Richard Thaler on “Slippery Slopes”

In today’s New York Times, Richard Thaler argues that the Constitutional “slippery slope” argument in the Obamacare case (“Today health care, tomorrow broccoli”) is misguided.  This is a strange argument in this particular case.  We must remember that all of today’s commerce clause jurisprudence (which everyone agrees has greatly expanded the power of the Federal government to regulate economic activity) rests on Wickard v. Filburn, a 1942 case involving a small wheat and chicken farmer in Ohio.  If ever there was a slippery slope, this is it, and it seems rational to fear another in the same Constitutional line.