levels of inflation are incompatible, so they avoid looking at simple counterexamples of stagflation (USA had that in the seventies). Monetarists believe in gov't controlling the interest rates and setting 'targets', thus denying the market to set market interest rates, and when this leads to inflation and hyper-inflation, well, I guess the 'wrong people' were in charge of government, so if only we can find those 'right people'.
Again, in my country of origin they thought they have conjured up the 'right people' and they destroyed the economy by running it command style - totalitarian socialism, no market, no individual freedoms, but plenty of statists, statisticians and plenty of gov't spending. Well, all spending was government spending.
USA OTOH has added to the world's history a period of time, when moderate deflation combine with lack of government regulations created the most productive nation on the planet, turning a former afterthought to the European countries into the biggest producer, exporter and thus creditor nation. All of that happened without gov't regulations and without income or corporate taxes, without any type of fake gov't insurance, without money regulations, without fake interest rates, printing of cash, without stimulus and bailouts, with almost no gov't spending.
All that infrastructure built by private interests, simply because they wanted to make a buck. Today China is the best approximation to that type of economy unfortunately, and they are doing it without even absolute protections to the individual rights, but at least they violate the rights of individuals to do business so little in practice, that the Chinese economy still pulled more people out of poverty over 30 years, than the rest of the world combined over the last century.
BTW., if you think I can't reason, you don't have to argue with me, what would be the point, right?
You can now cancel your insurance and wait until you really need it before you buy into that 'insurance' plan that you need, because clearly your fine will be lower than the cost you'd incur paying either for that condition or for your monthly 'insurance' payment. (more details here)
This is not insurance, unless it's unclear, this is just a tax. The concept of insurance ends where 'no preexisting conditions' rule begins.
You should submit that you don't know what "constitutional" means.
Constitution is not there to tell a business how to behave, it only defines what the government is and what it is authorised to do.
A person murdering you, for example, is NOT unconstitutional, it's a criminal offence, but he didn't "violate your right to live", because between him and you, you never had anything resembling a concept of a 'right'.
A 'right' is a concept that only has meaning within the relationship between you (individual) and the collective (government).
A business that creates a particular product for a particular customer cannot do anything that is 'unconstitutional'. By the way, that business cannot do anything that is 'constitutional' either.
I understand you love replying nearly to all of my comments, but here is why I never reply back (this will be the exception). You assume that the mob can steal from the productive people (you can call them rich) indefinitely.
That's patently false, the rich are moving their savings, investments and productivity somewhere else, eventually USA will be in the position that USSR was in - all productivity disappeared, whatever could be stolen was stolen, the individual became completely subservient to the collective, but there was no wealth, no real wealth, no things people actually want in their lives created.
Eventually, you see, you run out of people to steal from. Sure, USSR put shackles on people, built the 'iron curtain' - nobody could leave. But it only acted as a dis-incentive to work, people did plenty of things (many of which were illegal), but nobody really worked. So who are they going to steal from? The answer - they'll be stealing from themselves, as they will be missing something, they'll be missing the wealth and productivity that free market allows.
They'll be missing everything - from good food, to good clothing, to good medical care, to good TVs, to anything and everything.
Some will keep living better than others though, those who'll be in power, and thus the system will change to something worse for everybody, while keeping the worst parts of the system that exists today - corruption.
It's not going to be good for the people, those very people in that very mob. People who are productive and want to work to improve their lives will leave.
Right, or you can SAVE some money while working and attempt to start a business without asking anybody for any loans.
Of-course if you do get a loan and start a business, you'll either succeed or fail, but while you are supposed to pay the loan back with interest, unless you can pull it off, it's not your money you are risking - it's the money of the investors.
And thus you are risking some of your collateral (hopefully the banks aren't stupid enough to give you a loan without any collateral) and you are risking a bunch of your creditors' cash.
So when was it that slave owners gave their slaves money to start business while risking losing that money?
You don't even understand meaning of words.
