"At the Constitutional Convention, Madison argued that population would inevitably be a sufficient measure of wealth, as long as movement of
people was allowed, because people move to the cities and fertile farm
land where wealth was to be had, so the more people a state had, the
wealthier the state would be.15 Because states could and would cheat on
real estate valuations, population was seen as the best estimate the
Founders had for relative wealth. Measuring wealth by population was not intended to force a head tax, an equal amount of tax on each person,
since the Founders abhorred the idea of a head tax, calling it “odious”
and “abhorrent.”16 The number of persons was merely used as a reasonable index of wealth, John Adams said, and not the thing to be taxed.17
Allocation by population was not a protection of wealth “against assault
by mere force of numbers,” as the Supreme Court later erroneously said
in Pollock v. Farmers Trust,18 but in fact a means of reaching for
wealth —assaulting wealth— using population as a proxy for wealth."

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/taxation/publications/abataxtimes_home/19aug/19aug-pp-johnson-a-wealth-tax-is-constitutional/

Maybe someone can explain how this is *not* a case of "lipstick on a
pig." (for those unfamiliar with the quote, it's much like Shakespeare's
"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" except it's "you can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig.")

If you're basically saying "this state has 10x the population of this
other state so they must have approx 10x the wealth so we're going to
tax them 10x the amount", how is that different from "this state has 10x
the population of this other state so we're going to tax them 10x the
amount"?

I realize they may not have had any better way to calculate relative
wealth at the time but I fail to see the difference.

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On 4/6/2021 2:09 PM, Mike Anderson wrote:

...

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/taxation/publications/abataxtimes_home/19aug/19aug-pp-johnson-a-wealth-tax-is-constitutional/

Maybe someone can explain how this is *not* a case of "lipstick on a
pig." (for those unfamiliar with the quote, it's much like Shakespeare's
"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" except it's "you can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig.")

If you're basically saying "this state has 10x the population of this
other state so they must have approx 10x the wealth so we're going to
tax them 10x the amount", how is that different from "this state has 10x
the population of this other state so we're going to tax them 10x the amount"?

I realize they may not have had any better way to calculate relative
wealth at the time but I fail to see the difference.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch."

Today's comparison is the majority deciding they want free stuff and
using a wealth tax to take the money from the minority.

Aristotle pointed out that if the middle class disappears, then the poor
will become the majority. The poor tend to be less educated than the
rich, and they tend to struggle just to make ends meet. If the poor are
the majority, then in a democracy they will vote to take away the money
from the rich!

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On 4/6/2021 5:47 PM, Roy wrote:

On 4/6/2021 2:09 PM, Mike Anderson wrote:

...

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/taxation/publications/abataxtimes_home/19aug/19aug-pp-johnson-a-wealth-tax-is-constitutional/


Maybe someone can explain how this is *not* a case of "lipstick on a
pig." (for those unfamiliar with the quote, it's much like
Shakespeare's "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" except
it's "you can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig.")

If you're basically saying "this state has 10x the population of this
other state so they must have approx 10x the wealth so we're going to
tax them 10x the amount", how is that different from "this state has
10x the population of this other state so we're going to tax them 10x
the amount"?

I realize they may not have had any better way to calculate relative
wealth at the time but I fail to see the difference.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch."

Today's comparison is the majority deciding they want free stuff and
using a wealth tax to take the money from the minority.

Aristotle pointed out that if the middle class disappears, then the poor
will become the majority. The poor tend to be less educated than the
rich, and they tend to struggle just to make ends meet. If the poor are
the majority, then in a democracy they will vote to take away the money
from the rich!

I wasn't really trying to debate if I thought taxes on the rich are
justified or whatever (that's an entirely different can of worms that I
wasn't trying to open.) I was simply trying to understand how they can
say that's some sort of a distinction in HOW we calculate the tax.

I.e. the constitution says that we can't say "we're taxing the state $1
per person and there's 500,000 people so we're taxing $500,000" (the
income tax amendment was done specifically because of that.) So how can
they say "we're taxing the state $1 per unit of wealth and the state has 500,000 units of wealth because it has 500,000 people and we're
estimating any given state has one unit of wealth/person so we're taxing
them $500,000"? Isn't that exactly the same result? (without saying
anything about if I agree or disagree that we should wind up at that
result.)

