Tea Partiers Are Insane:

The tea party movement makes no sense. Supposedly, tea parties sprang up everywhere because congress was taxing those who were 'tea partying' too much, and spending too much on useless junk as a result. Both aspects of this theory are utter nonsense.

Exhibit A: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/04/how-to-think-about-taxes-and-the-rich/38947/

As you can see, taxes are actually at a historic low in American history. Every single group, everyone in America, is being taxed less than ever, all the way back to 1979, where the graph ends. If tea parties are a result of high taxes, why didn't they occur at any time in the past 30 years? Sure, one could argue that taxes are still too high, even though they're lower than ever, but why riot NOW instead of any time previously? Why suddenly get angry over historically low tax rates right when the democrats take office? There's no legitimate reason to complain about taxes NOW and not before. To make matters worse, the people showing up at these tea parties aren't even the ones being asked to pay the taxes.

Currently in America, as shown in the charts in that link, the top 20% of income earners earn 50.5% of the income earned in America. They also pay 69.3% of federal taxes collected. This measure includes all taxes, (estate, corporate, payroll, capital gains, and income). To be fair, it may be true that some poor person forced to pay even a measly 4% of his income to taxes, is losing exactly that last 4% that was enough to buy enough food to eat. In this way, someone paying dramatically less taxes, could still suffer more from the tax rate, than someone paying dramatically higher taxes. Though this is theoretically true, I find it highly doubtful in America today, where the poor are given all sorts of handouts like HUD housing, earned income tax credits, food stamps, unemployment benefits, medicaid, welfare, etc. I suspect the bottom two quintiles receive more in government benefits than they pay in taxes, and therefore have nothing to complain about. The next bracket then is the middle quintile, who pay 14.2% of their income in taxes, shoulder 9.1% of the tax burden, and make 17.3% of the income of the country. This means they're still being taxed less than a flat tax would ask of them, and therefore they, too, have nothing whatsoever to complain about. They're also too well off for us to worry about the privations of taxing this group, even if they receive no corresponding government benefits.


http://people-press.org/commentary/?analysisid=114

This link here, a little out of doubt, but accurate enough, shows the third quintile makes $46,500 on average. If they lose 14% of this to taxes, they end up with $40,000 instead. Horrors. Meanwhile, people in the bottom bracket are living off less than $19,000.

Let's look at the next bracket then, the 4th quintile: They pay 17.6% of their income to taxes, shoulder 16.5% of the tax burden, but make 23% of this nation's income. Again, they are better off than under a flat tax. Again, they are too wealthy to complain that the taxes are somehow crippling their standard of living. Again, they have no right to complain about taxes in this country.

So how about the fifth quintile? They pay 25.8% of their income to taxes, shoulder 69.3% of the tax burden, and earn 50.5% of the income. For the first time a group is paying more in taxes than they are earning in income. At the same time, we have to keep two things in mind -- however unjust this might be, it is the least unjust it has been in decades, and the rich are the richest they've ever been relative to the rest of us since the 1920's. This means not only have taxes been going down for the super rich, less and less wealth has been redistributed from the rich to the poor for almost a century. Supposing tea partiers were made up exclusively of this top 20% and therefore had a conceivable grievance against the federal government, why of all times have the rich decided to riot now over the concept of income redistribution or progressive taxation? Wouldn't the Bush years, the Clinton years, and the Reagan years all have been more appropriate targets to protest over? Why only when Obama comes to power and democrats gain control of Congress? Are the tea partiers seriously protesting bills they fear might be passed and taxes they fear might be raised and spending they fear might occur in the future? What kind of paranoia gets this kind of revolutionary energy together when Obama has promised over and over that the vast majority of Americans will not see any tax increases, and no such bills are making their way through Congress? Why are tea parties desperately marching around for fear of bills that don't exist and aren't being debated, when in a few months they can just peacefully go to the ballot box and vote in a congress they would feel safe about?

You see, democracy already has a process for people to lodge their grievances and give voice to their concerns. Obama won the election, as did the democrats in Congress, fair and square. Tea Party protests are meaningless. If the American people don't like the government in power, how about they show up a few months from now and vote in a new Congress for 2010? Surely a new vote every 2 years is enough to keep any government in line. There's only one problem with this -- 80% of Americans currently benefit from progressive taxation, only 20% even conceivably suffer. If anything, the tea party protesters should be running scared as to why the rest of Americans haven't demanded far more money than the unprecedented lows we are currently redistributing. Only the slavish willingness of the poor to endure their hard lots, usually not voting at all, has allowed such an imbalance to occur this long.

Do the rich intend to go on permanent strike, to protest day in and day out, rally and riot for eternity? I mean, if they suddenly can't stand the taxes and redistribution going on in America now, which are at unprecedented lows, how can they ever calm down? What would suffice to calm their injured hearts? What would be enough? Apparently the highest disparity between the rich and the poor in 70 years just isn't good enough, the rich require a yet higher % of American income or they'll march around with signs shouting 'Don't Tread on Me' and calling for secession. It's like we've entered some theater of the absurd and left reality far behind. The poor are sitting quietly while they find half of their quintile unemployed and unemployable and the inflation adjusted minimum wage the lowest it's been in decades, while the RICH are rioting over holding the highest share of income in American history in the past 70 years. Dear God give us back some smidgen of sanity to this debate!

