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The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

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Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#721

Post by prottog »

jquery wrote: post #710
eppp wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SALT deduction was a massive thumb in the eye to those of us that didnt get it. Why should local tax burden have anything to do with federal taxes? It was just a handout at the end of the day.

Without it, we have a race to the bottom with social services and infrastructure. A state with better infrastructure cannot be tax-competitive with another state that simply sucks on the federal government’s teat for all its needs. The biggest handout of all is small states getting two senators despite having 1/50th the population. SALT deductions are nothing in comparison, you could always redirect federal money to…

> another state that simply sucks on the federal government’s teat

It's antithetical to the federal nature of the US that the overwhelming majority of tax dollars are paid to the federal government and not to state and local governments. The federal government's share of taxation should be limited to support its constitutional mission, and more should remain at the state and local level to achieve state and local missions, including things like social services and infrastructure.

That way, some states may choose to have an expanded role of government with high levels of social services and infrastructure spending, some may choose the opposite, and none are left sucking on the federal teat -- the milk from which, may I remind you, are collected from people who live in every state, not just the ones with "better infrastructure".

In the end government money is just people's money taken by taxation. When you let the federal government take most of it, you allow it to browbeat the states into doing whatever the federal government wants, conveniently escaping the limitations that the Constitution placed on it.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#722

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #690
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What will most likely happen is that the prices of pork will go up in Cali That assumes: * either pork production for CA takes place only inside CA or in other states they have two levels of pork production * if the latter, this further requires that pork producers are happy maintaining two levels of production * it also requires that no or few other states follow CA lead on requirements > Regulation simply equals…

adding additional friction to a process always increases the difficulty of the process and the cost of overcoming that friction is always borne by the consumer.

who bears the cost of not adequately regulating production and disposal processes?

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#723

Post by yencabulator »

bumby wrote: post #686
Veelox wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile, Ireland manages to amend its constitution regularly [1] without exploding. Ireland has population of ~5 million or about the same as Alabama. It isn't the best example. Instead of a general critique could you instead offer a specific general improvement?

I don't think it's fair that you were downvoted, at least without that person elaborating on why. I would tend to agree that larger, more pluralistic societies may have a larger downside to the ability to rapidly changing their laws. As one group gets within power, they have the ability to make lots of changes, only to be upset by the next group that ascends to power. The U.S. has a history of voting out the current…

> The U.S. has a history of voting out the current party in power and that constant whipsawing of policy might be a recipe for instability.

That's largely a US two-party thing. Elsewhere, there's not as much a singular "party in power", and they all need to compromise and tamper their more radical agendas to gain the votes needed.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#724

Post by int_19h »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #484
int_19h wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Constitution requires 3/4 of state legislatures to ratify any amendment. Given the extreme disparities between states in terms of population, it's entirely possible for something to be supported by >80% of the people - I'd say that reasonably qualifies as "consensus" - but still unable to be ratified. Conversely, it's possible for the small states representing less than 25% of the overall population to band toget…

There will be no amendment to ratify though without 3/4ths majority of the house and the senate – easily accointing for a majority of the US population – or a constitutional convention, also something not at all likely to occur without not just popular support but long standing grievances of the populace with the federal government.

The constitutional convention requires 2/3 of the state legislatures to approve it to convene, so popular support is no more relevant to it than it is to ratification. If you have enough legislatures willing to ratify some amendment, the same legislatures can also submit it for ratification.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#725

Post by int_19h »

_-david-_ wrote: post #629
int_19h wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm accounting for indirection via state legislatures, since it's the latter who ratify by simple majority - so the MPs in the state legislature who vote to ratify don't necessarily represent all the residents of that state (in fact, given the quirks of FPTP and tricks like gerrymandering, things can be ratified against popular majority in the state).

All residents of the state are represented by their representatives even if they don't support and didn't vote for the representative.

Suppose they did support and voted for their representative, and that representative voted against ratification, but the legislature still voted to ratify. Does the ratification then meaningfully represent all residents of the state?

I don't think so, but I can see how others might take a different perspective here. It doesn't really matter to the point I was originally making, though - if 40% of the population can rewrite the constitution over the heads of the other 60%, it's still badly broken.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#726

Post by dang »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #170
nathanaldensr wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's just admit that you have no idea what Mississippians want or would do.

Quoted post unavailable.

You can't do this here. We've banned this account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#727

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #708
closeparen wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU famously makes a lot of policy!

Not compared to what democrats want the US federal government to do. EU countries have their own gun laws, separate healthcare, retirement, and unemployment systems, separate housing and labor laws, etc. Separate laws on abortion, same sex marriage, and other social issues.

This is weird, because you're crediting sovereign states for having their "own" national health care, retirement, unemployment, and housing systems, and in the wildest dreams of the Democratic party we wouldn't have a national system for all of these things.

It makes sense if you sort of skim over the idea that Germany, Sweden, and Spain are just "states" in a federation. But obviously, they are not.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#728

Post by snapplebobapple »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #640
snapplebobapple wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ron Paul. That is literally it.

the guy whose platform is going back on the gold standard and abolishing embassies to other countries? i'll give him credit for having a consistant platform and world view, but if he had his way we'd hand control of everything over to corporations -- and that's what his son is doing everything in his power to make happen.

The question wasn't who do you agree with that also writes good and can do other things good too, it was are there any politicians who write with the thoughtfulness approaching Jefferson (who would have agreed on the gold standard btw). Ron's ideas on freedom are excellent, they just aren't tempered with a strong understanding of market power and how it in itself can cause all the abuses the freedom from government he proposes is supposed to stop because there is little attempt to apply said freedoms to private companies who clearly have market power.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#729

Post by rayiner »

tptacek wrote: post #727
rayiner wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not compared to what democrats want the US federal government to do. EU countries have their own gun laws, separate healthcare, retirement, and unemployment systems, separate housing and labor laws, etc. Separate laws on abortion, same sex marriage, and other social issues.

This is weird, because you're crediting sovereign states for having their "own" national health care, retirement, unemployment, and housing systems, and in the wildest dreams of the Democratic party we wouldn't have a national system for all of these things. It makes sense if you sort of skim over the idea that Germany, Sweden, and Spain are just "states" in a federation. But obviously, they are not.

@debtinflation was making a pragmatic argument: that modernity renders these granular state lines obsolete. My point is that the EU manages to keep chugging with all these little sovereign states of 5-10 million people managing their own healthcare and retirement systems

Maybe a US state is something legally different than an EU country, maybe not. I would say the two weren’t intended to be different, and whatever trends have produced such a difference were a mistake. Either way, that doesn’t address the practicality question.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#730

Post by friend_and_foe »

int_19h wrote: post #724
friend_and_foe wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will be no amendment to ratify though without 3/4ths majority of the house and the senate – easily accointing for a majority of the US population – or a constitutional convention, also something not at all likely to occur without not just popular support but long standing grievances of the populace with the federal government.

The constitutional convention requires 2/3 of the state legislatures to approve it to convene, so popular support is no more relevant to it than it is to ratification. If you have enough legislatures willing to ratify some amendment, the same legislatures can also submit it for ratification.

I'm aware, I don't believe that the populations of any combination of 2/3rds of the states constitute a minority, and it's safe to assume that significant populations from the 1/3rd of stares would support whatever measure a convention was attempting to address whatever problem.
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