Cartoon of the Day
CARPE DIEM
Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance
Friday, June 29, 2012
About Me
- Name: Mark J. Perry
- Location: Washington, D.C., United States
Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University near Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. In addition to a faculty appointment at the University of Michigan-Flint, Perry is also a visiting scholar at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
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28 Comments:
We'll find out in November how much wisdom the voters have regarding the healthcare law.
I bet the American Staffing Association is quite happy to see PPACA prevail - given their members' role in facilitating various anti-worker dodges wrt benefits and financial compensation.
All that cartoon is missing is an American citizen in chains as a congresscritter brandishes a whip and mandates the slave's behaviour. Want to escape? Not before you a pay a 30% fine and you're banished forever. And then only if our political overlords allow it. I swear I've seen this movie before and you're not going to like how it ends.
Optimism continues to get harder to muster.
I swear I've seen this movie before and you're not going to like how it ends.
I believe it's called Nineteen-Eighty Four. Except not fictional.
jon-
i think she's referring to the soviet union.
I know she is. I was too (Nineteen-Eighty Four was Orwell's description of Bolshevism).
Although, Roberts may have done a favor by saying the mandate is a tax. If my understanding is correct, unlike regular laws, a tax can be repealed by a simple majority in the Senate, not a 2/3rds majority typically needed. If the GOP were able to secure the White House and keep control in the Senate, the law could be repelled.
jon-
my friend who runs a fund that bets against congress (congressional effect fund) was making that same argument this morning.
you cannot filibuster a tax vote either.
i don't know if it was intentional, but i like your use of "repelled" instead of repealed.
carries nice connotations of piracy.
The good news is Obama has kept inflation low:
"The PCE price index fell 0.2% last month to mark the first pullback in more than two years.
Over the past 12 months the inflation gauge has risen 1.5%."
Obama is giving the Fed another signal for quantitative easing (sort of like Rome burning under Nero).
I recall when Bush (aka Claudius) saw weak economic data, he did something about it, or at least looked like he did something.
I am really enjoying these Rome references.
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George W. Bush:
"The economy is growing, productivity is high, trade is up, people are working. It's not as good as we'd like, but -- and to the extent that we find weakness, we'll move."
i don't know if it was intentional, but i like your use of "repelled" instead of repealed.
LOVE that :)
my friend who runs a fund that bets against congress (congressional effect fund) was making that same argument this morning.
That's really cool.
To me (armed with my minimum required probably dumbed down law classes mandated by my school's curriculum), it seems like Roberts was twisting himself every which way to uphold this monster. With such a compliant court, hope for the peasants is dim. Not that ever indulged too much in the fiction of constitutional restraints on political power.
methinks-
here's another really interesting take on the decision:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2012/06/28/is-the-supreme-court-obamacare-decision-internally-consistent/
so, it's ok to tax citizens for non compliance, but you cannot do it to the states when they fail to support medicare?
this is the strangest reading of the 10th amendment ever.
it's like he thought that the power had to go to only one of the states OR the people and could not go to both.
Yep. Thanks, Morganovich. I saw that take elsewhere earlier (can't remember where).
Roberts rewrote the statute. But, once rewritten as a tax, shouldn't the court have refused to rule on the constitutionality until it is levied? I don't see any favours here. I see a guy who is willing to do whatever it takes to expand the government's power.
I don't know why we even bother with the constitution anymore.
Market up 2.5% today. Obamacare did not seem to have an effect on the market.
I was amused to see Roberts refer to General Welfare, after I got beat up here for suggesting that the preamble gave the government wide latitude in what to do with its powers.
"I was amused to see Roberts refer to General Welfare, after I got beat up here for suggesting that the preamble gave the government wide latitude in what to do with its power"...
What's really amusing is that George W Bush appointed a bit of a boob to the bench but one not so lost that he didn't warn people that they got what they voted for...
"Market up 2.5% today. Obamacare did not seem to have an effect on the market."
market sold off on it yesterday.
today was all about merkel giving in to the italians and spanish.
in the short run, that's a MUCH bigger deal.
Market up 2.5% today. Obamacare did not seem to have an effect on the market.
You may have noticed, if you were paying attention, that there are bigger fish frying across the pond. And also, that the ruling came out yesterday morning and that the market process that kind of information instantly. Yeah.
I was amused to see Roberts refer to General Welfare, after I got beat up here for suggesting that the preamble gave the government wide latitude in what to do with its powers.
Makes you wonder why the bothered to futz with those enumerated powers at all, huh?
Key words: "in the short run". Gotta love the lurches.
I was amused to see Roberts refer to General Welfare, after I got beat up here for suggesting that the preamble gave the government wide latitude in what to do with its powers.
No. The Preamble is the government's mandate. The Constitution is its powers. What Roberts said is this law fulfills the government's mandate and is within its powers. That's all he said. Every opinion has something along those lines. Again, the Preamble gives Congress no power whatsoever. It gives it a task. The Preamble is not some blank check.
The "General Welfare" clause of the Constitution is not in the Preamble. It's in Article 1, Section 8, first power - a description of Congress' power to tax.
For some reason utterly beyond my comprehension, the power to TAX for the general welfare is generally interpreted as a blanket power to SPEND for the general welfare - without regard to whether the spending contributes to any of the enumerated powers.
There is a lot of legislative history behind the Constitution, and it's plainly obvious that the purpose of the General Welfare provision on Congress' power to tax was to thwart attempts by the states to dictate that taxes raised in a specific state must be spent in that state or in a manner approved by that state's legislature. This was actually a serious problem under the Articles of Confederation, and the people who wrote the Constitution would definitely want to put a stop to such conditions.
The "General Welfare" clause of the Constitution is not in the Preamble. It's in Article 1, Section 8, first power - a description of Congress' power to tax.
Sure it is. It's the opening sentence.
Unless you mean power for supporting the general welfare?
I sent the following email to each of my socialist senators, Max Baucus and Jon Tester:
Dear sir,
Now that the Supreme Court has ruled on Obamacare, I am wondering what a guy has to do to get a job on one of the new death panels? I am pretty busy trying to make a living and paying for all the bums in this country that are too lazy to work, but I could try to fit it in. Sincerely, MKelley
Mkelley,
You can fit in by becoming one of those bums. Why have a job at all if you can live at the expense of someone else? Like Julia, you can live a carefree life without ever having to worry about making trade-offs.
In a progressive world where ability is punished and need is rewarded, why be the sucker who toils to provide for everyone else? It pays to be helpless.
Yes, of course this is the road to poverty for the entire country, but that's not your problem. Eventually, the Federal government will flex its new mandate ...uh..new tax that's not a tax but is powers to regulate everything from how and when you brush your teeth to the minimum number of hours you are obligated to devote to community service. But, that'll take a while. The country's culture first has to adjust to the new reality that the government owns you like the Czar owned all of Russia - the people, the land, the air they breathed.
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