It’s everywhere you look. Gavin Newsom said “We need a federal wealth tax”. He’s absolutely right, because as long as we have a system where states have any sovereignty, the reviled “billionaires” are of course going to flee to states which don’t have such a tax. They are doing it. The wealth tax obviously cannot be implemented on a state-by-state basis.
And look at the reaction to Hochul’s ban on new data centers in the State of New York. As a denizen of a neighboring state, Pa, all this means to me is that undoubtedly, the Pocono Mountains will be further ravaged by these behemoths. They’re popping up like fungi on a dead tree. I won’t be leaving my beloved land, but if I were looking to buy a parcel now , that would be a consideration. Pa and New Jersey will end up PAVED with data centers.
But that would be foolish because as I said, we can’t go on like this. Because China, China, China!
No, Cloward and Piven were right. Either everyone is forced into dependence on, and subservience to, the national government—or NOBODY is.
And that has to mean the demise of “states’ rights”.
Newsom is a fool, but you already knew that. People with real money are fully capable of leaving the country as well as any particular state. And they are doing it. Need I remind you that John Walker was in process of doing exactly that for the same reasons?
Every single fix proposed by the statists — slavers, in John’s parlance — merely serves to accelerate the decline. Much as a drug abuser needs to hit rock bottom before recovery is possible, so it may be necessary for the US to fall to Venezuelan levels before sanity is restored. Of course, some drug addicts die of overdose, only thus becoming truly drug-free.
Yes, obviously—but moving to a whole other country is a much bigger deal than moving across state borders.
Some European countries still have a wealth tax, but a lot of them repealed them 20 or so years ago—because of capital flight. In France I remember it used to be you had to pay an “estate tax” every year—no waiting til you’re dead!
So, you COULD, of course transpose my point to the international scene, but that isn’t what I was talking about.
Professional politicians love wealth taxes – just like they love income taxes, property taxes, excise taxes, sales taxes, road taxes, death taxes, etc. If they ever can work out how to impose an enjoyment tax, they will impose that too. Professional politicians and their enforcers (lawyers and bureaucrats) love Other People’s Money.
But … we don’t have to have professional politicians. That is where the current version of “democracy” has taken us, but we could change that. After the Coming Collapse, we probably will.
There is really an unresolved issue in governance. When the population is mainly near-self-sufficient peasants and the tradesmen who service them, government can be quite limited. When most people critically depend on remotely-supplied water, sewerage, electricity, gas, roads, rails, airports and a supply chain that begins on the other side of the world, we need a much larger (hence intrusive) government. Our current failed version of universal suffrage “democracy” does not do a useful job of keeping that necessarily-larger government under control.
Hmmm. Don’t Isle of Man residents end up under the gentle caress of London government?
The same two-tier government that happily turns a blind eye to thousands of young women being sexually abused because they are working class & white, while their abusers are the government-preferred welfare-consuming immigrants?
The same government that is prodding the Ukraine into starting a wider European war with Russia?
The same government that blights the landscape with expensive bird-killing windmills and sends the bill to the peons?
The same government that can switch leaders without giving mere citizens any say in the matter?
There is definitely room for regret! Stay or go (anywhere), professional politicians will do their best to squash us.
IOM has its own government, separate from the UK. It’s actually a crown dependency with its own government, currency, laws.
The things you’re slanging aren’t us. We have no forced dumping of undesirables, AFAIK no grooming gangs, no violence. And we’re proud of Tynwald, renowned as the world’s oldest continuously operating parliament, with origins dating back to the Viking age in 979 AD.
The Isle is small enough that people for the most part are good neighbors.
Yes, there are pros and cons with any decisions and career politicians are the lowest of invertebrates wherever one lives. I’d rather not have to up stakes and relocate should this place go all mainland UK but if it does I’ll do so
Thank you! Every day is a school day, as my Sister In Law says.
Interesting! If the internet is to be trusted, the population of Isle of Man is about 85,000 people – which puts it is the same general range as Ancient Athens. Maybe a reminder that the population level associated with a government worth having has to be quite small?
Dear Roxie, it seems to me you and JW, by virtue of your intellect, your sophistication, had become “citizens of the world”. The world was all before you! But most people are kinda….potbound. Or as Yeats put it more poetically, “rooted in one dear perpetual place.”
There are only two kinds of people who have nothing to lose by uprooting themselves: those who have nothing, and those who contain and thus can carry their wealth and capital: their intellect, and skill, with them wherever they go.
In my opinion most people bred in the First World would be too timid to uproot themselves.
P. S.: I just learned that you are single-handedly keeping Scanalyst going. THANK YOU!!
Federalism died in 1865. Or, if you’re feeling generous, in FDR’s administration. If feeling cranky, it died with Marbury v. Madison. Adoption of the 17th Amendment is another favorite milestone.
It’s been a long, steady decline, punctuated by a few key events. Take your pick.
There are several steps away from federalism worth noting. Mine is from 1942 - Wickard v. Filburn. That’s where the Commerce Clause ate the Constitution. The court (sic) said that, despite the fact that farmer Filburn ignored crop quotas because he consumed all his crops on his own farm - he nonetheless “affected” interstate commerce because he would otherwise have to resort to interstate commerce to buy what he needed! Otherwise put, if I break wind in Pittsburgh and someone buys an air freshener downwind in NJ, guess which orifice of my body is in reach of congress (sic) regulatory power under the Commerce Clause?
