David Shemano wrote: > ... Obamacare presently says you have to pay a penalty to the US government > if you do not have health insurance (the individual mandate). Obama could > have avoided all constitutional problems if, instead of the individual > mandate, the law raised taxes on income by some amount and then gave a > corresponding credit if the taxpayer (or the employer) purchased health > insurance... <
So are you saying that the Heritage Foundation which developed Romney/Obamacare in the first place was laying a trap for Obama, saying "here's a nice plan that should be acceptable to centrists, technocrats, and conservatives" without telling him that conservatives and money libertarians would actively challenge it in court (bringing in big money guns to support them)? > One could legitimately say this puts form over substance. But sometimes, > form IS substance. Obama did not want to say he raised taxes. He was > adamant that the mandate was not a tax. This was politically important to > him, apparently because he believed he could not pass the legislation if it > was characterized as a tax.< Being non-dogmatic, Obama probably wants to raise taxes, except that GOPsters oppose such actions tooth and nail. The insurance companies -- also heavy hitters -- likely preferred a plan that created a bigger market for their services. > This reflects the Constitutional structure, which implicitly, if not > explicitly, reflects a view of politics and public choice. The tax and spend > power of the Congress is more broad and powerful than the power to regulate > commerce precisely because legislators always have an incentive to highlight > the benefits and hide the cost of legislation.< Taxing and spending don't have benefits and costs that can be highlighted and hidden? Maybe the distinction between taxing and spending (on the one hand) and regulation (on the other) exists in the law, but in the real world the line is fuzzy. > Obama (and the legislation supporters) wanted the ability to take credit for >the benefits of the legislation while hiding the costs as much as possible. >He, politically, preferred to do that through regulation, where tracing >increased costs through a maze of institutions is hard, as opposed to the >simplicity of raising the additional revenue through taxes, where the costs >are more visible and more likely to create political resistance.< These days, both taxes and spending are so complex that the true costs can be hidden. Just thinking about tax incidence, do most people know that employers pass the cost of payroll taxes on to employees? by the way, to which version of "public choice theory" are you referring? that of James Buchanan? it's not as if there's just one version of that theory, since not all economists who dabble in political theory are wedded to free-market fundamentalism. -- Jim Devine / "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite." -- Paul Dirac _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