So the SCOTUS once again, lives up to its name of an activist court, it is activist, because it takes a completely unconstitutional idea and declares that it is Constitutional. What else is new.
Here was me saying a while back Scotus will most likely delay the decision, it's election year, and Obama has ways to pressure them, but Republicans will have to show their base they are not signing under the mandate being constitutional (and it's not), so it's most likely to be delayed. - so I was wrong and right, wrong that the court will delay the decision, right that Obama will have ways to pressure the court.
Now, what this decision means is that people should cancel their health insurance unless they want to be suckers.
Are you a sucker?
If you are not a sucker, you'll cancel your health insurance and you won't have it until you absolutely need it, at which point you can come to a health insurance company and become a 'client', because they can't deny you for any pre-existing conditions.
Of-course this means that insurance is no longer insurance. Insurance is not there to take care of your bills for you because you can't whenever you feel like it, it's there so that you can bet a monthly payment that you will need the insurance, while insurance is willing to take the opposite side of that bet as long as it has enough people in the pool, everybody will have coverage when they need it. It works because the pool allows insurance to have actual assets.
Government doesn't have assets of-course, so no gov't insurance is real.
OTOH gov't just introduced a new tax - you have to buy insurance or you'll be fined.
BUT as long as the fine charge is LOWER than whatever the condition you will be in, when you actually NEED insurance, you are coming out of this ahead, way ahead.
So for example - if your insurance bill is 1000 USD/month, and you visit a doctor 4 times a year, then it means your visits cost you 12000, or 3000 per visit.
Now, I remember I sometimes came to Buffalo Medical Group or Rochester Centre and paid out of pocket. Normally a charge is just over a hundred bucks, but there was time the charge was around 3500, but I always paid out of pocket.
So those can be prices for normal, regular things, visits, check ups, whatever.
However a case of cancer can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars, most people don't have that money for this, so they want insurance to cover it.
But if insurance cannot deny pre-existing condition and if the fine for not having insurance is lower than the cost of this pre-existing condition and in fact the fine is lower per year than actually buying insurance for that year, then it makes absolute sense to choose to pay fines and not insurance fees.
In fact the fines will be very low initially, and they will be going up all the time, because of what I am talking about - people will choose to take a fine as a financial hit and will skip buying insurance until they must.
This is a recipe for disaster, but at the same time it is just another STIMULUS PACKAGE.
This is a stimulus package. The insurance companies will have their money one way or another - either people will pay monthly, or gov't will pay to the insurance to subsidise the costs, while charging nominal fines to the uninsured that are caught.
But that's just a stimulus - more fake money will be created to pay for this, and Obama needs this for his reelections.
Of-course in the long run, this plan will help to dismantle the very socialistic economy that Obama stands for, and that's the only redeeming quality of this ruling today.
Help me out here. What do you think stops the consolidation of corporate power? What do you think stops banks from getting too big to fail and monopolies from forming ?
- competition and absence of laws that prevent competition.
You have a successful company building widgets, I am looking at you and I want to repeat that success. I take my savings or I ask a number of people to participate, we start producing widgets. If it is true that my hunch is correct and that I can be more efficient than you, I start making profits.
If we are successful enough, we can either sell our company to you, a good exit strategy, or we can run it ourselves.
The more successful you are with your widget production, the more profits you make, the more incentives other people see to enter the same market. If they are right, and if they can produce cheaper, better, whatever, they'll be your competition, this forces the market prices to drop, so you'll lower your prices.
If we are all wrong, and you are already at the edge of efficiency that economy of scale allows you to have, then we'll likely lose in that game, so you have an economy of scale that is best at providing the customers with widgets, so customers are best served with just your company, but normally there is space for more than one company in the market and there is one or two or a few biggest economies of scale and a few smaller players.
People love to bring the false example of Standard Oil to show that gov't destroyed a monopoly, but they don't realise that by 1911 Standard Oil had 150 competitors and it provided the lowest price since 1869. In 1869 SO had 4% of the market, and one gallon of refined oil sold at 30 cents.
