Chart: Median Earnings by Major and Subject Area

The Chronicle of Higher Education last year produced a highly informative chart showing the economic value, in terms of median annual salary, of a bachelor's degree by major and subject area. The chart covers median wages for more than 100 occupations spanning 15 majors and is a useful tool for anyone weighing how much student loan debt to accumulate.

It also raises a couple of interesting questions. Why do colleges charge the same general tuition rates for a petroleum engineer major, who can expect to earn an annual median salary of $120K, as a counseling-psychology major, whose annual median salary is only $29K?  Shouldn't tuition rates be more directly correlated to a student's return on investment, i.e., cost aligned to benefit of degrees?

"Why Women Make Less than Men"

"Are we really in the midst of what Pew [Research Center] calls a 'gender reversal'?" asks Kay Hymowitz in the Wall Street Journal. "One stubborn fact of the labor market argues against the idea. That is the gender-hours gap, close cousin of the gender-wage gap." She cites studies from the U.S. to Sweden suggesting that "the famous gender-wage gap is to a considerable degree a gender-hours gap."  Simply put, women more often than not choose to work fewer hours than men once they have children:

The main reason that women spend less time at work than men—and that women are unlikely to be the richer sex—is obvious: children. Today, childless 20-something women do earn more than their male peers. But most are likely to cut back their hours after they have kids, giving men the hours, and income, advantage.

Another Global Warming Icon Recants Alarmism

"Not many years ago, a celebrated scientist predicted a global warming disaster awaited humanity," writes Investor's Business Daily. "Today, that same scientist admits his warning was too 'alarmist'." 

James Lovelock, father of the "Gaia" theory that the entire earth is a single living system, was one of the many voices that's predicted environmental calamity will result from carbon dioxide emissions.

"We thought we knew 20 years ago," he said. "That led to some alarmist books — mine included — because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened."

The 92-year-old Lovelock notes that "the climate is doing its usual tricks" and concedes "there's nothing much really happening yet" even though "we were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now."

Activists Take Page from 'Communist Manifesto'

"The fervor for reform in America today shares in the same spirit of class struggle that inspired [Karl] Marx and [Friedrich] Engels in the 1840s." writes Maura Pennington at Forbes. "Were someone to substitute the word “corporations” or the catch-all “1%” for the word “bourgeoisie,” The Communist Manifesto would chillingly read like any official statement from Occupiers and the 99% movement at large."

Drawing many comparisons between the rhetoric of Marx and today's Occupiers, Ms. Pennington notes that "fools still fall for it [but] Americans, of all people, shouldn't be those fools. ... It is unlikely that the average American being swept up in the 99% movement has read The Communist Manifesto, but our leaders should recognize the language and know better than to recite from that script."

Consequences of Too Much Student Loan Debt

Can there be too much of a good thing? In the case of student loan debt, yes. The Wall Street Journal compiled a list of the potential consequences of taking out too many student loans:

• Inability to rent a home because of high debt-to-income ratio
• Inability to get credit cards or home or car loans
• Delays in buying a car or purchasing a home
• Postponement of marriage and childbirth for financial reasons
• Parents feel pressure to take out loans or otherwise help with payments
• Risk for parents (who co-sign loans) of losing homes, cars and other assets
• Little ability to discharge student loans in bankruptcy
• Having wages garnisheed
• Seizure of tax refund (government loans only)
• Possible loss of state-issued professional licenses
• Being forced to deal with private collection agencies in the event of default
• Having liens placed on bank accounts or property in a default (primarily loans from private lenders)
• Facing collection fees of 25% of amount owed in a default
• No statute of limitation on collection efforts
• Reduction of Social Security payments (government loans only)

YahooNews: 1 in 2 New Grads Jobless, Underemployed

"The college class of 2012 is in for a rude welcome to the world of work," begins the Yahoo news story. "A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or under-employed in positions that don't fully use their skills and knowledge." Here are the highlights:

