Can the Federal Government Constitutionally redistribute wealth?

[dcraelin]

Cool. Care to answer the question?

this multi-quote thing is really throwing me off. Did they change something, in the way it works?
Anyway the answer to the opening question if thats what you mean is: It is Consitutional.

I agree on the quotes, it's been confusing. And that is the first part of the question, the rest of it is, where does the Constitution grant the Federal government that authority since the Constitution is a document of enumerated Federal powers.

I wish they would have a simple option to highlight parts of a post you wish to respond to and put it in as quotes. Theres probably a way to do it....but I dont find it simple in any way.

OK on the subject. I believe the General welfare clause authorizes welfare payments, cant remember how the federal powers are enumerated but you may have a point in that welfare payments are not specifically mentioned, However, like a lot of things the federal government does, it does this where the states do not want to do it. In other words If the feds werent handling it the states would be and your tax burden would be roughly the same or ....even more since the states generally have balanced budgets.

 

[Dad2three]

Go back to the full quote. That was OKTexas's point, you cut out the context of the quote. The full quote showed he is referring to collecting "justly levied" taxes, it is not saying all money belongs to the government.

Stop being a lying moron!!!

All Property, indeed ... seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick,

 

[Little-Acorn]

You deleted the discussion, dumb ass. And your post didn't show that.

DID YOU DENY REDISTRIBUTION UPWARDS THE PAST 30 YEARS? Yes or no will do. Did I give you proof there has been upwards distribution the past 30 years./ Yes or no?

As you see, the liberals are so desperate, they even try to pretend that if someone has violated the Constitution for 30 years, that makes it OK to violate the Constitution now.

The shallowness of their "arguments" is astounding.

 

[Dad2three]

The Federalist papers by most accounts were not widely read. AND, if you've ever tried to wade your way through them you know your eyes glaze over pretty quickly.....I doubt they were very effective even to those that bothered to read them in New York.
They are over-hyped.

True, but it was a limited campaign to get just a few to sign onto the US Constitution, then as today, the nation was deeply divided over thinking people (federalists) and sheeple (conservatives, anti federalists)

 

[Wry Catcher]

What if Kaz got his way? What if the Federal Government could not provide for individual citizens?

Consider the fundamental changes we would see in less than a generation?

 

[Dad2three]

It's humorous how frantically the big-govt pushers keep trying to ignore the part of the Constitution that forbids their attempts to buy votes by redistributing wealth.

Redistributing wealth, as described in the OP, has two parts, of course:

1.) Taking money from one person,
2.) Giving that money directly to another peson.

The first is taxation, which the Fed govt clearly has the powerr to do.

The second is spending, which the Constitution explicitly restricts to programs that will help all Americans equally (see the so-called "Welfare Clause"). Handing money directtly to one person or group, blatantly violates that restriction.

It is flatly unconstitutioutional for the Fed govt to redistribute wealth.Despite the number of times the liberals desperately try to pretend that if the first is legal, then the second must also be legal.

Weird how SCOTUS has REPEATEDLY said you are full of it, with welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, SS, Etc..

 

[Dad2three]

No, it was very much a limited government push. I understand you need it to be less than that to promote your progressive trash.

Sure, Madison originally wanted to give the feds veto power over the states. Limited? lol LIMITED TO LAWS WRITTEN BY CONGRESS TO GOVERN A NATION.

 

[Dad2three]

SCOTUS does not interpret the Constitution, it applies the Constitution. Your understanding of this is truly poor to nonexistent.

LOL, SERIOUSLY? You are a fukking moron

 

[Little-Acorn]

"All Property, indeed ... seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, "

By the way, Franklin wrote that in 1783.

When the Constitution was ratified six years later, it overruled him, saying that property cannot be taken from individuals except by due course of law. The only courses available were taxation, and Eminent Domain. No automatic transfer of property to the Publick, as Franklin describes, was mentioned. And so the Fed govt had no such power.

Nice try. You people really are desperate to steal from honest citizens, aren't you?

 

[Desperado]

Can the Federal Government Constitutionally redistribute wealth?
Absolutely Not but when was the last time the Federal Government actually paid any attention to the Constitution.

 

[dblack]

It was the offered rationale, and explanation, for the contents of the new Constitution. If the Federalist Papers were, as you suggest, propaganda, and the Constitution actually means something different than what its authors claimed, then the ratification of the Constitution was fraudulent and should be reconsidered.

The Federalist papers by most accounts were not widely read. AND, if you've ever tried to wade your way through them you know your eyes glaze over pretty quickly.....I doubt they were very effective even to those that bothered to read them in New York.
They are over-hyped.

Maybe not by the population as whole, but they were read by those responsible for ratification, and represented the ongoing debate amongst them. Many of the articles are addressed to specific people and groups with objections. That's why it's so ironic that specific fears of those groups (like the broad interpretation of the general welfare clause) turned out be true. Despite the assurances that such fears were misplaced.

 

[Dad2three]

Ben didn't know any billionaires. Your assumptions are laughable.

Again, YOU are a moron. Got it


Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and other fellow travelers

If there was one thing the Revolutionary generation agreed on — and those guys who dress up like them at Tea Party conventions most definitely do not — it was the incompatibility of democracy and inherited wealth.

