What Does Nonbinary People's Day Celebrate If Anyone Can Be Nonbinary?

July 14 is not only Bastille Day in France, but it is also International Nonbinary People's Day, which takes place tomorrow. It was chosen as July 14 because it's the exact midpoint between International Women's Day and International Men's Day. It was created to raise global awareness about nonbinary people, but it begs an essential question: what in the world is nonbinary?

Every commemorative day celebrates an identifiable group of people. Veterans Day celebrates veterans. International Women's Day celebrates women. Before celebrating a category, it is reasonable to ask what distinguishes its members from everyone else. That is a surprisingly difficult question to answer when it comes to nonbinary people. 

Nonbinary: The Identity That Means Everything and Nothing

Most organizations and nonbinary individuals define nonbinary in roughly the same way: someone whose gender identity is not exclusively male or exclusively female. At first glance, that sounds straightforward enough. But after further examination, it doesn't answer the question because then there is the follow-up question of "What does that look like?"

Depending on who you ask, being nonbinary can be a range of things, whether that is identifying as both male and female, neither male nor female, something in between, outside the gender binary altogether, gender-fluid, or possessing multiple genders. These descriptions point in dramatically different directions. Instead of identifying a single, distinguishable category, "nonbinary" appears to function as an umbrella term for a wide variety of subjective experiences. 

That in itself presents a conceptual problem. Categories exist to distinguish one thing from another. The category of "veteran" distinguishes those who have served in the military from those who have not. The category of "citizen" distinguishes between those who possess a particular legal status from those who do not. 

But what distinguishes a nonbinary person from a man or woman who simply rejects traditional gender stereotypes? If the answer comes down to subjective self-identification, then the category has no ascertainable membership criteria. It tells us only what someone calls themselves, not what distinguishes them from everyone else. That "definition" offers no independent criteria by which anyone can distinguish between a nonbinary person from an ordinary variation between men and women. As such, the category of "nonbinary" has no meaningful limiting principle. 

The "Because I Say So" Problem: A Definition That Defines Itself

The problem becomes even more obvious when one asks a self-identifying nonbinary individual how they know they are nonbinary. The answer is usually with some form of "Because that's how I identify." But identify with what? Again, the most common definition is someone whose gender identify is neither exclusively male nor female. It is not descriptive because it does not answer the question of what gender is in this framework. 

If a man is defined as someone who identifies as a man, if a woman is someone who identifies as a woman, and a nonbinary person is defined as someone who identifies as nonbinary, the explanation becomes circular. If gender is not biological sex, personality, clothing, interests, or gender stereotypes, then what positive characteristics remain? The definition tells us who identifies, but it provides zero insight into what they are identifying with. Instead of pointing to an independently recognizable characteristic, the label appears to refer only to itself. 

At this point, I can see someone objecting to this description of nonbinary by saying that many identities involve self-identification. After all, no one can peer into another person's mind to determine whether they are truly a Christian, a Democrat, or homosexual. But those identities refer to something beyond the declaration itself. 

Biological sex refers to observable biological characteristics. Sexual orientation describes enduring patters of romantic or sexual attraction. Religion encompasses identifiable belief and practices that exist independently of merely claiming the label. While each of these identities contains subjective elements, they also refer to concepts that can be understood apart from self-identification. 

Nonbinary is different. Since the only criterion for membership is declaring oneself to be nonbinary, then the declaration is not merely evidence of the identity; it is the identity. The category then becomes self-referential, which makes it impossible to distinguish between the label and the thing the label is supposed to describe. That may suffice for personal self-expression, but it does not provide a foundation for a category, certainly one that is supposed to have an international day of recognition and observance. 

Everyone Is Different, and....?

Even if we wanted to set aside the definitional problems with nonbinary, there is another problem: the characteristics often associated with nonbinary identity are not unique to nonbinary people. Human beings have always varied in personality, interests, appearance, and behavior. Some men are more traditionally masculine, while others are more traditionally feminine. 

