Federalism & Inequality, Part One

Constitutional debates swirling around the PPACA’s individual mandate have much to do with federalism. The core issue the Supreme Court is addressing is whether the federal government has essentially unlimited authority in economic policy, or whether they are yet some areas of economic policy-making (such as whether to compel commerce) exclusive to the states. As [...]

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Socialism in One State

Vermont has passed a law authorizing a single-payer, government-run health insurance system. Apparently the plan fails to grasp the fiscal nettle and thus may never come to fruition. Nevertheless, I hope they go forward with it. I don’t think it will work – to the contrary, the experiment should serve as an object lesson to [...]

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Interposition: Part One: An Essential Purpose of the States

A rumble can be heard emanating from assemblies and governor’s mansions across these fruited plains. It is a sound reminiscent of by-gone days that echo down through centuries of constitutional thought. Prompted by everything from unfunded Congressional mandates to the new omnibus healthcare bill, (See here and here) these reverberations strike cords of distant legal memory that [...]

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Regional Inequality

The latest Economist has an interesting feature on inequalities among regions within countries. The article compares countries on their ranges in GDP per head (the ratio of richest region to poorest). Thus, we get charts like the following: But range is an extremely crude concept for measuring inequality. In the U.S., the District of Columbia [...]

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Oregon to Opt out of Parts of Obamacare?

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) had an interesting bipartisan health care bill with the now-ousted Bob Bennett of Utah that, unfortunately, never got anywhere. But apparently he sneaked into the bill that did pass a provision that will allow states to set up their own universal insurance systems. While conservative states are backing a legal challenge [...]

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A Constitutional Right to Marriage?

So what do we think about the district court ruling overturning California’s same-sex marriage ban? To my knowledge, this is the first time a court has asserted a federal constitutional right to marriage. As a longtime supporter of getting government out of marriage licensing and of legal equality for same-sex and nonmonogamous relationships, I am [...]

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More Money for the States?

It is probably fairly obvious to our readers that many (all?) of us here at Pileus support a more robust form of federalism (and decentralization) than we currently enjoy in the U.S.  So it is with much chagrin that I relay news from this weekend that President Obama wants more federal dollars to bail out irreponsible supposedly [...]

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Who’s Afraid of Fiscal Federalism?

In the 2005 case Gonzales v Raich, the Supreme Court pulled back on its federalism jurisprudence and ruled that the federal government may prosecute someone for growing marijuana at home for personal use under the authority of the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which grants Congress the right to regulate commerce among the several [...]

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Liberty as Decentralization

Under certain conditions, decentralization can in and of itself represent an increase in freedom, even if government does not shrink as a consequence. Libertarians need not be complete anarchists, just radical decentralists.

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Experiments, Health Care, and Federalism

As the New York Times reported: Esther Duflo, a development economist at M.I.T., has been awarded the John Bates Clark Medal. The award is given to “that American economist under the age of 40 who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge.”  Professor Duflo, 37, helped found the [...]

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