I am not advocating for unconstitutional policies, so judges can’t overturn it.
That’s exactly what someone advocating for a 50 year delayed rule to make sure gay marriage is prohibited would have said, 50 years ago. It turns out that according to the only people who matter, yes he would have been advocating for unconstitutional policies.
Right, but I’m not arguing against gay marriage. Again if you can explain how land value taxes are unconstitutional, I’m all for it. You’re saying “people can misclassify”. So? Tell me how I’ve misclassified it as constitutional, even potentially. If you’re going to duck my actual question yet again, I’m not interested in discussing further.
The way you’ve “misclassified” it is that the court can say anything they want, and anything you say that disagrees with the court is, by the standards “who has the guns and enforces the rules”, misclassification.
You’re not debating the court in a truth-seeking process where you get to win if you can show flaws in their arguments. It doesn’t matter exactly what the court’s reasoning is, since they are a court and you’re not, and what they say goes. They just say it’s unconstitutional, post some decision that I’m sure you’ll disagree with, and voila, it’s unconstitutional.
Your argument is too powerful. And by that, I mean it classifies all policy arguments as dumb. “Oh you want to do X? Well the whole system is screwed up, so you’re naïve for even suggesting it.” Substitute any policy that could conceivably involve the courts for X. That’s your argument. If your arguments can’t delineate between good and bad ideas, your arguments have no value.
Yes, this is something that the court can do to any policy. If you’ll notice, high profile Supreme Court decisions are supposedly decided based on the Constitution, but actually depend on the political affiliations of the judges. It’s already happening.
That doesn’t mean that the system is completely screwed up, that means that the system is screwed up for any politically significant policy that the court wants to overthrow. You shouldn’t ask yourself if the policy violates the Constitution; you should ask yourself if the policy is politically significant. If it is, whether the court lets it through depends on politics, not on the Constitution.
In the specific case of decisions many years in the future, the fact that the political landscape changes after so many years makes it more likely that the court’s decision will be screwed up than if you just went to court today.
The type of law my proposal falls under is legislation. So you should give an example in the last 100 years where the supreme court invalidated legislation that has nothing to do with the constitution. (Roe vs Wade not being an example, because it’s not legislation.)
Or concede that the supreme court hasn’t overturned legislation that has nothing to do with the constitution in the last 100 years, and then point to any constitutional reason the court could give for overturning the specific policy I’ve advocated for (land value tax with a delay and a debt).
I explicitly asked for “legislation that has nothing to do with the constitution”, because that’s what’s actually relevant here. Then you bring up legislation that was struck down based off the 14th amendment’s equal protection and due process clauses.
Have you got any examples that actually meet the specified criteria (i.e. within the last 100 years, laws that are legislation, that were struck down by the supreme court without even a tenuous reference to the constitution)? If you don’t have any examples, then you need to concede that point, and then reference any places in the constitution that could, even unfairly, be used to invalidate my specific proposal (land value tax).
I explicitly asked for “legislation that has nothing to do with the constitution”, because that’s what’s actually relevant here. Then you bring up legislation that was struck down based off the 14th amendment’s equal protection and due process clauses.
One prominent method by which the courts overturn things is by stretching and twisting the Constitution to cover the thing they want to overturn. It’s going to “have something to do with the Constitution” after the fact, even if it didn’t before.
I’m pretty sure that if you had described the Defense of Marriage Act 50 years before the fact to just about any judge or lawyer, they’d have said it had nothing to do with the Constitution, just like a land tax.
Then surely you can twist some part of the constitution to find some relevance to land value taxes as I’ve proposed them. If you can, then credit where credit’s due, you have a point worth considering. If you can’t, then your concerns seem a lot less plausible.
Also, do you concede you were wrong about the U.S. not taking on $1T of debt? Because it seems like you’re really confident about things that you shouldn’t be confident about. Like, stuff that a simple google search would disconfirm. I suspect you have a real problem admitting error. In our other conversation, you totally just Smoke Bombed without so much as a “Oh, my bad”.
Then surely you can twist some part of the constitution to find some relevance to land value taxes as I’ve proposed them.
It’s not hard. “Reducing the value of the land is illegal as an uncompensated taking” or “this tax is unconstitutional because it violates the rule about direct taxes” (twisting the definition of direct tax so they can include it, of course) or even just due process because if the tax is instituted, the owner has no way to contest it.
You could say “those arguments are obviously wrong, so they don’t count”. You could say “they don’t apply those arguments in other situations—that’s special pleading and sophistry”. But it doesn’t matter how good or bad the Constitutional arguments are, only that a court would make them. And of course from our point of view 50 years in the past, they are obviously bad arguments to everyone, but 50 years in the past, Constitutional arguments about gay marriage were obviously bad too.
Also, do you concede you were wrong about the U.S. not taking on $1T of debt?
No. The national debt is 33T total, so 1T is a substantial portion of it. Nothing like that can, in practice, be put into place without a complete political realignment.
