Playing By Your Rules?
I believe that the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution was meant to place real limits on Federal power by reserving powers to the States and to the People. However, it seems that, in modern jurisprudence, the 10th Amendment has been relegated to "truism" status, and those who adhere to the notion of a search for "meaning" in the Constitution, so far as the intention behind a particular clause or section are irrelevant - because there is no monolithic intent behind the Constitution, nor any article or amendment thereof. In light of these, as I see it, unfortunate developments in our understanding of the Constitution, I have undertaken to draw up an argument against redistribution of wealth via progressive income tax and entitlements using the language of the Living Constitution. If you will not listen to an argument in the terms of the Enlightenment and the Founding, perhaps you will consider this one.
The "Due Process" clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments to the US Constitution, according to the Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, when read in light of the 9th Amendment's assurance of unenumerated rights, give us the concept of Substantive Due Process. By this, we know there are fundamental rights, which are "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," which have "long histories" or are "deeply rooted" in American society, and among these is the much touted Right to Privacy, which no act of Congress may abridge without withstanding strict scrutiny. In order to survive strict scrutiny, the court must show whether there is a compelling state interest that is furthered by the violation of this fundamental right, and whether the law in question is narrowly tailored to address the state interest.
Due to its long standing role in the history of our nation and its extremely deep roots in our American society, manifest in such concepts as the “American Dream," the Right to the Pursuit of Happiness is a fundamental right according to Substantive Due Process. No act of Congress may abridge the right of the People to pursue their own happiness without withstanding strict scrutiny.
We, in the United States, are subject to a graduated, progressive income tax, authorized by the 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution. In addition, because of this graduated status by which the matching segments of each tax payer's income are taxed equally, we know that this progressive income tax does not violate the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law. However, under our current system of taxation and entitlements, we know according to Internal Revenue Service data that in tax year 2007, the top 50 percent of wage earners - those who earned $32,879+ - paid 97.11% of Federal income taxes. When factoring in other Federal taxes, including the payroll tax, the top 50 percent was still responsible for 72% of the full Federal tax burden. The bottom 20 percent of wage earners paid only 0.4% of all Federal taxes, due to the Earned Income Tax Credit, by which up to 45% of payroll taxes may be refunded to a would-be tax payer. When considering entitlement payments - Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid - this bottom 20 percent of wage earners may effectively have a negative tax rate.
The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution was enacted to end slavery in the United States. However, because we know that there is no monolithic original intent behind the amendment, nor the Constitution as a whole, and because the amendment also prohibits indentured servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, then the meaning of "indentured servitude" may be interpreted in a new light according to our modern society and culture.
The top 80 percent of wage earners in the United States are effectively indentured to those in the bottom 20 percent of wage earners who take advantage of the Earned Income Tax Credit and who are also recipients of payments via Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid such that they receive more dollars from the government in entitlements than they pay to the government in taxes. The only way for the top 80 percent of wage earners to escape their servitude to these is to either exile themselves from the United States or to be divested of their fundamental Right to the Pursuit of Happiness by giving up their livelihood to become one of the very 20 percent whom they previously served. There is no compelling State interest in this divestiture of that right; in fact, its destruction serves the interests of less than one fifth of the population at the expense of the remainder. As such, the only supposed remedy to the condition of servitude must needs that the wage earner gives up one fundamental right for another, and to ask the wage earner to live without either cannot withstand strict scrutiny.
By this argument, it is unconstitutional for the Federal tax system to take money from the economically productive in order to give to those with no stake in the system.
posted by Aaron J Coventry @ 7:52 AM
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