This is especially true when looking at gay men and lesbians. For gay men, there is everything from the muscle gays and jocks to the fem boy, and everything in between. Lesbians range on the femininity spectrum from lipstick lesbian to being butch. One of the contributions of the gay rights movement was challenging the idea that a man must conform to a narrow definition of masculinity or that  a woman must conform to a narrow definition of femininity. 

Men who are less masculine are still men, and women who are less feminine are still women. That does not mean that they are this third category. If nonbinary identity is based on not fitting neatly into traditional gender norms, then it risks treating ordinary human diversity as evidence of a separate identity category. A category that encompasses anyone who does perfectly conform to gender stereotypes, which is almost everybody, ultimately ceases to distinguish between anything meaningful. 

The vast majority of people experience themselves differently from some idealized form of gender norms and expectations. Since there are no criteria that separate nonbinary people from men and women who share those same traits, the category has no clear boundary. Without clear boundaries, the category of nonbinary is meaningless because virtually anyone can qualify simply by interpreting their own relationship with gender in a particular way. A description that includes just about everyone who feels different in some way ceases to be a category at all. 

So What Is Being Celebrated?

A meaningful category should tell us who belongs, what members have in common, and how they differ from everyone else. Yet nonbinary lacks a clear definition, objective membership criteria, and distinguishing characteristics beyond self-identification. If a category can include almost anyone who feels different from traditional gender expectations, then it is not a distinct group of people. Since there is no clear defined group of people to celebrate, what does Nonbinary Day celebrate exactly? 

It seems like it is one of the first awareness days in human history for a group of people who cannot explain who is in the group. In short, it is the culmination of coddling every subjective experience simply because someone says "it's my lived experience" and of the Participation Trophy mindset. When words no longer describe anything beyond what someone says they describe, categories themselves lose their purpose. It is a death knell of words having any meaning. 

Why Restricting International Students Is Trump's $481 Billion Mistake

There are a number of features that make the United States a unique and exceptional country. One of those drivers of American innovation has been that it has attracted ambitious people around the world, which means having an immigration policy open enough to allow them to work and live in the United States. America has historically understood that importing talent is one of the best investments it can make, but the current administration has lost sight of that concept. 

As I pointed out earlier this year, the Trump administration has attacked legal immigration to the United States. One of those foci of attack has been restricting international students to study in U.S. universities. The Trump administration asserted that foreign adversaries have exploited American universities to steal sensitive research and technology and that stricter visa screening was needed to safeguard U.S. interests.

Whether these restrictions ultimately improve national security remains difficult to measure. What is much easier to estimate, however, is their economic cost. A recent study from the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that restricting international STEM students could reduce U.S. GDP by as much as $481 billion over the next decade.

The reason for this decline in GDP is intuitive. The mechanism is fairly intuitive. International STEM students don't simply earn degrees. They become part of America's innovation ecosystem. Many stay to work in research labs, high-tech firms, and startups, where they help develop new products, improve existing technologies, and increase productivity throughout the economy. 

By reducing the number of these future innovators, restrictions shrink the pool of human capital that drives long-term economic growth. The projected GDP loss is therefore not an accidental correlation, but the estimated value of the discoveries, companies, and productivity gains that never materialize.

This immigration restriction especially hits hard for the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) industry because as the PIIE study points out, 35 percent of all STEM workers with a PhD are foreign-born and U.S.-trained.

Scientists and engineers develop new products, improve manufacturing processes, write software, discover medical treatments, and launch companies that employ thousands of people. These innovations make workers across the economy more productive, which is ultimately what drives rising incomes and long-term economic growth. International STEM graduates have played an outsized role in America's innovation economy for decades. Restricting their numbers reduces the number of future breakthroughs that make the entire U.S. economy more prosperous.