With Thomas Jefferson taking the lead in the Virginia legislature in 1777, every Revolutionary state government abolished the laws of primogeniture and entail that had served to perpetuate the concentration of inherited property. Jefferson cited Adam Smith, the hero of free market capitalists everywhere, as the source of his conviction that (as Smith wrote, and Jefferson closely echoed in his own words), "A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural." Smith said: "There is no point more difficult to account for than the right we conceive men to have to dispose of their goods after death."


Stephen Budiansky s Liberal Curmudgeon Blog Adam Smith Thomas Jefferson and other fellow travelers

The causes which destroyed the ancient republics were numerous; but in Rome, one principal cause was the vast inequality of fortunes.

–Noah Webster

The founders, despite decades of rancorous disagreements about almost every other aspect of their grand experiment, agreed that America would survive and thrive only if there was widespread ownership of land and businesses.

George Washington, nine months before his inauguration as the first president, predicted that America "will be the most favorable country of any kind in the world for persons of industry and frugality, possessed of moderate capital, to inhabit." And, he continued, "it will not be less advantageous to the happiness of the lowest class of people, because of the equal distribution of property."

The second president, John Adams, feared "monopolies of land" would destroy the nation and that a business aristocracy born of inequality would manipulate voters, creating "a system of subordination to all... The capricious will of one or a very few" dominating the rest. Unless constrained, Adams wrote, "the rich and the proud" would wield economic and political power that "will destroy all the equality and liberty, with the consent and acclamations of the people themselves."

James Madison, the Constitution's main author, described inequality as an evil, saying government should prevent "an immoderate, and especially unmerited, accumulation of riches." He favored "the silent operation of laws which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigents towards a state of comfort."

Alexander Hamilton, who championed manufacturing and banking as the first Treasury secretary, also argued for widespread ownership of assets, warning in 1782 that, "whenever a discretionary power is lodged in any set of men over the property of their neighbors, they will abuse it."

Late in life, Adams, pessimistic about whether the republic would endure, wrote that the goal of the democratic government was not to help the wealthy and powerful but to achieve "the greatest happiness for the greatest number."



http://www.newsweek.com/2014/02/07/why-thomas-jefferson-favored-profit-sharing-245454.html

 

[dblack]

It was the offered rationale, and explanation, for the contents of the new Constitution. If the Federalist Papers were, as you suggest, propaganda, and the Constitution actually means something different than what its authors claimed, then the ratification of the Constitution was fraudulent and should be reconsidered.

So you DON'T know ALL the federalists were was adversiment to sway a few NYers to support a STRONG FEDERAL GOV'T over the weak Articles of Confederation. Got it

You've 'got' nothing, beyond a zeal for authoritarian government.

 

[Dad2three]

As you see, the liberals are so desperate, they even try to pretend that if someone has violated the Constitution for 30 years, that makes it OK to violate the Constitution now.

The shallowness of their "arguments" is astounding.

If you don't have a clue of the actual context of the question, you probably should stay out of the conversation, it makes you look even more foolish than you normally do.


The original posit was UPWARD concentration of wealth via taxation or lack of (Reaganomics)

 

[Little-Acorn]

But Adams, Madison, and even the big-govt fanatic Hamilton realized that the wealth redistribution they envisioned, could not be implemented without resorting to outright theft.

For that reason, they wisely decided to leave it out of the Constitution, thus denying the Fed govt any authority to do it.

That was quite possibly the last time in recorded American history that big-government advocates showed common sense.

 

[Dad2three]

What if Kaz got his way? What if the Federal Government could not provide for individual citizens?

Consider the fundamental changes we would see in less than a generation?

The US would AGAIN look like a 3rd world nation conservatives/libertarians want!

 

[Dad2three]

By the way, Franklin wrote that in 1783.

When the Constitution was ratified six years later, it overruled him, saying that property cannot be taken from individuals except by due course of law. The only courses available were taxation, and Eminent Domain. No automatic transfer of property to the Publick, as Franklin describes, was mentioned. And so the Fed govt had no such power.

Nice try. You people really are desperate to steal from honest citizens, aren't you?

Got it, you can't critically think and aren't honest

 

[Dad2three]

You've 'got' nothing, beyond a zeal for authoritarian government.

And like all libertarians ALL you have is 'faith and myths' to stand on, as NO NATION has EVER used your bullshit, even limited!

 

[Dad2three]

But Adams, Madison, and even the big-govt fanatic Hamilton realized that the wealth redistribution they envisioned, could not be implemented without resorting to outright theft.

For that reason, they wisely decided to leave it out of the Constitution, thus denying the Fed govt any authority to do it.

That was quite possibly the last time in recorded American history that big-government advocates showed common sense.

Yes, they left it up to future generations, as they knew it was a living document they created

 

[saveliberty]

No, it was very much a limited government push. I understand you need it to be less than that to promote your progressive trash.

Sure, Madison originally wanted to give the feds veto power over the states. Limited? lol LIMITED TO LAWS WRITTEN BY CONGRESS TO GOVERN A NATION.

All powers not expressly given to the federal government are retained by the states and individuals. Note these are powers, not rights.