The Wickard ruling is by far one of the most far reaching bad decisions ever made. The mental gymnastics required to justify it are inexcusable, as it boldly spits in the face of the 10th Amendment.
I think it's horribly bad application of law but a good ruling in practice. The federal government is the last desk in situations where coordinated action between or restrictions on states is needed to avoid bad outcomes and prisoner's dilemmas for everyone. If the federal government had only one power I think it should be that.
I wish they would apply it to ban the sweetheart deals states give companies so that we can end the race to the bottom where states have to suck ceos off to get them to set up shop.
> The federal government is the last desk in situations where coordinated action between or restrictions on states is needed to avoid bad outcomes and prisoner's dilemmas for everyone.
That kind of regulation is the core of the central planning fallacy. If people know how much demand for wheat there would be next year or what crop yields would be then farmers would know how much to plant before it would become unprofitable and you wouldn't need anyone to order them to. If that information isn't available then it isn't available to the government either and they're not going to make any better a decision, and in most cases it will be worse because they'll have less information than the people actually doing it or less reason not to be careless or hidebound because it's not their livelihood on the line.
The purpose of the interstate commerce clause is that sometimes the victims of a misdeed are in a different state than the perpetrators and then the victims have to be able to go somewhere for redress that has jurisdiction over the perpetrators. But that only applies when the commerce is actually inter-state.
> I wish they would apply it to ban the sweetheart deals states give companies so that we can end the race to the bottom where states have to suck ceos off to get them to set up shop.
The sweetheart deals aren't a race to the bottom, they're corruption. If the state wanted to attract business generally then it would create a generally favorable environment with low administrative overhead or quality infrastructure etc., not create weird exceptions for one specific corporation. Those one-company deals never actually work out because their true purpose is to steal from the taxpayer.
Look, in this particular instance you might be right but the idea is more general. The FCC is a good example of coordination that benefits everyone but isn't really interstate commerce in rules-as-written.
> The sweetheart deals aren't a race to the bottom, they're corruption.
Call it what you want but large businesses planning to do large buildouts collect bids from states for favorable tax breaks and other incentives. In my state there are two
whole departments at the statehouse dedicated to just this. Having the federal government step in and tell every state all at once that the practice is now outlawed eliminates this source of legal corruption and levels the playing field so states that want to attract business must do exactly what you lay out.
> Look, in this particular instance you might be right but the idea is more general.
The problem is more general too.
> The FCC is a good example of coordination that benefits everyone but isn't really interstate commerce in rules-as-written.
Most of what the FCC does actually is inter-state commerce. They're regulating communications networks that cross state lines and radio products that are sold not just inter-state but internationally.
In principle they shouldn't be able to stop you from building a radio within your own state and then using it there at power levels that don't cross state lines, but why would they need to? Your state could do that if they wanted to.
> Call it what you want but large businesses planning to do large buildouts collect bids from states for favorable tax breaks and other incentives.
The bids are a competition between corrupt government officials in different states to see who is willing to offer the most taxpayer money in exchange for having their pockets lined. The problem here is that taxpayers fail to vote out anyone who does this.
> Having the federal government step in and tell every state all at once that the practice is now outlawed eliminates this source of legal corruption and levels the playing field so states that want to attract business must do exactly what you lay out.
The fact that they haven't done this rather illustrates the point. If the population doesn't want it then they'll vote for politicians who don't do it at the state level. If they don't care enough to, as seems to be the case at present, then no federal rules exist either.
Even putting aside Wickard where the Supreme Court dubiously decided that a farmer growing wheat on his own land for his own personal use was "interstate commerce", I'd say that companies that sell products outside of their home state or hire employees or contractors across state lines would be considered "interstate commerce" by any reasonable definition.
If a business only sells products within Pennsylvania and only hires residents of Pennsylvania then I'd say that they're not engaged in interstate commerce. That also means no mailing or shipping orders to customers outside of Pennsylvania. In such cases, I'd say that only Pennsylvania labor law should apply to the company not federal labor law. For approximately 99.9% of companies, this would make no difference whatsoever as businesses in a modern economy are virtually always engaged in interstate commerce. It also wouldn't matter that much because most states have state labor laws that are at least as worker friendly as federal law.
So, I'd agree that Wickard is too broad and should be overturned but I don't see any reason to overturn federal labor law. I think the Roberts Court will likely take a similar position if it ever takes up such cases. Chief Justice Roberts tends to be against extremely disruptive rulings and can usually persuade one of the other conservatives.
Also, getting rid of federal labor law would probably make the "union problem" worse not better for corporations. Many of the more radical union actions that were common in the early 20th century such as wildcat strikes and general strikes were outlawed by the Wagner Act. The labor movement is currently the most popular it has been in decades and a radically anti-union Supreme Court ruling would likely lead to a massive backlash.
there problem here is that the intent from an originalist standpoint of the commerce clause was to prevent New York from regulated commerce coming from Delaware, or vice versa.
Was to regulate, as in to make regular...
It was not to expand to allow regulations to apply to any commerce that happened to cross state lines... like your example of shipping a package.
The movement of the package may then trigger federal regulations but those regulations should not move up stream to the Person that packed the box, as that activity was wholly intrastate. The employer and the employee was both in the same state, and the transaction for the labor was enclosed into a single state.
The transaction from the consumer to the company may be interstate and that may be regulated by the Commerce clause.