Ironically enough, these restrictions can actually undermine the President's rationale for the restrictions. Economic strength is one of the foundations of national security. A larger, more productive economy generates greater capacity in research, development new technologies, and gives the United States the resources needed to maintain a technological edge over its rivals. 

Policies that reduce innovation therefore carry national security costs of their own. Restricting international STEM students may prevent some security risks, but it also reduces the supply of scientists and engineers who drive economic growth. If America becomes less innovative, it also becomes less capable of sustaining the military and technological superiority that has underpinned its security for decades.

The irony is that policies intended to protect American workers and strengthen American security can end up undermining both. In an effort to protect America, policymakers risk reducing the very economic dynamism that has made America powerful. STEM students do not simply compete for jobs. They create knowledge, launch companies, and develop technologies that make the entire economy more productive. Restricting their ability to study in the United States means fewer innovations, fewer businesses, and less economic growth.

Restricting international STEM students risks sacrificing one of America's greatest strategic assets: its ability to attract talented people who create new ideas and technologies. In addition to economic implications, it harms national security because it risks reducing the innovation and technological leadership that make the United States secure in the first place. This is yet another reminder that protectionist policies have this uncanny ability to limit economic freedom and American prosperity at the same time.

United Nations Falsely Accuses Israel of Genocide: Targeting Children Edition

Astronomer Carl Sagan once said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That principle is especially relevant when the claim in question is not merely whether a military has committed wrongful acts in war, but that it has deliberately targeted children as a part of a broader strategy amounting to genocide. In both moral and legal terms, this is among the most serious accusations that can be leveled against any state or armed force. The accusation of targeting children heightens the claim because under humanitarian law, children are treated as a protected category. It also implies a level of moral depravity and legal culpability that international law reserves for the worst of the worst.

Yet a recent United Nations Commission report precisely makes that allegation against Israel in the context of the war in Gaza. It concludes that Israel not only caused widespread death and suffering, but that it formed part of a broader strategy to destroy the future of the Palestinians in Gaza by targeting children as a "biological and social continuity" of that group.  

This is not the first time that the UN has advanced sweeping claims against Israel that later proved controversial or methodologically fragile. The UN falsely accused Israel of causing food shortages of Gaza, implying it was part of some master strategy to starve Gazans. The UN also blindly accepted Gazan casualty statistics that exaggerated children fatalities, with the effect of making it look like the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were targeting women and children. The UN perpetuating refugee status and Jew-hatred under UNRWA also does not help matters.

This does not by itself prove the UN's latest allegations false, but it does warrant extraordinary caution of what the UN claims. Therefore, it is necessary to determine whether the Commission's findings themselves actually confirm if the IDF deliberately targeted children in Gaza or not. 

To conclude that Israel deliberately targeted children, the Commission would need produce evidence of intent, not merely evidence of harm. In the law of armed conflict, intent may be established from direct proof, whether it is orders, directives, or communications. This was the sort of thing observable during the Nanjing Massacre, the murder of children during the Holocaust, ISIS targeting Yazidi children in Iraq, and the Srebrenica massacre. Alternatively, such intent could be inferred through highly compelling circumstances evidence that excludes reasonable alternative explanations. 

The Commission does not present this kind of evidence. Instead, it infers intent from the scale and pattern of child casualties, assuming that a) each child killed in Gaza was killed by the IDF, and b) the child was targeted simply because a child died. Another way to put it: what the UN Commission does is it makes the evidentiary leap from "children have died in this war" to "Israel is targeting children." But even if one were to acknowledge the existence of large-scale harm, that by itself does not prove intent. 

As I have explained before when refuting false claims accusing Israel of committing genocide, for something to be considered genocide, one would have to be able to infer that genocidal intent is the only reasonable inference from the evidence. Here are some things that the United Nations conveniently leaves out of or minimizes in its reporting that show that is far from the case. 