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According to Mike Anderson <prabbit237@gmail.com.com>:

I.e. the constitution says that we can't say "we're taxing the state $1
per person and there's 500,000 people so we're taxing $500,000" (the
income tax amendment was done specifically because of that.)

You have it backwards -- Art I, Sec 9, says that is the only way they can
levy a direct tax.

So how can
they say "we're taxing the state $1 per unit of wealth and the state has >500,000 units of wealth because it has 500,000 people and we're
estimating any given state has one unit of wealth/person so we're taxing
them $500,000"?

"Direct tax" is not defined anywhere and courts have interpreted it in
many ways. In the Hylton case in 1796 SCOTUS said a tax on carriages
(which only rich people owned so it was in practice a wealth tax) was
OK because it was an excise tax. A century later in 1895 a very right
wing court said by 5-4 nope, we were wrong, lots of things are direct taxes
so you get no income tax. But in 1909 the same court said an excise tax
on yachts, again in practice a wealth tax, was an excise tax so it's OK.
In 1921 they found the estate tax to be an excise tax, too.

So the historical argument that a wealth tax is OK has a lot of support.
For details start here:

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C4-1-1/ALDE_00001090/


--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

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On 4/8/2021 11:12 PM, John Levine wrote:

According to Mike Anderson <prabbit237@gmail.com.com>:

I.e. the constitution says that we can't say "we're taxing the state $1
per person and there's 500,000 people so we're taxing $500,000" (the
income tax amendment was done specifically because of that.)

You have it backwards -- Art I, Sec 9, says that is the only way they can levy a direct tax.

So how can
they say "we're taxing the state $1 per unit of wealth and the state has
500,000 units of wealth because it has 500,000 people and we're
estimating any given state has one unit of wealth/person so we're taxing
them $500,000"?

"Direct tax" is not defined anywhere and courts have interpreted it in
many ways. In the Hylton case in 1796 SCOTUS said a tax on carriages
(which only rich people owned so it was in practice a wealth tax) was
OK because it was an excise tax. A century later in 1895 a very right
wing court said by 5-4 nope, we were wrong, lots of things are direct taxes so you get no income tax. But in 1909 the same court said an excise tax
on yachts, again in practice a wealth tax, was an excise tax so it's OK.
In 1921 they found the estate tax to be an excise tax, too.

So the historical argument that a wealth tax is OK has a lot of support.
For details start here:

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C4-1-1/ALDE_00001090/

Yes, I realize there's been a lot of back and forth on if some taxes are
excise taxes or not. I guess my main point is summed up in the one line
reading "The number of persons was merely used as a reasonable index of
wealth, John Adams said, and not the thing to be taxed."

It just sounds to me that they are trying to say "we're setting the tax
amount based off the number of people but we're NOT taxing the number of people" and I'm asking "what is the difference, legally speaking?"

They did come up with compromises like the 3/5 statement (how a slave
only counts as 3/5 of a freeman), etc but it's STILL seems to me to be a tax/person or "head tax", which was supposed to be “odious” and “abhorrent.”

Now in a philosophical debate, you may be able to get away with saying
"I killed the biological container that housed Mike but I didn't kill
Mike himself" but in a legal debate, the judge would say "Sorry, but
it's the same thing and you're going to the chair" (or, if the judge was wanting to be ornery, he'd say "OK, I'll buy that argument. John Levine
himself is free to go where-ever he wants but the biological container
that houses John Levine is going to the pen.")

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Mike Anderson <prabbit237@gmail.com.com> wrote:

Yes, I realize there's been a lot of back and forth on if some
taxes are excise taxes or not. I guess my main point is summed up
in the one line reading "The number of persons was merely used as
a reasonable index of wealth, John Adams said, and not the thing
to be taxed."

It just sounds to me that they are trying to say "we're setting
the tax amount based off the number of people but we're NOT taxing
the number of people" and I'm asking "what is the difference,
legally speaking?"

The difference is that with a head tax, everyone pays the same amount
of tax irrespective of their income or amount of assets. With a tax
based on the number of people, the obligation for the entire state is determined, and then allocated among the people in some reasonable
way.

They did come up with compromises like the 3/5 statement (how a
slave only counts as 3/5 of a freeman), etc but it's STILL seems
to me to be a tax/person or "head tax", which was supposed to be �
oodious� and � oabhorrent.�

That wasn't for tax purposes. That was to allow the slave states to
have more representatives than they would have had if the number of representatives were allocated by the number of voters rather than
total number of people.

