Billionaire Tax? We Are Farmers, Bop de Bop…

Letter to Romans: While income tax surcharges on the “rich” is likely constitutional, the Supremes have never specifically ok’d a direct (or veiled direct) tax on their inflating assets as Biden, Warren, Sanders & some blue states like California push. “Reality check, please”?

The 16th Amendment’s history is perhaps the best tell of how the High Court & Congress tread gingerly about wealth & income taxes on steroids circa 1913. The key precedent to look at is Pollock v Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co., in which the Supremes in a 5-4 decision struck down a tax on income accrued from real estate & personal property (like stocks & bonds) because it wasn’t apportioned among the states by population as required by the Founders’ US Constitution. After that decision, Congress passed the 16^th Amendment, which gave Congress the authority to levy an income tax on individuals & corporations from any source without that apportionment requirement. It ushered in the so-called Progressive Era that sought to increasingly tax citizens at ever higher levels to further its wealth-shifting ideology & to meet its welfare goals; but it’s never been specifically ruled to pass constitutional muster if a given new tax steals, er, “directly” taxes just a rich guy’s property. How today’s Supreme Court conservative majority would rule is open to debate.

Regardless of the complex legal principles involved, however, the biggest practical problem facing the tax happy progressives now in charge of their bankrupt or near bankrupt cities & states is that the wealthy, like their wealth and income, are mobile. Many, we’re told, are fleeing California, for instance. And what that promises Gov. Newsom, after he may get a one-time revenue boost from whatever new tax is floated, is an ever-shrinking tax base of average citizens who are stuck having to pay for his party’s ever-expanding welfare state. Like the insurance commercial says, “We are farmers …” and the reality is that “we” can only be milked by progressive dreamers so much before “we” cry “oink, oink, oink!”

Davd Soul