We have to remember that it was Hamas that started this war by raping, kidnapping, torturing, and murdering over 1,200 civilians. Since 1948, Israel has been surrounded by Arab entities that want to wipe it off the map, including the genocidal entity known as Hamas. That by itself does not give the IDF a carte blanche to do what it wants in response. But what follows points out that genocide is not a reasonable conclusion based on the evidence. 

Civilian casualties are sadly a consequence of armed conflict. Children casualties are going to be an outcome given that about half of Gaza's population is under 18. More to the point, Gaza is one of the most densely populated battlefields in modern history, making this outcome even more inevitable.

There is one other sad truth to acknowledge: not all individuals under 18 in this conflict zone are necessarily noncombatant casualties. Armed groups in Gaza have been known to recruit and train minors to participate in hostilities against Israel. This further underscores why aggregate references to "child casualties" is insufficient, and is one other area in which the UN overstates their case. 

Even if one were to accept the Commission's casualty figures (which again, I would hesitate since the UN has accepted exaggerated casualty numbers before), neither a high civilian death toll nor a particular civilian-to-combatant ratio can substitute for genocidal intent. 

Hamas has a long-standing practice of using its civilians as human shields. The UN also ignores that Hamas has embedded vast tunnel networks, weapons stockpiles, booby-trapped buildings, and command facilities in civilian infrastructure. Without this context, the UN does not capture the complexities that the IDF faces while fighting Hamas and dismisses that these deaths could have been caused by crossfire, militant Hamas activity, or an unfortunate consequence of urban warfare. 

Furthermore, Israel's conduct is inconsistent with genocidal intent. The IDF has put warnings to civilians out before strikes (e.g., evacuation notices, phone calls, text messages), which no other military in history has done because they would lose the tactical advantage and incur military cost. The IDF has also allowed for humanitarian corridors and humanitarian aid to enter to reduce civilian suffering. 

Another point: Israel has a multi-ethnic and multi-religious population that includes about 2 million Muslims who are given equal rights under the law. It would be an odd policy for a government that was intent on exterminating Muslims to simultaneously extend full legal equality to Muslims in its borders. But then again, these are the sort of loops that the anti-Israel side jumps through to believe in this accusation. 

Ultimately, the UN does not prove evidence showing its headline allegation that the IDF is targeting children. All of this context in the previous paragraphs provides a reasonable, alternative explanation for the scale of child casualties in Gaza. However, the report gives those alternative explanations insufficient considerations and jumps straight to genocide as the only explanation, which is out of touch with the reality on the ground. This sort of inferential leap without sufficient evidence not only should give us reason to pause, but for any rational and sane person, it is yet another example that puts the UN's supposed objectivity and impartiality into question.

America at 250: Where Has My Country Gone?

I remember back in 2009 watching a South Park episode called Dances with Smurfs.  In the episode, the troublemaker Eric Cartman becomes the reader of the elementary school announcements. He takes on the persona of political commentator Glenn Beck, and repeatedly invokes the What happened to my school? I don't consider myself a conservative or one to have blind patriotism, but that episode recently had me ask a similar question of What happened to my country? 

Sure, there are great things about the United States. The United States has the world's largest economy and is still the main superpower. Many of the world's top universities and largest companies are in the United States, and is still a hub for innovation. It is a country that was built on a creed and where your ancestry did not determine your lot in life. Freedom of speech and freedom of religion are still faring well, certainly relative to Europe. But there is so much that has me concerned:

