Today, June 28th, 2012 is a historic day. The Supreme Court has upheld the Affordable Care Act, affectionately known as Obamacare, as constitutional. The basis for constitutionality is not the commerce clause, as the Obama administration argued, but the taxing authority. Rather than extending the reach of congresses ability to regulate to allow compelling actions in the name of regulating commerce, the Supreme Court has stated that congress has the authority to compel action through taxation. This means inaction is now a taxable activity.
What does this mean for those of us advocating for limited government? This is a huge set back and a massive expansion of government power. This ruling officially marks the end of any constitutional limits on federal power. However the government wants to remake society, they are authorized to compel compliance through a fee and call it a tax.
A Reason.tv interview claimed there was a silver lining. However, everything that congress could have done to abuse the commerce clause if the mandate were upheld on that basis, they can still do through the new taxing power.
Given that Obamacare is widely unpopular, this is a huge victory for Mitt Romney. Though he would never denounce Obamacare by pointing to how Romneycare has decimated health insurance in Massachusetts, he can gain support by promising to repeal Obamacare. Since Republicans will need to hold the House and win the Senate in order to gain enough support for repeal, we may see a sweeping change in the balance of power.
Unfortunately, the failure of the Supreme Court to uphold the limited and enumerated powers nor the clear intent of the tax laws cannot simply be repealed by government action. And why would we expect congress to want to repeal their new powers? The only way we can ever expect to get back to limited constitutional government is if we make our voices heard.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Corporate Personhood
Are corporations people?
The answer to this question depends on the meaning. I won't get bogged down in the metaphysical definition of person. There are 2 different possible meanings to this question and we need to address which meaning we intend to convey.
The first meaning is that a corporation is a person separate from all human people and created at the time of incorporation. When people on the left say that corporations are not people, they are I hope referring to this meaning. Legally, a corporation is a person in this sense.
There is a second sense in which a corporation is people. A corporation is a group of people coming together for a common goal. Some corporations produce goods, others services. The corporation is made of managers, workers and shareholders.
When I say corporations are people, I mean it in this second sense. The issue of corporate personhood comes up in several contexts. Corporate taxes are not paid by some soulless nonperson but by the individuals who make up the corporation or by the people who buy the goods and services made by the corporation.
In the same sense, when the corporation says something, it is not a personless entity making unprotected speech, it is a collaborative effort by the people within the corporation exercising their right to free speech in a collective manner.
The answer to this question depends on the meaning. I won't get bogged down in the metaphysical definition of person. There are 2 different possible meanings to this question and we need to address which meaning we intend to convey.
The first meaning is that a corporation is a person separate from all human people and created at the time of incorporation. When people on the left say that corporations are not people, they are I hope referring to this meaning. Legally, a corporation is a person in this sense.
There is a second sense in which a corporation is people. A corporation is a group of people coming together for a common goal. Some corporations produce goods, others services. The corporation is made of managers, workers and shareholders.
When I say corporations are people, I mean it in this second sense. The issue of corporate personhood comes up in several contexts. Corporate taxes are not paid by some soulless nonperson but by the individuals who make up the corporation or by the people who buy the goods and services made by the corporation.
In the same sense, when the corporation says something, it is not a personless entity making unprotected speech, it is a collaborative effort by the people within the corporation exercising their right to free speech in a collective manner.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Fixing problems
When ever a problem arises, the first step in solving the problem is to determine the cause of the problem. If the new problem is a symptom of some other underlying issue, attempting to address the problem directly is merely treating the symptom. There are many instances where politicians are proposing solutions to problems while ignoring the underlying causes.
While this same issue is relevant to other problems in our daily lives, since government policy effects every person in the country, I would like to focus on those issues. There are problems in health care, education, the economy, etc. and I hope to deal with each one in turn. For now, I would just like to emphasize the importance of not just trying to deal with the apparent issue but rather seek the underlying cause and address it.
