Keep in mind our Constitution declares: “No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.”
Your rule for taxation [ “From each according to their ability to pay, to each who needs help living a decent life.” ] violates the above federal prohibition.
Additionally, our founders, and those who ratified our federal Constitution, agreed to a specification of particulars for which Congress may lay and collect taxes “and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States”
That specification of particulars, which Hamilton makes reference to, is found beneath Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 of our Constitution and does not include a power to provide federal revenue "… to each who needs help living a decent life … " as you advocate.
In fact, Hamilton, in Federalist Paper No. 83 addresses your socialist/communist idea:
The plan of the convention declares that the power of Congress, or, in other words, of the NATIONAL LEGISLATURE, shall extend to certain enumerated cases. This specification of particulars evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd, as well as useless, if a general authority was intended.
Hamilton then goes on to apply the principle with an example:
“In like manner the judicial authority of the federal judicatures is declared by the Constitution to comprehend certain cases particularly specified. The expression of those cases marks the precise limits, beyond which the federal courts cannot extend their jurisdiction, because the objects of their cognizance being enumerated, the specification would be nugatory if it did not exclude all ideas of more extensive authority.”
Keep in mind Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 is immediately followed by “certain cases particularly specified” , and the “specification would be nugatory if it did not exclude all ideas of more extensive authority.”
The above view, expressed by Hamilton in Federalist 83, is in total harmony with what Madison states in Federalist Paper No. 41:
"It has been urged and echoed, that the power “to lay and collect taxes…to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and the general welfare of the United States amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor [the anti-federalists] for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction…But what color can this objection have, when a specification of the object alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not ever separated by a longer pause than a semicolon?. For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power.” ?
Madison also states in Federalist Paper No. 45:
“ The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected.
The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State."
Additionally, in the Virginia ratification Convention Madison again explains the limited meaning of the phrase “general welfare” as follows: “… the powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction.” [3 Elliots 95]
Also see Nicholas, 3 Elliot 443 regarding the general welfare clause, which he pointed out “was united, not to the general power of legislation, but to the particular power of laying and collecting taxes…”
Similarly, George Mason, in the Virginia ratification Convention cautions the convention:
“The Congress should have power to provide for the general welfare of the Union, I grant. But I wish a clause in the Constitution, with respect to all powers which are not granted, that they are retained by the states. Otherwise the power of providing for the general welfare may be perverted to its destruction.”. [3 Elliots 442]
For this very reason the Tenth Amendment was quickly ratified to intentionally put to rest any question whatsoever regarding the meaning of the general welfare clause, and thereby cut off the pretext to allow Congress, or the Courts, to extended the federal government’s powers via the wording provide for the “general welfare“ which otherwise might allow your rule for taxation ** “From each according to their ability to pay, to each who needs help living a decent life.” **
The bottom line is, you cannot support and defend our constitutionally limited Republican Form of Government and the use of its taxing powers as you suggest unless you believe in the Humpty Dumpty Theory of Language being applied to our Constitution:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less.”
JWK
”Words or terms used in a constitution, being dependent on ratification by the people voting upon it, must be understood in the sense most obvious to the common understanding at the time of its adoption…” __ (my emphasis) 16 Am Jur 2d Constitutional law, Meaning of Language