• Capitalism is declining in popularity while nearly two-thirds of Americans from the age of 18 to 29 who favor socialism. An economic system once considered synonymous with the American Dream is now viewed with skepticism. Instead, more of today's youth are attracted to an ideology that has been tried and has failed. 
• According to Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom, the United States was faring better a couple of decades ago. A similar decline is on Fraser's Economic Freedom index. It shows that this country is less committed to the economic liberty that fueled generations of innovation, entrepreneurship, and prosperity. 
• There was a time where Congress cared about fiscal discipline, but the U.S. credit rating continues to spiral downwards with the debt-to-GDP ratio showing no signs of slowing down and shrinking.
• The Federal Reserve continues to have a large balance sheet, not to mention the U.S. dollar declining as a percent of global reserves. While the dollar is still dominant, it does signal concerns about the long-term fiscal and monetary foundations of the United States. 
• Homeownership and education are increasingly out of reach. Starting a family is more expensive, whether it is child care or providing a proper education. 
• More Americans think the First Amendment goes too far. The freedoms of religion, speech, protest, and press are civil liberties are not merely inconveniences that should be tolerated. They are some of the defining features of a free society. Cancel culture has only made this trend worse. It shows that this country is less tolerant of opposing ideas, beliefs, and ways of life. 
• Populism has become popular on both sides of the political aisle. The Left promises protection from corporations, inequality, and unfairness. The Right promises protections from foreign competition, free trade, immigrants, and cultural change. Both increasingly believe that the government is the solution, not markets and civil society.  

This list is not about one president, one party, one election, one Supreme Court decision, or one public policy. It is the sad realization that over the course of my lifetime, the country I thought represented life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is disappearing bit by bit. America used to stand for many noble ideals. Here are some that come to mind:

• All people are created equal and are entitled to equal protection under the law. 
• With enough hard work and disciple, anyone can thrive, regardless of their station in life. 
• Markets generally work better than the government. 
• Capitalism provides prosperity and excessive government is anathema to the American spirit. 
• Government should be small and liberty is the default. 
• The extent to which government is in it is in our lives, it exists to serve the people, not the other way around. 
• A person's status and success should be determined by their merits, talents, and efforts, and not on their wealth, class, gender, or race. 
• Personal independence and individual accomplishments. 

What makes me sad is that many of the ideas that once made America exceptional now have to be defended in a way they never did before. The principles of liberty, limited government, free enterprise, and constitutional restraint have survived wars, depressions, and national crises over the past 250 years. I want those ideals to triumph both because they are morally just and because they create the most prosperity. Even so, I am less hopeful that those ideals can survive in this country for another 250 years. 

Elon Musk, the First Trillionaire: A Capitalist Success Story with Some Caveats

Just when you thought Elon Musk could not have gotten any richer, he announced the initial public offering (IPO) of SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturing company. The SpaceX shares combined with Tesla made Musk the world's first trillionaire. 

There were those, particularly on the Left, flipping out. The Institute for Policy Studies called it a dark day for democracy. Senator Elizabeth Warren decried it while making a call for a wealth tax, which is a bad idea. Senator Bernie Sanders thought it was absurd and pitched the idea of removing the cap on taxable income for Social Security. It is certainly a reminder that the income inequality debate is not dead, and neither is envy for success or rich people. 

Forget what I think about his missed opportunity to reduce government largesse with DOGE, the man's accomplishments are remarkable. He helped the foundations for PayPal, built Tesla into a transformative company, and founded SpaceX. If he is successful in making routine space travel possible, it would rank among one of the biggest entrepreneurial achievements in human history. 

More importantly, Musk is creating value. And that brings us to a point often lost in this discussion. Elon Musk is not sitting on a trillion dollars in cash. A net worth is not a bank account. It is largely an estimate of the value of investments, businesses, and other assets. 

Nor is he hoarding wealth. The economy is not a fixed pie in which one person's gain necessarily comes at another person's expense. Wealth is created through innovation, investment, and productivity. Musk's fortune reflects the belief of millions of investors that the companies he built have generated enormous value and may generate even more in the future. 

His rise to trillionaire status is a reminder of what can be accomplished through ideas, perseverance, risk-taking, and a market economy that allows individuals to create wealth on a massive scale. That being said, I would say that there are two important caveats. 