• about 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor's degree-holders under age 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years (about half of these were underemployed)
• stronger demand in science, education and health fields, but arts and humanities fields flounder
• more grads were employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists, and mathematics combined
• more grads were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers
• those who majored in zoology, anthropology, philosophy, art history and humanities were least likely to find jobs appropriate to their education level
• those with nursing, teaching, accounting or computer science degrees were among the most likely to find appropriate jobs

Jobs of the Future, Not the Past

Liberal nostalgiacs don't understand jobs of the future, reads a Michael Barone headline. Liberals live in the by-gone era of the lifetime unionized assembly-line manufacturing jobs and white collar mega-corporation careers. That nostalgia shapes liberals' economic policies and thwarts opportunities for today's job-hunting, career-building young people. "The good news," writes Barone, "is that information technology provides the iPod/Facebook generation with the means to find work and create careers that build on their own personal talents and interests."

Barone draws attention to a "brilliant the-american-interest.com blog" post by Walter Russell Mead, who challenges the Left's backward-looking vision of "wealth and celebrity for a handful, hunger games for the rest."

But here, I think, is what they miss. The young people who find that the doors to secure upper middle class lives as lawyers or as members of other safe and respectable professions are closed aren’t going to sit peacefully in their parents’ garages for the next forty years. Some may — more, if marijuana is legalized and prices fall.

But there are going to be a lot of people who are well-educated, ambitious, and expect something more out of life than a beanbag chair, a sound system and a bong. The creativity and enterprise of this generation is the resource that can (and in my view, will) power America’s economic renaissance and lead us into a new kind of economy.

These kids have been raised to point toward bureaucratic, institutional success. Go to school, stand in line, keep your nose clean, get the grade, get into the next good school, and repeat until you get a job offer. At that point, get on the escalator of success — as an associate in a law firm, for example — and if you do your job well, you will have a reasonably smooth ride to the top.

Graduating into a world that looks less and less like the world they’ve been led to expect, these young adults are going to have to figure out new ways to get ahead. They are going to have to become entrepreneurs. Some will go to work as freelance college and educational consultants. There are lots of parents who don’t think their kids are getting all the help they need from their guidance counselors. Some will come up with new products or new services and take advantage of today’s open media and low costs to develop smart niche businesses that haven’t existed before.

Mead also chastises state governments that woo big corporations at the expense of new small business start-ups.

If local, state and federal governments want to prep the country for a brighter future and get us through the transition doldrums into a new era of innovation, growth and full employment as quickly as possible, they need to try to figure out what they can do to help a new and hungry generation of entrepreneurs launch businesses and careers.This is almost always going to be about dismantling barriers rather than creating new “helping bureaucracies.”...

The Mikes (and the Debbies and the Kishawns and the Chantelles and the Maliks and the Fatimas and the Juans and the Marias of this world) do need help. The career paths they’ve been trained for are narrowing and they are going to have to launch out in directions they and their teachers didn’t expect. They were bred and groomed to live as house pets; they are going to have to learn to thrive in the wild.

Yet the future is bright, Mead argues, if the politicians in charge remove the obstacles.

To give them a chance, America is going to have change directions. We have to stop issuing new and more complex regulations every year — and start to tweak, redesign, simplify and in some cases roll back what we’ve got. We have to stop focusing so much on making this country a safe and predictable environment for big business and large corporations, and look to make it a more welcoming place for start ups.

The faster we do this, the faster our future will start to look brighter. The future is filled with enterprises not yet born, jobs that don’t yet exist, wealth that hasn’t been created, wonderful products and life-altering services not yet given form.

It’s time for America to start clearing a path for this brighter future; a cornucopia is headed our way, but we need to demolish the obstacles that stand in its path.

Mead's article, Post Blue Jobs: Part Two is worth a full read.

Picture Worth a Thousand Words

Graphic: Taxes or Living-Which Costs More?

