"tax" or "penalty"?

[Dan Goncharoff]

I think you just called the Constitution a list of prefab categories, but
maybe I read you wrong.

DanG


On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "tax" or "penalty"?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> It isn't exactly a tax and it isn't exactly a penalty. That's the point. To
> say, as the Court did, that it's Constitutional under the taxing power of
> Congress, isn't quite the same as saying it's a tax precisely like other
> taxes. It's saying that it's more like a traditional tax levied by Congress
> through the IRS than it is a innovative penalty imposed under the commerce
> clause. Those were the choices.
>
> The semantic issue isn't whether the individual mandate is good or whether
> it will work or anything else. The issue is that to label it as simply a
> "tax" *or* a "penalty" is to cram it unreasonably into a prefab category
> that will not fir precisely. That is an elementary freshman-level error in
> reasoning.
>
> Like every other 5-4 SCOTUS opinion, a different court might have decided
> differently.  A law isn't deemed Constutional because the Court's had a
> Revelation from the Realm of Pure Forms; it's Constitutional because
> a majority of nine of the presumably sharpest legal minds available have so
> decided, based on their professional expertise and interpretation of the
> arguments. Constitutional is as Constitutional does.
>
> To think otherwise is to indulge in another freshman-level error, except
> this time in the realm political science. The media and the
> pols encourage these errors on the KISS principle, the bedrock of all
> politics and journalism.
>
>
> JL
>
> On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 10:23 AM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: "tax" or "penalty"?
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > It seems to me that, since penalties are unconstitutional and taxes are
> > constitutional, it's a distinction with a difference, and something
> worthy
> > of getting hung up on.
> >
> > DanG
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 8:22 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com
> > >wrote:
> >
> > > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > > -----------------------
> > > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > > Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> > > Subject:      "tax" or "penalty"?
> > >
> > >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> > > Every commentator I've seen on TV (and I watch a hell of a lot),
>  whether
> > > right or left, pol or journo, expert or otherwise, is passionately hung
> > up
> > > on the question of whether the inidividual mandate is a "tax" or a
> > > "penalty."
> > >
> > > What's remarkable is that *nobody* has been able to utter the simple
> > truth
> > > that "It's like a penalty in some ways and like a tax in others."
> > >
> > > Is this a political, a journalistic, a semantic, or a brain problem? Or
> > all
> > > of the above?
> > >
> > > OK, don't answer that.  But the point is, in media journalism, don't
> > > address the issue if you can address the label instead.
> > >
> > > JL
> > >
> > > --
> > > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> > truth."
> > >
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