The first has to do with monetary policy. The Federal Reserve spend decades expanding the money supply and eroding the purchasing power of the dollar. One consequences has been rising asset prices, which in turn have produced ever-larger fortunes on paper. Musk unquestionably created wealth, but the emergence of the world's first trillionaire is less shocking given how much the dollar has devalued. 

The second has to do with the government subsidies, contracts, or regulatory breaks received by Musk's companies as evidence of unfair advantage. This argument often misses the broader institutional point. When the government has the authority to subsidize industries, grant tax advantages, and regulate entry into markets, it inevitably creates incentives for rent-seeking.

Musk's success is best understood not as the product of government intervention, but it cannot be understood as something that happened in a purely free market either. His success and value creation took place in a system in which markets remain the dominant engine of value creation, but also where political discretion occasionally distorted outcomes at the margins. 

Musk's story is one that took place in an economy with considerable rent-seeking and monetary expansion.  The story is less about whether anyone should be a trillionaire and more about the fact that propserity depends on sound money, competitive markets, and limits on political favoritism. 

Another Reason to Dislike Obamacare: Fraud Rates Costing Taxpayers As Much As $25B a Year

Remember back nearly two decades when the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was meant to expand coverage and lower costs? Guess what it ended up doing instead? Far from delivering on its promises, premiums and deductibles remained high, insurer competition was weakened, and Congress continues to spend money. 

As if those shortcomings weren't enough, a new study from the Paragon Health Institute suggests Obamacare may suffer from another serious problem: large-scale enrollment fraud and improper subsidy payments.

The Paragon Institute estimates that approximately 6.2 million people enrolled in Obamacare may be improperly receiving subsidized insurance, which accounts for can account for as much as one-quarter of total exchange enrollment. In fiscal terms, the report argues this could translate into as much as $20–25 billion in annual improper federal subsidy spending, depending on assumptions about eligibility verification and income reporting accuracy.

These issues are not coincidental; they are structural. First, eligibility for subsidies is heavily dependent on self-reported income, which is often based on projections as opposed to verified real-time earnings. This creates natural friction between reported income at the time of enrollment and actual income over the course of the year, especially for workers with variable earnings, gig income, or fluctuating hours.

Second, the system relies on delayed verification and post-enrollment reconciliation instead of strict upfront screening. This means discrepancies may not be corrected until after coverage has already been granted and subsidies disbursed.

Third, the growth of third-party brokers and automated enrollment platforms has increased the number of intermediaries involved in sign-ups. While many operate legitimately, the report argues that commission-based compensation tied to enrollment volume can weaken incentives for careful eligibility verification.

Finally, automatic re-enrollment mechanisms can allow previously enrolled individuals to remain in coverage even if their eligibility status has changed and was never fully rechecked.

This gets into a debate about how estimates of improper ACA enrollment vary widely depending on how “error” is defined and how aggressively small discrepancies are extrapolated across the full exchange population. Federal auditors like the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Government Accountability Office generally focus on confirmed, verifiable errors, which tend to produce lower, single-digit to low-teens estimates.

Higher-end estimates, on the other hand, attempt to capture what those same processes are likely to miss when eligibility is based on self-reporting, delayed verification, and automatic renewal. Put simply, the lower estimates only measure what the system catches and acts as a low-bound estimate. The higher estimate is more plausible because it attempts to measure the full scale of eligibility drift.

Enrollment is frequently cited as evidence of the Obamacare’s success, but it is an incomplete metric. It captures participation in the system, not the accuracy or stability of that participation. In a framework built on self-reported eligibility, delayed verification, and automatic renewal, enrollment can rise even as underlying errors persist. The Paragon Institute’s findings highlight how large those gaps may be at scale.

The latest evidence on enrollment and subsidy error does not stand alone. It reinforces a longer pattern of structural problems that have followed the ACA since its inception, much like I pointed out in my 2017 piece listing 15 reasons we should all dislike Obamacare. Whether it is fraud rates, higher premiums, or fewer options, this latest Paragon Health report is a sobering reminder of why Obamacare should never have existed in the first place and how the American people are still paying for this boondoggle.