Source: http://rsc.jordan.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=290251

Source: 

Antidote to the "Tax Fairness" Lie

Need a powerful argument to counter the Left's "tax fairness" gimmick? Stephen Moore and Peter Ferrara provide it:

The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

So began Kurt Vonnegut's 1961 short story "Harrison Bergeron." In that brave new world, the government forced each individual to wear "handicaps" to offset any advantage he had, so everyone could be truly and fully equal. Beautiful people had to wear ugly masks to hide their good looks. The strong had to wear compensating weights to slow them down. Graceful dancers were burdened with bags of bird shot. Those with above-average intelligence had to wear government transmitters in their ears that would emit sharp noises every 20 seconds, shattering their thoughts "to keep them…from taking unfair advantage of their brains."

Drawing upon Vonnegut's story, Moore and Ferrara show how the Left's use of progressive tax systems to 'equalize' financial outcomes produces only totalitarian governments, poverty and equality of misery—in fiction and real life. The authors then turn to other inequalities in life and the impossibility of the 'social justice' logic:

Moreover, as Vonnegut's story illustrates, inequalities of wealth and income are not the only important differences in society. If equality is truly a moral obligation, then inequalities of beauty, intelligence, strength, grace, talent, etc. logically all should be leveled as well. That would require some rather heavy-handed government intervention. It is not fair that LeBron James has a 40-inch vertical leap, and we have a 4-inch vertical leap (combined). It is not fair that some have high IQs, and others are below average. It is not fair that Christie Brinkley is beautiful, that some people are born with photographic memories, that one person gets cancer and the next one doesn't. We Americans were born in a land of opportunity and wealth, while billions around the world are born into poverty and squalor. We won the ultimate lottery of life just by being born in this great and rich country. Where is the justice in that?

The goal of a society should not and cannot be to make people equal in outcomes, an impossibility given the individual attributes with which we were each endowed by our creator. It is the opposite of justice and fairness to try to equalize outcomes based on those attributes. It is not fair to the beautiful to force them to wear ugly masks. It is not fair to the strong to punish them by holding them down with excess weights. It is not fair to the graceful and athletic to deprive them of their talents. In the same way, it is not fair to the productive, the risk taking, or the hard working, to deprive them of what they have produced, merely to make them equal to others who have worked less, taken less risk, and produced less.

The Left's notion of fairness bears no resemblance, of course, to our constitutional protection of 'equality under the law':

But doesn't the Declaration of Independence itself say "All men are created equal," and isn't equality a fundamental American ideal? Yes, but these expressions invoke a concept of equality different from the social justice concept of equal incomes and wealth for all.

The original and traditionally American concept of equality is "equality under the law." That means the same rules apply to all, not the same results. Baseball is a fair game because the same rules apply to all players.

Equality of rules protects the property of all, which encourages saving, investment, and work, because all are assured protection for the fruits of their labor. Equality of rules ensures that all enjoy the same freedom of contract, which empowers them to maximize value and production, and plan investment knowing they can rely on their agreed contractual rights. Equality of rules provides a framework in which all are free to pursue their individual visions of happiness to the maximum extent.

The pursuit of equal outcomes is a fool's quest with as devastating an ending for Americans as the characters in Vonnegut's story. Read the full article.

Hope! Real Medicare-Medicaid Reforms

Sensible reforms to two budget-busting government health care programs may be possible after all. Hotair.com has an interesting post about the bi-partisan behind-the-scenes discussion—including at least 12 Democratic senators—of the Paul Ryan-Ron Wyden compromise to reform Medicare for seniors.

Promising news, too, on the Medicaid program, which Grace Marie Turner calls "a dismal program that finances care for low-income Americans but condemns them to long waits in emergency rooms to get even routine care." Rhode Island "wrested from the Bush administration a global waiver for the state's Medicaid program" in exchange for an experimental block grant with a five-year spending cap of $12.1 billion.

A December 2011 study by the Lewin Group, a consulting firm, found that Rhode Island's block-grant experiment allowed it to lower spending and improve the quality of care while maintaining the same enrollment levels. Patients had better access to doctors, reducing the need for expensive emergency room use. Costly long-term care patients who don't need to be in nursing homes were switched to home and community-based care, for example. The savings total more than $55 million.