While this same issue is relevant to other problems in our daily lives, since government policy effects every person in the country, I would like to focus on those issues. There are problems in health care, education, the economy, etc. and I hope to deal with each one in turn. For now, I would just like to emphasize the importance of not just trying to deal with the apparent issue but rather seek the underlying cause and address it.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Laws as violence
Few people think about what it means to pass a law. All laws are threats of violence. If you do A or fail to do B, the government will enact violence upon you perhaps by forcibly detaining you or taking your property.
Violence is an appropriate response in defense against violent acts. That is why no one disputes laws against murder, rape, theft, etc. These laws threaten violence when violence is committed.
However, responding to non-violent acts with threats of violence is wrong. Something to consider when you voice support for a law against a non-violent act.
Violence is an appropriate response in defense against violent acts. That is why no one disputes laws against murder, rape, theft, etc. These laws threaten violence when violence is committed.
However, responding to non-violent acts with threats of violence is wrong. Something to consider when you voice support for a law against a non-violent act.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Model of charity
In order to examine charitable giving, we must start with a model for charity. The model will have to be simple to start with. James Andreoni in "Giving with Impure Altruism: Applications to Charity and Ricardian Equivalence," Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 97, No. 6 (Dec., 1989), pp. 1447-1458, develops such a model.
Charity is considered a public good in this model. Under a model of pure altruism, every dollar taxed to fund the private good results in a dollar decrease in private charity. This is known as crowding out. However, empirical results seem to conclude that there is very little crowding out of private giving due to the government funding of charity.
Andreoni's model of impure altruism can help to account for that. Under pure altruism, we gain utility from just the presence of charity not from the act of giving itself. This is because altruism is giving for givings sake. With impure altruism, we actually get satisfaction just for giving.
Under impure altruism, even if taxes were raised to fully fund charity to its socially optimal level, since people get satisfaction from the act of giving, charitable contributions will continue.
There are problems with this model. I people believe that government funding of charity will not be done in the best manner people may, for purely altruistic reasons, give to charities that they feel will be more efficient.
Charity is considered a public good in this model. Under a model of pure altruism, every dollar taxed to fund the private good results in a dollar decrease in private charity. This is known as crowding out. However, empirical results seem to conclude that there is very little crowding out of private giving due to the government funding of charity.
Andreoni's model of impure altruism can help to account for that. Under pure altruism, we gain utility from just the presence of charity not from the act of giving itself. This is because altruism is giving for givings sake. With impure altruism, we actually get satisfaction just for giving.
Under impure altruism, even if taxes were raised to fully fund charity to its socially optimal level, since people get satisfaction from the act of giving, charitable contributions will continue.
There are problems with this model. I people believe that government funding of charity will not be done in the best manner people may, for purely altruistic reasons, give to charities that they feel will be more efficient.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
The effectiveness of charity
For my Public Finance class, I have chosen to write a paper on the effectiveness of private charity versus the government antipoverty programs. My starting point is a working paper titled "Faith-based charity and crowd out during the great depression" available through NBER working paper series. The first assignment is to do a write a review of a working paper related to the topic we have chosen for our final paper. This working paper discusses how New Deal programs effected the existing faith-based charity with an emphasis on crowding out effects, i.e. how government spending on charity reduces private charity contributions.
The are two aspects to government antipoverty programs, often misreferred to as government charity. There are the in-kind transfer payments such as welfare and food stamps and there is public financing of private charity organizations. The question becomes, what is more successful? Or does government programs create new problems that make both options inferior to private charity donations?
Direct payments to needy individuals can only be effective if there is an incentive to leave the program. Can bureaucrats be as effective as private charities in creating incentives for impoverished individuals to improve their lot? Does the rent seeking of faith-based charities due to government funding reduce their efficiency below that of privately funded charities? Can privately funded charities obtain enough funds to meet the needs of all the needy without some kind of subsidy?
In my paper I hope to be able to answer some or all of these questions. Ultimately, I would like to use this paper as part of my dissertation in which I would like to address each of these questions in far more detail. I am looking for resources that I could use that examine the question. I need papers, books or data sets that I can use for my analysis. Any suggestions that can be provided by my readers would be greatly appreciated.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Self authenticating irrationality
It has been a while since I have written and I have read quite a few things that I would like to talk about including Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. What I would like to discuss today, though, is a peculiar form of irrationality advocated by William Lane Craig in Reasonable Faith.