Now in a philosophical debate, you may be able to get away with
saying "I killed the biological container that housed Mike but I
didn't kill Mike himself" but in a legal debate, the judge would
say "Sorry, but it's the same thing and you're going to the chair"
(or, if the judge was wanting to be ornery, he'd say "OK, I'll buy
that argument. John Levine himself is free to go where-ever he
wants but the biological container that houses John Levine is
going to the pen.")

No, legally they are not the same (depending on what "biological
container" means), though the RESULTS are the same because of intent,
action and result, which are the real criteria for the outcome of any
criminal case.

--
Stu
http://DownToEarthLawyer.com

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On 4/9/2021 1:00 PM, Stuart O. Bronstein wrote:

Mike Anderson <prabbit237@gmail.com.com> wrote:

Yes, I realize there's been a lot of back and forth on if some
taxes are excise taxes or not. I guess my main point is summed up
in the one line reading "The number of persons was merely used as
a reasonable index of wealth, John Adams said, and not the thing
to be taxed."

It just sounds to me that they are trying to say "we're setting
the tax amount based off the number of people but we're NOT taxing
the number of people" and I'm asking "what is the difference,
legally speaking?"

The difference is that with a head tax, everyone pays the same amount
of tax irrespective of their income or amount of assets. With a tax
based on the number of people, the obligation for the entire state is determined, and then allocated among the people in some reasonable
way.

Ok, if I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that in one case,
the federal government is saying "each and every person will pay $x in
taxes" and in the other case, you're saying "a state with 50 people will
pay 50 times $x" and then the state can say "we're charging 10 people 5
times $x each and the other 40 pay nothing" (or "one person pays 50
times $x and the other 49 nothing" or "each person pays $x" or however
they want to divey it up) and that makes sense and answers the original question. Basically it's just shifting it to the states to charge a "per
head" tax if they want or some other method if they don't.

They did come up with compromises like the 3/5 statement (how a
slave only counts as 3/5 of a freeman), etc but it's STILL seems
to me to be a tax/person or "head tax", which was supposed to be ƒ
oodiousƒ and ƒ oabhorrent.ƒ

That wasn't for tax purposes. That was to allow the slave states to
have more representatives than they would have had if the number of representatives were allocated by the number of voters rather than
total number of people.

The source quoted/linked said it was for both.

"The North argued that slaves contributed at least what free persons did
to a state’s wealth because free northern farmers did not continue to
work following the first freeze and northern women did not work in the fields.20 The 1783 proposal compromised by counting slaves at
three-fifths of a person, both sides “despairing of doing any better.”"

Now in a philosophical debate, you may be able to get away with
saying "I killed the biological container that housed Mike but I
didn't kill Mike himself" but in a legal debate, the judge would
say "Sorry, but it's the same thing and you're going to the chair"
(or, if the judge was wanting to be ornery, he'd say "OK, I'll buy
that argument. John Levine himself is free to go where-ever he
wants but the biological container that houses John Levine is
going to the pen.")

No, legally they are not the same (depending on what "biological
container" means), though the RESULTS are the same because of intent,
action and result, which are the real criteria for the outcome of any criminal case.

I meant "biological container" (the physical body) as opposed to the personality/mind (which some would argue is seated in some sort of a
soul that can exist outside of and independent from the body. I don't
agree with that but, again, that's not the can of worms I was trying to
open.) The law also doesn't try to address that issue of if the body and
mind are separate or one-and-the-same but that's DEFINITELY an issue for
a different newsgroup :)

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On 4/9/2021 10:00 AM, Stuart O. Bronstein wrote:

They did come up with compromises like the 3/5 statement (how a
slave only counts as 3/5 of a freeman), etc but it's STILL seems
to me to be a tax/person or "head tax", which was supposed to be ƒ
oodiousƒ and ƒ oabhorrent.ƒ

That wasn't for tax purposes. That was to allow the slave states to
have more representatives than they would have had if the number of representatives were allocated by the number of voters rather than
total number of people.

But the section on direct taxes specifically mentions the census or enumeration, which is mostly done for the purpose of allocating seats in
the HR. So it's likely that the slaves would have also been counted at
3/5 for purposes of a "direct" tax.

--
I do so have a memory. It's backed up on DVD... somewhere...

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