Constitutional collapse: Why we could be on the verge of a democratic apocalypse

[Bigun]

And just what would that do?  The answer is, not much.

I find it absolutely, utterly amazing - and amusing - that so many people who are so damned sure repealing the 16th Amendment will end the income tax haven't even bothered to read the two seminal Supreme Court cases that the 16th Amendment was intended to undo.

I'm not among them. 

Think me wrong?  Go read the cases.  The two cases are known collectively as the "Income Tax Cases" - they consist of an opinion by the Supreme Court after hearing the case, and a second opinion of the Supreme Court upon a rehearing.

I admit the opinions are a little hard to follow for people who are only accustomed to reading opinions in the current format that's been used by the Supreme Court for about the last 60 years or so, but if you read them carefully you will realize this:

(a) the income tax was unconstitutional ONLY as it applied to income from real and personal property, but

(b) the entire law was ruled unconstitutional because the Court felt that Congress did not intend for only the unconstitutional parts to be struck out of an otherwise valid law.

Here are links to the two opinions:

First opinion after hearing the case:  https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/157/429/case.html

Second opinion after rehearing:  https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/158/601/case.html

I don't think you wrong at all. In fact, I know you are exactly right.

The Marxist income tax is unfit for a FREE people and I will be fighting to see it gone until it is or I'm dead.

The founders told us the correct way to tax -  taxes on articles of consumption only -  and THAT is exactly what we should be doing!

[Oceander]

I'm not among them. 


I don't think you wrong at all. In fact, I know you are exactly right.

The Marxist income tax is unfit for a FREE people and I will be fighting to see it gone until it is or I'm dead.

The founders told us the correct way to tax -  taxes on articles of consumption only -  and THAT is exactly what we should be doing!

That's fine, so long as you understand what the Supreme Court actually said in those cases and understand why repealing the 16th Amendment wouldn't make the income tax go away, it would just make it grossly unfair.

[Bigun]

What Taxes Are Really For
Federal taxes can be made to serve four principal purposes of a social and economic character. These purposes are:
1. As an instrument of fiscal policy to help stabilize the purchasing power of the dollar;
2. To express public policy in the distribution of wealth and of income, as in the case of the progressive income and estate taxes;
3. To express public policy in subsidizing or in penalizing various industries and economic groups;
4. To isolate and assess directly the costs of certain national benefits, such as highways and social security.
In the recent past, we have used our federal tax program consciously for each of these purposes. In serving these purposes, the tax program is a means to an end. The purposes themselves are matters of basic national policy which should be established, in the first instance, independently of any national tax program.
Among the policy questions with which we have to deal are these:
Do we want a dollar with reasonably stable purchasing power over the years?
Do we want greater equality of wealth and of income than would result from economic forces working alone?
Do we want to subsidize certain industries and certain economic groups?
Do we want the beneficiaries of certain federal activities to be aware of what they cost?
These questions are not tax questions; they are questions as to the kind of country we want and the kind of life we want to lead. The tax program should be a means to an agreed end. The tax program should be devised as an instrument, and it should be judged by how well it serves its purpose.

From:

TAXES FOR REVENUE ARE OBSOLETE
 
by Beardsley Ruml,
Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~becraft/RUMLTAXES.html

[Oceander]

From:

TAXES FOR REVENUE ARE OBSOLETE
 
by Beardsley Ruml,
Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~becraft/RUMLTAXES.html

Taxes still raise revenue.  That other functions have been engrafted doesn't change that fact.

[Bigun]

.The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation

 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“The greatest tool Communism has in our toolbox is the progressive income tax.”

 Karl Marx

" The socialistic and anti-social character of the income tax is inherent.

Imbedded in the philosophy of the law is the destructive principle, so that once it is in effect the economic and political consequences are inevitable.  The principle of the income tax is the denial of private property.

There is nothing in the Sixteenth Amendment, there is nothing in the principle of the income tax, which puts a limit on the amount the State may demand, and hence the implication is clear that the individual's absolute right of private property is denied.


The theory of republican government, that its powers are derived from the will of the people, is no safeguard against this denial of private property.

Assuming that the Sixteenth Amendment at the time of its enactment did express the will of the people, every one of them, the substance and effect of income taxation was to destroy the will of any subsequent generation for modification or revocation.

It is unlike any other law.  For the denial of the right of private property is in essence the denial of the right of the individual to himself. He is no longer a free person if he is not free to keep and enjoy the products of his labors. --"

 Excerpted from From Solomon’s Yoke to the Income Tax  by Frank Chodorov

https://fee.org/resources/the-income-tax-root-of-all-evil/

[Bigun]

“The proletariat will use its political supremacy top wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible. Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production. These measures will of course be different in different countries. Nevertheless in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
   
1.   Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
   
2.   A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
   
3.   Abolition of all right of inheritance.
   
4.   Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
   
5.   Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
   
6.   Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
   
7.   Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
   
8.   Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
   
9.   Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
   
10.   Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c., &c.
   
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”


Manifesto of the Communist Party: Chapter 2 (toward the end)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm