What gives the US federal government the power to set a minimum wage? How can the federal government set a minimum wage? It seems like that would be reserved to the states under the 10th Amendment. Is the interstate commerce clause? That seems iffy to me.
It's the interstate commerce clause. Because of how the modern economy works. there's really pretty much nothing that's confined to a single state in its effects and doesn't affect other states. Almost any law can be justified as a regulation of interstate commerce these days, especially if that law is actually directly about commercial activity. The big case to cite here is United States v. Darby (312 US 100). This case tested a federal minimum wage law which banned shipping goods in interstate commerce where they were produced by people paid less than minimum wage, and also banned the employment of those people at less than minimum wage in that context. The Supreme Court found this law constitutional, even though the manufacturing employees weren't personally engaged in interstate commerce, because the employer was engaged in interstate commerce and regulating production was a permissible way to regulate that commerce. Now, after that decision, there was a major broadening of what was allowed to be regulated under the interstate commerce clause. In Wickard v. Filburn (317 US 111), the Supreme Court ruled that the appropriate test to see whether something could be regulated as interstate commerce was whether it had a "substantial economic effect" on interstate commerce. Under this rule, federal regulation under the commerce clause is very far-reaching. It supports extending a minimum wage to domestic service workers (Marshall v. Rose, a Fourth Circuit case from 1980); it supports extending EEOC rules to state employers (EEOC v. Wyoming); it supports a lot of things.
The president alone has power, under Article II, Section 2, Clause 1, to grant pardons for federal offenses. Many states have an analogous power for governors, to pardon state offenses. In some states, though (for example Minnesota), there is a board in charge of the process (made up, in Minnesota, of the Governor, Chief Justice and Attorney General). Likewise, in Canada, pardons are granted by a board. Although POTUS has the power, in terms of implementation it is a bit more complicated, since he doesn't sit around wondering "Who should I pardon": he has an Office of the Pardon Attorney who makes recommendations. However, there are other ways to get out of jail (besides doing the time), namely having the conviction overturned, being paroled, and credit for good behavior. Federal parole is no longer an option, but the other avenues are open, at least in principle.
Both the Due Process Clause and the Dormant Commerce Clause impose meaningful limits on states' ability to tax income on residents. The Due Process Clause requires &quot;minimum contacts&quot; between the state and the taxpayer. Under the Due Process Clause, states may only tax a nonresident's income when there is a &quot;some definite link, some minimum connection, between a state and the person, property or transaction it seeks to tax.” North Carolina Dept. of Revenue v. Kimberley Rice Kaestner 1992 Family Trust, 139 S. Ct. 2213, 2220 (2019). Despite the word &quot;minimum,&quot; there isn't any fixed threshold at which contacts become sufficient to permit a state to impose a tax. Instead, the courts will ask whether the state's assertion of jurisdiction to tax the person offends &quot;traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.&quot; A critical question in this analysis will be whether the taxpayer enjoyed the &quot;benefits and protection&quot; of the state in connection with the subject of the tax. In your examples, then, you can probably guess how the courts would view each transaction. If you are a Connecticut resident but perform a $5,000 job in New York, you have physically entered New York, likely conducted business with another New York entity, and you can go to the New York courts if the other party breaches the contract by which you earned the money. You have meaningful contacts with the state and enjoy the protection of its laws, so the state is permitted to impose a tax on the income from that transaction. But if you drive from New York to California, your presence in each state is likely highly transient. You pay tolls for using the highways and sales taxes for lunch or something, but you aren't generating any income from those transactions. Your presence in New Jersey would not, for instance, entitle you to go into New Jersey courts to sue for a breach of your New York contract. New Jersey has no meaningful connection to that income, so it may not tax it. But contrast that with your lunch purchase, which creates sufficient connections to New Jersey to permit it to tax that transaction: you are physically in New Jersey, you are protected by New Jersey's food-safety laws, and you can go into New Jersey courts if Burger King intentionally poisons you. So the state can impose a sales tax on that transaction, but not income tax on out-of-state transactions. The Dormant Commerce Clause prohibits states from imposing the &quot;unfair burden&quot; of double taxation on interstate commerce. The Dormant Commerce Clause prohibits the states from regulating, restricting, or substantially burdening interstate commerce without the consent of Congress. The U.S. Supreme Court has made clear time and time again that income taxes violate the Dormant Commerce Clause when they create a risk of double taxation that doesn't exist for taxpayers with no out-of-state business: Adams Mfg. Co. v. Storen, 304 U.S. 307, 311 (1938) (“Interstate commerce would thus be subjected to the risk of a double tax burden to which intrastate commerce is not exposed, and which the commerce clause forbids.”) Gwin, White &amp; Prince, Inc. v. Henneford, 305 U.S. 434, 440 (1939) (“Such a multiplication of state taxes, each measured by the volume of the commerce, would reestablish the barriers to interstate trade which it was the object of the commerce clause to remove.”) Comptroller of the Treasury of Maryland, 135 S. Ct. 1787, 1801-2 (2015) (“The tax schemes held to be unconstitutional ... had the potential to result in the discriminatory double taxation of income earned out of state and created a powerful incentive to engage in intrastate rather than interstate economic activity.”) So even though New York and Connecticut have sufficient contacts from a due-process perspective to permit both of them to tax your business, they many not tax all of your income if not all of it if another state has a claim to it as well. This has of course led to debates over exactly how much of your income New York and Connecticut is entitled to, and the question only gets more complex for businesses with larger footprints. Amazon, for instance, is doing business in every state and territory, so how do we divide its income among the 50+ entities looking to take a bite of those hundreds of billions of dollars in income? For quite a long time, most states used a three-factor calculation that apportioned income among the states based on how much of they taxpayer's property, payroll, and sales were in each state. Oversimplified, this means that if you had 5 percent of your property in New York, 40 percent of your payroll in New York, and 15 percent of your sales in New York, that would average out to 20 percent, so you would pay New York taxes on 20 percent of your income. Over time, the three-factor apportionment method has fallen out of favor, and many states adopted other methods -- especially calculations that more heavily weight the sales factor -- to encourage economic development. Because most large companies have only a small portion of their sales in almost any given state, they can substantially reduce their tax bills by setting up their headquarters in a state that is going to ignore the value of their real estate, equipment, and payroll when calculating their tax bills. tl;dr: Under the Due Process Clause, a state can't impose tax on anything it doesn't have some meaningful connection to. Under the Dormant Commerce Clause, the states have to find a way to make split up taxes that they might share a claim to.
Under the commerce clause, a state cannot (without authorization from Congress), forbid its residents to travel to another state, nor tax such travel. It cannot prohibit imports from, or exports to, another state. It cannot tax products from other states in general, or from specific states, at a different rate or in different ways from products made within the taxing state. However, a state government may decide where its own employees will go on official business. It may decide where its own funds will be spent, and what products or services it will purchase for its own use. It may decline to purchase products from states with policies it disapproves of. It may forbid official travel that it would be responsible to pay for to such states, if it so chooses. It can probably also encourage its citizens and residents not to travel to or buy from such states, as long as it sticks to persuasion, and does not impose any penalty or tax on those who do so trade or travel, and also does not refuse to deal with people who do deal with the state it dislikes.
A US state's constitution cannot "put restrictions on" the Federal constitution, or any of the rights guaranteed by it, if by that is meant limiting the rights Federally guaranteed. The so called "Supremacy clause" of Article VI says: This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. (The above was more relevant before the question was edited to remove the 'put restrictions on" language. But it is still accurate and somewhat relevant.) Similarly, and because of the Supremacy clause, the content of a US State's constitution cannot change the interpretation of the federal constitution, in either state or federal courts, including the presence or absence of rights similar to those protected by the Federal Constitution. However, a number of state constitutions have guarantees which parallel the federal First Amendment, particularly its freedom of speech and freedom of religion aspects. This is particularly true of state constitutions written prior to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. At that time, the Federal Bill of Rights only restricted the federal government, and so when similar restrictions were wanted against a state government, they had to be in the state constitutions. See Barron vs Baltimore for the limitation of the bill of rights to restricting the federal government at this time. Such provisions did not usually reference the Federal First Amendment explicitly, they simply had more or less similar language. Since the passage of the 14th, and the incorporation of the various provisions of the Federal bill of rights against the states (largely starting in the 1920s) most court cases have refereed to the Federal provision rather than any similar state provision, unless, as is sometimes the case, the state provision offers greater rights or wider scope than the federal one does.
Congress has the power to propose amendments, but not to enact them. Amendments are only enacted once they're ratified by 3/4ths of the state legislatures. And yes, there's no reason to think it would be unconstitutional for 2/3rds of each house of Congress plus 3/4ths of the state legislatures to make fundamental changes to the Constitution like eliminating other branches of government. The only limit on amendments that's still in effect is that states can't be deprived of equal suffrage in the Senate without their consent.
The Constitution said people have the Rights to Properties. No it doesn't. There is no such provision. The closest I am aware of is the so-called &quot;takings clause&quot; in the Fifth Amendment, which reads: Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation. There has been a good deal of litigation over just when when a &quot;taking&quot; occurs under this provision. The classic and most obvious case is the use of eminent domain to aquire actual title to the property by a government (Federal, State, or local). This is always a takign, and compensation nis required. The more questionable cases have occurred when some law or regulation leaves the owner with title, but significantly restricts the uses to which the property may be put, particularly when the existing use becomes unlawful. Courts have ruled in different ways in such cases, but I think the current standard is that when a regulation removes all, or almost all, economic value from the property there has been a &quot;regulatory taking&quot; and compensation must be paid. But as far as I know, a tax on the property has never been considered to be a taking inn this sense.
The Constitution only regulates the powers of the government; it doesn't directly say what the people can and can't do. In particular, it doesn't say directly that nobody except Congress can coin money. However, it does give the government the power to make laws, which are binding on the population. So Congress possibly could make a law forbidding cryptocurrencies, or at least regulating them, under the "regulating the value thereof" clause. However, they haven't done so. In the case of the Liberty Dollar, there are some specific laws that apply. They were convicted of violating 18 USC 485, which forbids the making of physical gold or silver coins that resemble US or foreign money, and 18 USC 486, which forbids creating or passing any physical metal coins as money (as well as other conspiracy charges, aiding and abetting, etc). None of these laws apply to cryptocurrency because they are not physical metal coins. Given that Congress has been explicitly given the power to coin and regulate the value of money in the United States, how are cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Basis created, distributed, and redeemed such that they have not been found unconstitutional? The power to regulate includes the power to not regulate. As a slight tangent, what laws allow for the creation and distribution of cryptocurrencies? In a free society, "everything is permitted that is not forbidden". We don't need a law specifically allowing the creation and distribution of cryptocurrencies; it's sufficient that there is no law that forbids it.