Now let's consider Exhibit B:

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/51413

The budget for the 2011 fiscal year, which has to be voted by Congress by this Oct. 1, looks to be about $3 trillion, not counting the funds collected for Social Security (since the Vietnam War, the government has included the Social Security Trust Fund in the budget as a way to make the cost of America’s imperial military adventures seem smaller in comparison to the total cost of government). Meanwhile, the military share of the budget works out to about $1.6 trillion.

The same people rioting across the country in Tea Parties are fervent backers of the military and want to go to war with Iran. Would they be startled to find out that 53% of the federal budget was spent on the military this year? Excluding social security, which has always run a surplus through the payroll tax which means everyone has paid in their fair share long before they receive anything back -- ie, no redistribution of income is occurring via social security (If anything, money is redistributing from the poor, who usually die younger, to the rich, who live longer and collect more social security benefits thereby.) The Tea Party must, then, be complaining about their portion of taxes that goes to all programs outside of social security, right? The ones they are unfairly paying a higher share of? Only no, that can't be, because by that measure, 53% of all taxes are spent on their most beloved program of all, the one they'd love to double, triple, quadruple in funding -- the military.

Not only is it disgusting to realize that the Tea Party is protesting tax dollars being spent to help poor people, sick people, and children gain access to health care, it is even more disgusting to realize where the Tea Party would rather be spending its money. Why save sick people's lives in our own country when we could go kill hundreds of thousands of people all around the world who never did anything to us instead? The choice is clear to the Tea Party. There is no conceivable use to our military funding EXCEPT as an aggressor. This is because the United States spends as much on its military as the REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED SPENDS ON THEIRS. So even if we were at war with the whole world, it would be an even match! Since the whole world isn't currently invading us, no conceivable threat is sufficient to explain a budget such as ours. To put things in context, this year we are spending more, inflation adjusted mind you, then at any time in American history -- even higher than during World War II.

From the link:

The 2011 military budget, by the way, is the largest in history, not just in actual dollars, but in inflation adjusted dollars, exceeding even the spending in World War II, when the nation was on an all-out military footing.

The only reason it feels like less is the economy and population has grown since the 1940's, so the share of GDP this spending constitutes is less. This doesn't change the fact, though, that we are outputting a more powerful military than the one we fielded in World War II, in order to fight a few crazies hiding in caves who haven't succeeded in staging a single terrorist attack on US soil in the last 9 years. The scale of our hammer to their flea is inconceivable, it is impossible to make a rational argument for this level of military spending. Even so, even though this is the greatest waste of federal tax dollars, the only tax dollars that provide no benefits whatsoever to America, even though the military is 53 cents out of every tax dollar, the tea party is silent concerning it, or wants to get into more wars and raise the spending even higher.

If people want to argue that spending on the military provides all sorts of jobs for soldiers and weapon industries, then I must bring up two points in refutation. 1) Why should the entire country randomly hand out half of all their tax dollars to a few selected special interests who happen to be in these valueless, even evil tasks such as warmongering? If we are spending money in this way just to help people, with no real goal for their work except as an excuse to give them money, couldn't we instead help everyone directly via a citizen's dividend? 2) Do you realize how incredibly inefficient it is to lock up huge amounts of skilled labor in a useless trade, burning through huge amounts of valuable oil, steel, real estate, and other materials to fund a war industry that serves no purpose? If this money were instead redistributed directly to the public, they could spend the money on goods that improve one's standard of living far higher, since it would all go towards buying food, health care, houses, cars, education, diapers, tv's, or SOMETHING that makes a person's life better after purchasing.

Compared to the federal budget devoted to the military, every other program in the federal budget is worth more. Since the tea party doesn't complain about military spending, it has no right to complain about spending for any other purpose. Giving people free houses, free food, free health care, free trips to the Bahamas, is all better than throwing trillions of dollars away to buy toys we never use, never have used, and never will use just to enrich a select few.

The most efficient use of tax dollars is a direct redistribution with no middlemen or bureaucrats in-between, a straight flat tax and equal redistribution among all citizens in the country. People could then set their own priorities on how they want to use their money, buying goods of real value to themselves. Businesses would thrive with the influx of new consumer demand, and artificially subsidized industries like housing, the military, health care, energy, agriculture, and education would all drop to a more affordable and reasonable level. By eliminating all government interference in the economy, we could finally find out what people really want, and what goods they really benefit from, rather than trying to force feed them goods we think are best for them, and creating market inefficiencies, parasitic middlemen, and government waste every step of the way. If we took this entire military budget of 1.6 trillion alone and redistributed it to all Americans today, we could have, instead of our useless military and insane foreign wars of aggression, everyone in America could receive $5,300. That's half of what they need to afford a decent, modern lifestyle. In a pinch, it could fund all of what they need to live. The incredible blessing of a citizen's dividend is just one cut in the military away. Every day we struggle through this recession is another day we chose to embrace poverty for the sake of our right to invade and murder foreigners who have done nothing to us. The fact that we really have chosen option #2 over option #1, and primarily due to people like the Tea Partiers who have the sheer nerve to complain about 'wasted tax dollars,' proves our country is irretrievably demented.

On another note, Vdare has run out of money AGAIN, just a few months after their last collapse. Meanwhile Ron Paul polled on Rasmussen among likely voters in a DEAD HEAT with Obama in a potential 2012 match, 41% to 42%. Ron Paul received millions of dollars in fundraising in the 2008 primaries. Compare the energy of these two brands and then think for yourself!