I’ll leave it to others to decide how plausible it is that the courts would make those arguments (especially when the post explicitly handles compensation). And it looks like I called it with your complete inability to accept error. Please don’t comment on my posts anymore.
That’s exactly what someone advocating for a 50 year delayed rule to make sure gay marriage is prohibited would have said, 50 years ago. It turns out that according to the only people who matter, yes he would have been advocating for unconstitutional policies.
Right, but I’m not arguing against gay marriage. Again if you can explain how land value taxes are unconstitutional, I’m all for it. You’re saying “people can misclassify”. So? Tell me how I’ve misclassified it as constitutional, even potentially. If you’re going to duck my actual question yet again, I’m not interested in discussing further.
The way you’ve “misclassified” it is that the court can say anything they want, and anything you say that disagrees with the court is, by the standards “who has the guns and enforces the rules”, misclassification.
You’re not debating the court in a truth-seeking process where you get to win if you can show flaws in their arguments. It doesn’t matter exactly what the court’s reasoning is, since they are a court and you’re not, and what they say goes. They just say it’s unconstitutional, post some decision that I’m sure you’ll disagree with, and voila, it’s unconstitutional.
Your argument is too powerful. And by that, I mean it classifies all policy arguments as dumb. “Oh you want to do X? Well the whole system is screwed up, so you’re naïve for even suggesting it.” Substitute any policy that could conceivably involve the courts for X. That’s your argument. If your arguments can’t delineate between good and bad ideas, your arguments have no value.
Yes, this is something that the court can do to any policy. If you’ll notice, high profile Supreme Court decisions are supposedly decided based on the Constitution, but actually depend on the political affiliations of the judges. It’s already happening.
That doesn’t mean that the system is completely screwed up, that means that the system is screwed up for any politically significant policy that the court wants to overthrow. You shouldn’t ask yourself if the policy violates the Constitution; you should ask yourself if the policy is politically significant. If it is, whether the court lets it through depends on politics, not on the Constitution.
In the specific case of decisions many years in the future, the fact that the political landscape changes after so many years makes it more likely that the court’s decision will be screwed up than if you just went to court today.
The type of law my proposal falls under is legislation. So you should give an example in the last 100 years where the supreme court invalidated legislation that has nothing to do with the constitution. (Roe vs Wade not being an example, because it’s not legislation.)
Or concede that the supreme court hasn’t overturned legislation that has nothing to do with the constitution in the last 100 years, and then point to any constitutional reason the court could give for overturning the specific policy I’ve advocated for (land value tax with a delay and a debt).
The Defense of Marriage act was legislation.
I explicitly asked for “legislation that has nothing to do with the constitution”, because that’s what’s actually relevant here. Then you bring up legislation that was struck down based off the 14th amendment’s equal protection and due process clauses.
Have you got any examples that actually meet the specified criteria (i.e. within the last 100 years, laws that are legislation, that were struck down by the supreme court without even a tenuous reference to the constitution)? If you don’t have any examples, then you need to concede that point, and then reference any places in the constitution that could, even unfairly, be used to invalidate my specific proposal (land value tax).
One prominent method by which the courts overturn things is by stretching and twisting the Constitution to cover the thing they want to overturn. It’s going to “have something to do with the Constitution” after the fact, even if it didn’t before.
I’m pretty sure that if you had described the Defense of Marriage Act 50 years before the fact to just about any judge or lawyer, they’d have said it had nothing to do with the Constitution, just like a land tax.
Then surely you can twist some part of the constitution to find some relevance to land value taxes as I’ve proposed them. If you can, then credit where credit’s due, you have a point worth considering. If you can’t, then your concerns seem a lot less plausible.
Also, do you concede you were wrong about the U.S. not taking on $1T of debt? Because it seems like you’re really confident about things that you shouldn’t be confident about. Like, stuff that a simple google search would disconfirm. I suspect you have a real problem admitting error. In our other conversation, you totally just Smoke Bombed without so much as a “Oh, my bad”.
It’s not hard. “Reducing the value of the land is illegal as an uncompensated taking” or “this tax is unconstitutional because it violates the rule about direct taxes” (twisting the definition of direct tax so they can include it, of course) or even just due process because if the tax is instituted, the owner has no way to contest it.
You could say “those arguments are obviously wrong, so they don’t count”. You could say “they don’t apply those arguments in other situations—that’s special pleading and sophistry”. But it doesn’t matter how good or bad the Constitutional arguments are, only that a court would make them. And of course from our point of view 50 years in the past, they are obviously bad arguments to everyone, but 50 years in the past, Constitutional arguments about gay marriage were obviously bad too.
No. The national debt is 33T total, so 1T is a substantial portion of it. Nothing like that can, in practice, be put into place without a complete political realignment.
I’ll leave it to others to decide how plausible it is that the courts would make those arguments (especially when the post explicitly handles compensation). And it looks like I called it with your complete inability to accept error. Please don’t comment on my posts anymore.