Now several members of Congress "have introduced the State Health Flexibility Act (H.R. 4160) to federal funding for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program into one block grant to the states."

The legislation would give the states maximum flexibility to tailor the program to meet the unique health care needs of their citizens without having to plead with Washington for every minor improvement they want to make.

Importantly, the legislation meets the seven principles for Medicaid reform proposed by 29 governors in June 2011, and it also requires accountability to taxpayers. Annual audits are required in each state to report to the U.S. Treasury, state legislatures and the public to ensure the federal funding is spent properly.

Liberty or Equality? We Can't Have Both

"Freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies ... to check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed." —"The Lessons of History," by Will and Ariel Durant

With liberals pushing tax hikes for the top 1% of Americans, former Senator Phil Gramm and Steve McMillan tackle liberals' misleading claims of income inequality in a lengthy Wall Street Journal article entitled, "The Real Causes of Income Inequality."

Nowhere is the political debate over income inequality more detached from reality than the call for the top 1% of American income earners to pay their "fair share." The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) data on the ratio of the share of income taxes paid by the richest taxpayers relative to their share of income show that the U.S. has the world's most progressive tax burden.

The top 10% of earners in the U.S. pay 35% more of the income tax burden than in Sweden and 22% more than in France. These figures—from the 2008 OECD publication "Growing Unequal?"—include all household taxes imposed on income at the federal, state and local level, including social insurance taxes.

In an eternal irony unique to large welfare states, it is the expansion of government in the name of the poor and middle class that always costs poor and middle-class families the most. When the U.S. collects 16.1% of GDP in income taxes, the top 10% of taxpayers pay 7.3% and the other 90% pick up 8.9%.

In France, however, they collect 24.3% of GDP in income taxes with the top 10% paying 6.8% and the rest paying a whopping 17.5% of GDP. Sweden collects its 28.5% of GDP through income taxes by tapping the top 10% for 7.6%, but the other 90% get hit for a back-breaking 20.9% of GDP.

If the U.S. spent and taxed like France and Sweden, it would hardly affect the top 10%, who would pay about what they pay now, but the bottom 90% would see their taxes double.

Since OECD members have significantly higher consumption taxes on average than the U.S., the total tax burden of bigger government is even more heavily borne by lower-income citizens in developed nations than these numbers suggest.

The real and alarming message in these OECD numbers is that there appear to be limits in the real world to how much tax blood can be extracted from rich turnips.

WSJ: Forget Buffett; it's the Obama Rule

"Forget Warren Buffet...," argues the Wall Street Journal. "This week the Administration officially endorsed what in essence is the Obama Rule: Taxes must be high simply to spread the wealth, never mind the impact on the economy or government revenue. It's all about 'fairness', baby."

The Buffett rule is really nothing more than a sneaky way for Mr. Obama to justify doubling the capital gains and dividend tax rate to 30% from 15% today. That's the real spread-the-wealth target. The problem is that this is a tax on capital that is needed for firms to grow and hire more workers. Mr. Obama says he wants an investment-led recovery, not one led by consumption, but how will investment be spurred by doubling the tax on it?

The only investment and hiring the Buffett rule is likely to spur will be outside the United States—in China, Germany, India, and other competitors with much more investment-friendly tax regimes. The Buffett rule would give the U.S. the fourth highest capital gains rate among OECD nations, according to a new study by Ernst & Young, to go along with what is now the highest corporate tax rate (a little under 40% for the combined federal and average state rate). That's what happens when politicians pursue fairness over growth.

Ferrara: Why Obama Hates Paul Ryan

Peter Ferrara believes President Obama's April 3 address to the Associated Press reveals 4 things: he doesn't understand major issues facing the country, he is hopelessly dishonest about what he does understand, he is demanding left-wing extremism as policy, and he is very angry because he's been shown up by Paul Ryan, "who stepped up in his budget and provided the leadership that Obama promised America in 2008..." Worth a full read.

