In the end the Supreme Court of the United States didn’t untie the Gordian Knot, but as Alexander had done, they cut it instead.
And by doing so they demonstrated what we have known all along: The only new ideas Democrats-and D.C. bureaucrats- have are the old ideas of finding new ways to tax Americans and creating new bureaucracies to spend that money.
I won’t read the Obamacare opinion. I’ll leave that to legal scholars.
But I know this.
A tax is a tax is a tax.
Obamcare, when shorn of its Euro-Metro sophistication, is a tax.
A really big, fat, ugly tax, with a really big, fat, ugly bureaucracy attached to it.
Thus the Democrats- and D.C. bureaucrats- have created a system that promises to raise taxes on everyone. And still not make healthcare affordable for all.
Why did they do this? Not to “save” healthcare; nor yet to “reform” it.
As I have said before, no one in D.C. gets paid to solve problems. That would give lobbyists nothing to do.
Instead, we have just created another pot of money that can be used for cronies, anti-capitalists and special interests to keep D.C. as the one major metropolitan area where home prices are steady.
Of course D.C. thinks things are great. For people in Washington the money machine is still open for business. You just have to have the right pin number.
Compare the two charts.
The one on top is the median sales price of all properties in the Washington, D.C. area since Jan 2000- which starts at $130,000. The real estate market peaked in 2007 at $460,000, yet home prices have remained remarkably steady, despite “the worst recession” since the start of time. The current median sales price for all homes in D.C. according to Trulia is $410,000. That’s about a 10 percent average annual return.
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The chart below is the chart for the median sales price for homes listed in Chicago, IL. Remarkably, in January of 2000, median homes prices were at $145,000, higher than D.C. Chicago real estate values peaked at $329,000 in 2007 and now stand at $180,000. That’s about a 1.9 percent average annual return.
The rate of inflation over the same periods is just a tad higher.
What’s clear from the Supreme Court decision is that our revolution for limited government and limited taxation is now broken. 236 years ago this country was founded on the belief that governments that governed least, governed best.
I think we still believe that.
But heaven forbid that that antique idea get in the way of the Washington wealth machine.
The six million people who live in the D.C. bubble may only add up to two percent of the population, but they truly are the One Percent that we’ve been warned about.
Wall Street?
Wall Street has done worse than the average home in Chicago.
In January of 2000, Wall Street peaked at 1498 on the S&P 500. The S&P now stands at 1362. That’s a rate of return of about .80 percent, or a 9.55 percent loss during the entire period.
“In many troubled relationships, both sides deserve some of the blame,” write pollster Scott Rasmussen. “But the United States is a nation founded on the belief that governments gain their legitimacy only from the consent of the governed. In the relationship between the people and the Political Class, that means the voters are right, and the politicians need to change.”
Or we need to change the politicians.
Now we know.
P.S. We won't be France. Say it with me. Post it to Facebook
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