In Chapter One titled How do I know Christianity is true?, Craig puts forward a radical claim that Christians know that Christianity is true by the self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit. He makes the bold claim that belief in God is properly basic like Pythagorean's Theorem. Supposedly we perceive God like we perceive a tree. He does not even consider that this supposed perception of God could in fact be something else.
Worse, he insists that the self-authenticating witness could only lead to Christianity and that anyone else, say a Mormon or Muslim, has only a false witness or misinterprets the true witness. He does not seem even open to the possibility he could be wrong and that his supposed experience of God is no more valid then the Muslims or Mormons experience. He does suggest a test to see if the experience is the same by asking Mormon and Muslim apostates to Christianity if their experiences of God are the same. However, this would be a clearly biased experiment since when someone commits apostasy, they are more likely to become more devoted to their new belief. We would actually need to ask not only those who defected to Christianity but those who defected from. We could even include Atheists as a control.
To defend his claim since he is directing this at Christians he quotes from the Bible. He suffers a blow to his credibility by referring to the author of First and Second John as the apostle John when he should know that neither epistle was written by John. Tradition ascribed these epistles to John because of the similar writing style with the Gospel John, which Craig also quotes but does not name the author. None of the books of the Bible were written by any of the 12 apostles as they were all illiterate. In the unlikely event that any of them were taught to read, it would have been Hebrew, not Greek. None of them spoke Greek either, they spoke Aramaic, but the books of the New Testament were all written in Greek by people who were proficient in Greek. They do not bare the marks of being originally written in Aramaic then translated and transcription was always done as word for word transcribing.
So Craig defends his faith with an irrational appear to an experience he cannot confirm is actually God and denies the authenticity of any non-Christian experience of the same sort. I am still waiting for God's message to me. Perhaps he will wait to reveal himself on my death bed, but I would not count on it. Perhaps Craig is right, and I will humbly admit that I could be wrong, but I see no reason to think so.
In Chapter One titled How do I know Christianity is true?, Craig puts forward a radical claim that Christians know that Christianity is true by the self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit. He makes the bold claim that belief in God is properly basic like Pythagorean's Theorem. Supposedly we perceive God like we perceive a tree. He does not even consider that this supposed perception of God could in fact be something else.
Worse, he insists that the self-authenticating witness could only lead to Christianity and that anyone else, say a Mormon or Muslim, has only a false witness or misinterprets the true witness. He does not seem even open to the possibility he could be wrong and that his supposed experience of God is no more valid then the Muslims or Mormons experience. He does suggest a test to see if the experience is the same by asking Mormon and Muslim apostates to Christianity if their experiences of God are the same. However, this would be a clearly biased experiment since when someone commits apostasy, they are more likely to become more devoted to their new belief. We would actually need to ask not only those who defected to Christianity but those who defected from. We could even include Atheists as a control.
To defend his claim since he is directing this at Christians he quotes from the Bible. He suffers a blow to his credibility by referring to the author of First and Second John as the apostle John when he should know that neither epistle was written by John. Tradition ascribed these epistles to John because of the similar writing style with the Gospel John, which Craig also quotes but does not name the author. None of the books of the Bible were written by any of the 12 apostles as they were all illiterate. In the unlikely event that any of them were taught to read, it would have been Hebrew, not Greek. None of them spoke Greek either, they spoke Aramaic, but the books of the New Testament were all written in Greek by people who were proficient in Greek. They do not bare the marks of being originally written in Aramaic then translated and transcription was always done as word for word transcribing.
So Craig defends his faith with an irrational appear to an experience he cannot confirm is actually God and denies the authenticity of any non-Christian experience of the same sort. I am still waiting for God's message to me. Perhaps he will wait to reveal himself on my death bed, but I would not count on it. Perhaps Craig is right, and I will humbly admit that I could be wrong, but I see no reason to think so.
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