Scientists Chastise NASA on its Man-Made Global Warming Advocacy

NASA administrator Charles Bolden, Jr. got a letter from 49 former NASA scientists, engineers, and astronauts last week "admonishing the agency for it's role in advocating a high degree of certainty that man-made CO2 is a major cause of climate change while neglecting empirical evidence that calls the theory into questions." The key points made in the letter:

• "The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA's history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements."
• "We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change, are not substantiated."
• "We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject."

Read the full text of the letter.

Dumb Ethanol Law Costs Us Plenty

Each year 1/3 of the U.S. corn crop grown on 33 million acres of farm land is diverted from food to ethanol fuel, and it's caused corn prices to triple since 2005, when the ethanol law took effect. Congress made things worse with the 2007 Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) law. Since then, a 2010 Rice University study that found "no reason to believe" that corn ethanol production and use emit less carbon dioxide than gasoline.

Now there may be a better method to produce ethanol fuel cheaper, faster, and without using corn, reports Christopher Helman at Forbes, but the 2007 RFS law blocks its development in the U.S. because the innovation isn't plant-based. So the Dallas-based chemicals company, Celanese, is taking its innovation to China, where Beijing "issued final permits in March ... for an 80-million-gallon plant."

The corn-dominated ethanol lobby is conflicted about making ethanol out of fossil fuels. On one hand, corn growers don’t want competition from cheap gas. On the other, it’s in the national interest to cut oil imports. “We’re supportive of expanding all renewables and all alternative fuels,” says Matt Hartwig, spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association. Says Joe Cannon, president of the Fuel Freedom Foundation: “We need every option. There are 2 billion people moving from bicycles to mopeds to cars, and that’s just in India and China.”

Thirteen congressmen led by Pete Olson, whose district around Houston, Tex. encompasses dozens of chemical plants, including Celanese, have introduced a bill to add natgas-derived fuels to the RFS. Any change would face attack from the greens but is supported by animal farmers who want cheaper feed corn. “We would prefer not to have the RFS at all,” says a spokeswoman for Olson, “but this is a step in the right direction.”

Until the RFS law changes, U.S. corn farmers will continue to get ethanol tax subsidies, China will get the benefit of a new US-developed fuel innovation, and US consumers will continue to pay higher prices at the gas pump and the grocery store.

Full article: How a Dumb Law Blocks a Great Way to Fuel America, by Christopher Helman 

Mead: The Myth of America's Decline

America isn't in decline, argues Walter Russell Mead; she is in the midst of a global economic realignment to a "septagonal, not a trilateral, world." The old trilateral economic world of the U.S., Europe and Japan is shifting to include China, India, Brazil and Turkey.

It won't be easy, and success won't be total. But even in the emerging world order, the U.S. is likely to have much more success in advancing its global agenda than many think. Washington is hardly unique in wanting a liberal world system of open trade, freedom of the seas, enforceable rules of contract and protection for foreign investment. What began as a largely American vision for the post-World War II world will continue to attract support and move forward into the 21st century—and Washington will remain the chairman of a larger board.

Despite all the talk of American decline, the countries that face the most painful changes are the old trilateral partners. Japan must live with a disturbing rival presence, China, in a region that, with American support, it once regarded as its backyard. In Europe, countries that were once global imperial powers must accept another step in their long retreat from empire.

For American foreign policy, the key now is to enter deep strategic conversations with our new partners—without forgetting or neglecting the old. The U.S. needs to build a similar network of relationships and institutional linkages that we built in postwar Europe and Japan and deepened in the trilateral years. Think tanks, scholars, students, artists, bankers, diplomats and military officers need to engage their counterparts in each of these countries as we work out a vision for shared prosperity in the new century.

The American world vision isn't powerful because it is American; it is powerful because it is, for all its limits and faults, the best way forward. This is why the original trilateral partners joined the U.S. in promoting it a generation ago, and why the world's rising powers will rally to the cause today.