Illinois Finds Yet Another Ineffective Way to Raise Revenue by Implementing a Social Media Tax

Illinois' spending problems are nothing new, but how the Illinois General Assembly handles it is. Earlier this month, Illinois passed a new social media tax to help fund its proposed $56 billion budget. Platforms with 100,000 to 500,000 "Illinois users" will have to pay $0.10 per user each month; platforms with 500,000 to 1 million "shall pay $40,000, plus $0.25 per month" per user; and platforms with over 1 million users will pay $165,000, plus $0.50 per user, each month on the number of users over 1 million. 

Aside from dealing with budgetary issues, some view this tax as paying "its fair share." Some might view this as a fair and just tax. In practice, this is a complex, legally fraught tax that will cause all sorts of headache. 

Let's start with the first problem, one addressed by the Tax Foundation: no one seems to know what exactly is being taxed. For starters, what is a user? Is a user a person or an account? If a person has multiple accounts on the same social media platform, does each account constitute a separate user, or is the person one user? 

Then there is the question of whether someone with accounts on multiple platforms is taxed separately. What about who constitutes as an Illinois user? What happens if you are visiting from outside of Illinois temporarily? And what constitutes an Illinois user from whom a platform collects data? When lawmakers cannot clearly explain what is being taxed, businesses cannot reliably comply and taxpayers cannot hold government accountable.

Traditionally, governments have imposed special taxes on products that they regard as socially undesirable. Cigarettes have long been subject to punitive taxes. More recently, politicians have advocated taxes on sugary drinks, unhealthy foods, and other products they believe people consume too much of.

Instead of taxing economic activity neutrally, Illinois has singled out a particular industry for unique taxation. The state is effectively saying that because social media companies are viewed as problematic, they should bear additional financial burdens.

This approach suffers from the same flaw that afflicts most sin taxes. It substitutes political judgments for sound tax policy. Whether one believes social media has positive or negative effects is beside the point. Tax systems should raise revenue in the least distortive manner possible. They should not be designed to reward favored industries and punish disfavored ones.

One of the most troubling aspects of the social media tax debate is how quickly constitutional concerns are dismissed. Many people dislike social media companies, but constitutional protections do not vanish simply because the target lacks public sympathy.

The First Amendment issue is particularly significant. Social media platforms have become central venues for political discussion, news dissemination, and public debate. When government imposes a special tax on a particular category of communications platform, courts may reasonably ask whether the state is burdening speech-related activity in a manner that raises constitutional concerns.

The tax also raises questions under the Commerce Clause. Social media companies serve users across state lines, and internet activity rarely respects geographic boundaries. If Illinois can impose a unique tax based on user activity within the state, other states may adopt competing systems that subject the same activity to multiple layers of taxation.

Illinois’ social media tax is not really about social media. It is about a state government that has become structurally dependent on finding new revenue sources to support an ever-expanding set of spending commitments.

The problem is not that Illinois lacks creativity in taxation. The problem is that it rarely shows restraint in spending. When budgets become tight, the solution is rarely reform or prioritization. Instead, lawmakers turn to new, narrowly targeted taxes that are politically easier to justify than broader fiscal discipline. Matters end up being even worse when the tax is poorly defined and designed.

That pattern has consequences. Targeted taxes on unpopular industries may be politically convenient, but they do little to address the underlying fiscal imbalance. Worse, they risk creating a tax system that is increasingly fragmented, unstable, and vulnerable to legal challenge.

Social media companies may be unpopular today, just as smoking, fatty foods, and sodas have been in other political moments. But fiscal policy built on shifting political fashions is not a substitute for structural reform. Illinois does not need more inventive taxes. It requires a serious conversation about the scale and scope of government itself.