For the government to say where the tip goes, the government is acting like they are the owner of the tip.
From a property rights point of view, when was the control of the property conceded to the government?
That would have been in 2011 when the Obama administration passed a regulation preventing employers from tip pooling.
This new change gives the choice back to the employer. It does not require them to pool tips, but it does not prevent them from doing so either.
This is a successful roll back of an Obama-era regulation that restricted employer rights.
“For the government to say where the tip goes, the government is acting like they are the owner of the tip.
From a property rights point of view, when was the control of the property conceded to the government?”
Control of wages was conceded to the government when the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted in 1913. Before that point in time the Constitution would not permit the government to impose taxes that were not uniform and direct taxes on property could not be assessed unless apportioned according to the census. The federal government could not tax individual property. The Supreme Court had ruled in Pollack vs Farmer’s Loan & Trust (1894) that taxes on incomes were unconstitutional unapportioned direct taxes.
The 16th Amendment allowed Congress to impose an income tax without apportioning it among the states. It exempted income taxes from the constitutional requirements limiting direct taxes.
With the passage of the 16th Amendment, the federal government became the owner of the fruits of an individual’s labor (income) and assumed the power to determine how much of the income paid to a citizen for labor the citizen would be allowed to keep. Today some citizens are rewarded through the income tax system by earned income credits and do not pay taxes. Others pay high taxes based on the political whims of Congress, and the fruits of their labor are distributed to others as Congress deems appropriate.
The 16th Amendment, allowing involuntary seizure of an individual’s property through the tax system, is in direct conflict with the 13 Amendment which abolished “involuntary servitude” immediately after the end of the Civil War. However, the Supreme Court and our politicians in Congress do not consider citizens working for wages in an economic system where the government arbitrarily determines how much of their productive efforts they can retain to be involuntary servitude.
Prior to the adoption of the 16th Amendement the activities of the federal government were funded by tariffs and duties. The politicians of the progressive movement desired to project American power and influence across the globe through acquisitions of colonies (Philippines and Puerto Rico for example) and a power navy supported by a standing army.
The Constitution had been carefully constructed to prohibit direct taxes in order to limit the income of the federal government as well as protect individual liberty of the citizens. At the time the 16th Amendment was adopted, its proponents claimed the income tax would be small, never more than 3%. In addition, by restricting the sources of income available to the federal government the founders were protecting the people from the federal government growing to the point it would become imperialistic, interfering in the affairs of foreign nations and becoming involved in alliances which the founders called “foreign entanglements”.
In hindsight the passage of the 16th Amendment was a watershed moment which removed a major impediment to tyranny from the central government. Since then the concept of limited government, completely subservient to the people, has been replaced by acceptance of an all powerful central government highly involved in the daily affairs of citizens, controlling commerce with a heavy hand, and projecting military power across the globe against the will and interests of the people.
Liberty died during the progressive era of the early 1900’s when the statists rewrote the constitution with the 16th Amendment, the 17th Amendment (direct election of Senators), 18th Amendment (outlawing liquor), and the passage of the Federal Reserve Act (which created an “independent” central bank, with control of the currency, and not subject to any meaningful congressional oversight). The carefully crafted checks on the power of the central government were tossed aside by men who considered themselves superior to the masses and guided by a higher morality to be called on to exercise dominion over men for their own good. Other members of the elites in business and government perceived no high calling but supported the big central government because they could manipulate politicians to siphon off some of the taxes extracted from the general public for their own economic well being. Money = power and the unprecedented sums of money the federal income tax could siphon from the people was extremely attractive to special interests which used their share of the money distributed from the treasury to bribe politicians and create the endless cycle of corruption and big government tyranny that exists today.
As long as the federal government has the power to determine how much of the income a citizen can keep of the labor he earns, the citizen toils under a system of involuntary servitude. Those who produce in this country are wage slaves and in concept no different than the slave on the southern plantation of 1865 whose share of the fruits of his labor (food, clothing, shelter) were arbitrarily determined by the master. The only real difference is so far the chains are lighter and physical violence of the central government is rare although the federal government does routinely use its control over the legal system to ruin the lives of individuals it chooses to punish.
Once the current dream of the progressives to have a federal government controlled healthcare system is realized, the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington will assume the arbitrary power of life and death over the average citizens through the denial of health care services to those who are deemed to no longer be of value to the state. One can only speculate how soon after government controlled single payer healthcare is in place the government will begin adopt mandatory euthanasia to eliminate the no longer productive elderly citizens, the permanently disabled, and the malcontents who oppose the central authority. Certainly the $500 million allocated to the Planned Parenthood abortion mills in the recently passed omnibus spending plan indicates the current members of Congress condone the murder of innocents enabled by funds extracted from the people.