Obamacare-American Bar Association Statement

President Obama's grossly misleading and inaccurate statement on the Supreme Court's judicial review of Obamacare stunned many in the legal world, including the American Bar Association, whose president, William T. Robinson III, put out this statement (via Volokh Conspiracy):

Re: President Obama’s remarks on upcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling on national health care

President Barack Obama’s remarks on Monday speculating about the Supreme Court’s potential decision in the health care legislation appeal are troubling. Particularly worrisome was his suggestion that the court’s decision in this case could serve as a “good example” of what some commentators have cited as “judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint” by an “unelected group of people.”

We’re gratified that the president recast his remarks Tuesday. He clarified appropriately that “the Supreme Court is the final say on our Constitution and our laws, and all of us have to respect it.”

Federal judges are, by design, not elected officials. Article II of our Constitution reserves for the president the authority to appoint Supreme Court justices and all other officers of the United States with the advice and consent of the Senate. In fact, President Obama himself has offered more than 123 nominations for Article III judgeships, including two lifetime appointments to our nation’s highest court.

The legitimacy of judicial review was settled more than 200 years ago in the landmark case Marbury v. Madison, which established such review as a key safeguard of the separation of powers doctrine. The Framers of our Constitution clearly understood that an independent judiciary is critical to the maintenance of our democracy and freedom.

It is incumbent on all of our elected officials—including those aspiring to hold office—to continually demonstrate that the courtroom is not a political arena. It is a measure of a free society that individuals are able to openly disagree with court decisions, but we should expect our leaders to refrain from partisan statements aimed at judges fulfilling their constitutional role and responsibilities.

Voter ID Laws, Please!

Great video by Project Veritas showing why we desperately need Voter ID laws:




YouTube link here

Student Loan Debt Blame

"Who is to blame for soaring U.S. student loan debt," asks Fox Business News' Elizabeth MacDonald, "that now surpasses credit card and auto-loan debt, at an estimated $1 trillion, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?" Could it be the colleges? Consider this:

• More than 75 colleges and universities sit on record endowments in the tens of billions of dollars from donations made by people who believe their money is going towards cutting tuition costs. ... But one estimate shows that colleges only spend an average of about 3% of their endowments on tuition.
• Census data show that, as of 2005, colleges and universities employed more than 675,000 full-time faculty members — but 756,000 administrators, counselors, accountants, alumni relations officials, and attorneys, among others. Between 1976 and 2007, the proportion of administrators to students doubled at colleges nationwide.
• As part of their collective flight from reality, too many colleges have locked themselves into a vicious cycle where "you raise tuition, so you can give out more aid, so you can raise tuition," Jacqueline E. King, director of federal policy analysis at the American Council on Education, a Washington education lobby group, has said. "Institutionally based financial aid accounts for about one-third of all the increases in tuition," David L. Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities has said. "It's the driving force behind rising fees."

Or how about the government, "whose well-meaning student aid fuels higher tuition costs which relies on more student aid"?

• The College Board estimates more than $60 billion in financial aid—most of it from the federal government—is annually available to students as of a few years ago. But 60% of that aid was in the form of loans, up from 40% in 1980.
• Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, has said government loans and subsidies are not cost-effective for taxpayers because "universities and colleges just raise their tuition. It doesn't improve affordability and it doesn't make it easier to go to college."
• The dilemma, say economists, is a simple supply and demand problem. Colleges can "raise tuition because they can," David Breneman, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, has said. When the government subsidizes something, producers respond by raising prices to soak up as much of the subsidy as they can.

The danger here is taxpayers could be on the hook for belly flopping student loans," writes MacDonald, "since eight in 10 of these loans are government-issued or guaranteed, a support that increased after the government stepped in to help this market after it iced over during the financial crisis in 2008."

What's Next if Obamacare Goes Down?

NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez interviews health care expert Sally C. Pipes on the Future of Health Care Reform in America, whether Obamacare stays or goes. Pipes, who will be a featured speaker at the Institute's Western Women's Summit this month in Santa Barbara CA, is the author of "The Pipes Plan: The Top Ten Ways to Dismantle Obamacare." 