By 1899 SO sold one gallon of oil for UNDER 6 cents (5.9 or 5.8), so in 30 years the prices dropped by over 80%.
Once SO was broken up, prices never went down again, indeed they started gradually going up.
The problem is it's not their money, its their investor's money because we deregulated the banks from having to separate investing from savings.
- gov't shouldn't be in business regulating banks and money in the first place, it's the moral hazard of gov't intervention that created this problem.
FDIC is a huge part of the problem - it's a moral hazard of fake gov't guarantee. Fake, because there are no assets there to guarantee anything, it'll be bailed out by the Fed once the time comes. Moral hazard, because it means ppl don't care who they are lending their money to. That's right, giving money to a banker means lending him your money, unless it's a deposit box basically, where you pay fees to keep your money in that box and you don't want anybody to loan that out.
Banks used to be just in business of keeping your money for a fee and only lending it out and investing it if you agreed to that, and you wouldn't have to pay the monthly fees then, you'd make a few percent, the bankers used to be safe keepers and investment managers, that's all, that was their function BEFORE the gov't took over and created all the moral hazards of the Fed (fake money, fake interest rates) and later FDIC (moral hazard of people not caring who they are lending to).
We permitted AIG to say that their derivatives were not a form of insurance and thus evade the regulation which exists to insure that insurers are themselves good for the debts under all circumstances. This was clearly a situation where AIG should have been regulated but they gamed the system to get out of it.
- gov't shouldn't be allowed to regulate businesses, including insurance, which is just another business.
There is nothing special about insurance (or health care or education for that matter) that requires gov't there. Gov't got into insurance business, creating a huge and impossible to compete with system - a system based on non-existing reserves and fake money.
How can an insurance company compete with an entity that PRINT
History proves you wrong. 19th century US couldn't self correct itself and it got destroyed by people gaming the system.
- well, you just said something that made absolutely no sense at all. 19th century, especially the time after the gov't trying to push paper money onto everybody because of war, was the time when USA created its economy, USA became world's largest producer, exporter and creditor nation, which of-course took huge amounts of savings, investments, competition, innovation, infrastructure building, all done in private sector, all done in free market - market free from government intervention.
1800 to 1913, dollar gained value by a factor of 2. 1913 - 2012, dollar lost almost 99% of its value.
You clearly don't know anything on the topic, so bugger off.
I know that in the real world 'gaming the system' is irrelevant to the health of the economy, because it is limited to the people who are involved, and in the free market there are no 'too big to fail' banks, there are no monopolies, there are economies of scale, but no monopolies. In the free market somebody CAN game the system, they can steal your money, but they can't keep at it for too long, as people discover the problem they just stop dealing with that individual or business.
This is the polar opposite when gov't is involved - it doesn't matter if you figure out that the gov't is stealing, you can't stop dealing with the gov't, you can't stop SS, you can't stop Medicare, you can't stop undeclared wars, you can't stop EI, you can't stop Medicaid, you can't stop welfare state, you can't stop labour laws and business regulations, you can't stop income taxes, etc.etc.
The good thing about the free market is that it is stronger than any government and any given economy, so eventually everything rebalances and the offenders (nations, countries, economies) will be crushed and then rebalanced again, so it is a self-correcting problem in the long run.
The bad thing is that instead of trying to fix it by allowing the free market to work and run a normal course -recession, depression, recovery, the gov't wants to prevent any of these restructuring activities from taking place, it's political suicide, so the gov't fights the free market forces the only ways it knows how: fake money, fake low interest rates, wars, totalitarianism.
Eventually all of it will crush, but unfortunately it will cause massive damage before it's restructured, the longer the gov't continues propping up its fake economy, the worse the crush will be and the longer the recovery will take.
As to what Free Market is - it's only a matter of not having government regulations, capitalism, individual freedom, respect for private property. Free market means market free from government meddling.
I was born in a place that was antithetical to the free market - former USSR. The system was fighting the market forces for 75 years, eventually it crushed of-course, and the recovery is taking a very long time.