Obamacare-Gitmo Parallel

"If the Court does end up striking down the mandate," wrote Orin Kerr last week at the legal blog, the Volokh Conspiracy, "this will be the second consecutive presidency in which the Supreme Court imposed significant limits on the primary agenda of the sitting President in ways that were unexpected based on precedents at the time the President acted. Last time around, it was President Bush and the War on Terror. ... If the mandate gets struck down, we’ll get a replay with the politics reversed. Just substitute Obama for Bush, health care reform for the War on Terror, the individual mandate for Gitmo, and Wickard for Eisentrager. "

Kerr dives into the legal weeds (for non-lawyers anyway) to argue here and here that "there's a lot in the comparison, in part because the debate over both policies boils down to judicial deference versus constitutional norms seen as embedded in the text."

Kerr notes that Charles Lane picked up the same theme in a Washington Post article this week:

As policies, Obamacare and George W. Bush’s war on terror have almost nothing in common. They do not address the same subject matter.

Yet from the Supreme Court’s perspective, they pose practically the same question: How much more authority over individuals can the federal government assume, consistent with the Founders’ notion of limited and enumerated powers?

During the 20th century, the court stretched that concept to accommodate the rise of both a large domestic regulatory and welfare apparatus and of a permanent military and intelligence establishment. That seemed necessary and proper in view of the social problems of a modern urban society and the external threats of Nazism and communism.

In fact, the welfare state and the national security state grew up together. The New Deal’s twin was World War II; the Great Society accompanied the Cold War. The federal government’s expansion has protected us from old age, poverty and external threats — while burdening us with taxes, bureaucracy and a certain amount of official snooping.

The Bush administration took Sept. 11, 2001, as an opportunity to win additional national security powers for the federal government. The Obama administration saw the Great Recession as an opportunity for a New Deal-like expansion of health care and other domestic programs.

Consequently, the court has had to decide whether to allow further growth of the national security state and the welfare state — or to push back, lest these twin leviathans smother individual freedom.

Obamacare an Indictment of Progressivism

The Left's Obamacare argument—in and out of court—sounds to John Hayward "like an excellent argument in favor of rejecting 'progressivism' root and branch. It contains no hint of self-determination, liberty, or the consent of the governed. The inability of Big Government to correct even its most ghastly errors is a stunning indictment of the entire liberal project..."

Who Really Gets Those Tax Breaks?

Liberals claim the wealthy get all the tax breaks, but our Swiss cheese-like tax code dispenses goodies to all income groups, including lower-income taxpayers. First, who pays? Thanks to an already heavily progressive tax code, in FY2009:

• the top 1% of earners paid ONE-THIRD (36.7%) of all federal income taxes collected;
• the top 10% of earners paid over TWO-THIRDS (70.5%) taxes collected; and
• the top 50% of earners paid almost ALL (97.8%) taxes collected.

Who gets? In FY 2011, tax breaks "amounted to over $1 trillion," among them:*

• $100 billion to low-income taxpayers through three "refundable" tax breaks: the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Refundable Child Care Credit, and the Making Work Pay tax credit;
• $109.3 billion to earners with company benefits for tax-free employer-provided health insurance;
• $42 billion to taxpayers for deductions to offset state and local taxes paid; and
• $76 billion to homeowners for mortgage-interest deductions.

The $1 trillion figure "is why many deficit reduction plans want to shrink them," writes Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a former chief economist of the U.S. Labor Department.

Those on the left of the political spectrum seek to eliminate tax expenditures as a way of raising revenue. Those on the right want to lower tax rates, keeping revenue collected by the federal government at the same level as it stands now.

The soundest way to reduce our deficit is through fundamental tax reform, which generates the economic growth that powers our economy. This means a revenue-neutral plan to get rid of tax expenditures [i.e., breaks] and to lower tax rates, without raising overall levels of taxation. Raising taxes by eliminating tax expenditures, without a commensurate decline in tax rates, will only reduce economic growth.

*See Furchtgott-Roth's three page report and chart for a breakdown of these and other tax breaks.