A short post today, my apologies, but I want everybody who can to attend their local “Tea Party” on April 15th. As you may recall from American history, back in 1773 American colonists irate over increasingly oppressive duties and tariffs imposed by the British disguised themselves as indians, boarded British Merchantmen in Boston Harbor, and threw their cargo of tea overboard, protesting among other things taxation without representation.
Taxation with representation ain’t so hot either and, as Washington is now completely in the clutches of our home-grown criminal class, I’d like everybody who gives a crap about liberty, free enterprise, and stopping the conversion of our country into just another European mammary state to gather with your fellow citizens at your city’s tea party.
Keep the following in mind:
1. Although the tea parties are being touted as “Conservative” events and their will be many conservatives there, you don’t have to be completely conservative to go. They are more and expression of Libertarianism but conservatives share some similar values so it’s cool.
2. Keep yer’ pro-life, pro-gun, pro-whatever stuff at home. I’m pro-life and pro-gun but this is not the day for it.
3. Be polite to the handful of counter-protesters. They will be freaky and transgendered looking and they will be advocating as many issues as their are protesters, most having nothing to do with taxation, but that’s just their thing. I have been to many conservative events and without exception conservatives and Libertarians are well-dressed, polite, well-spoken, and behave in a way that makes our events family friendly. I have never seen the police have to use pepper spray, dogs, or any intimidation at all to control conservative crowds (in fact most cops are probably on your side) so let’s make it a pleasant day for everybody including the police.
Fact is, the majority of Americans are on the liberal’s side. It might be mob rule, but as long as we have a democracy where one person gets one vote, the have nots are going to out-vote the haves.
I like the idea of paying for all the stuff that we buy. Honestly I think it’s disgusting the ‘conservatives’ have supported pretty much every form of spending under the sun but burst into paroxysms of rage at the meerest suggestion that their income might be taxed to pay for the goods and services they have bought. For almost 8 years before this economic collapse we’ve had republicans running huge deficits in relatively good economic times, fighting for the philosophy that bills never need to be paid and times are never good enough to start paying down your debt.
(Whoa. Conservatives have not supported every form of spending under the sun. You must be thinking of the Republican Party which has its fair share of “moderates” and is not an exclusive club for conservatives, the conservative part of which opposed such things as expanding the Mammary State. There is no Conservative Party in the United States although most conservatives vote Republican either as the lesser of two evils or over social issues. Besides, and this is key, we are all a little hypocritical at times. Requiring purity of thought and action is a trick of the Left to try to shut down Conservatism; no such standard ever being required of liberals.
As far as paying for stuff we buy, what are we buying and why should we be buying it. That’s the whole point.-PB)
If we had the Libertarians on one hand with a model of small government and the Democrats on the other hand with a model of large government maybe I could see the debate. I think the conservatives would lose, but it would be a debate worth having. However as it stands we have the Democrats standing for big government and Republicans fighting for and equally big government that they want to motgage to the Chinese rather than risk Paris Hilton paying more than 15% estate tax on her trust fund.
A big part of the problem here is that even self professed conservatives generally don’t realize what a small percentage of the government spending they can actually agree on wanting to cut. The military and homeland security? They want to increase that. Social security, Medicare, and medicaid? That’s all that’s keeping Grandma alive, there’s no public support for cutting it. National disaster response, or regulatory agencies? There are calls to increase funding for those after florida hurricanes and chinese lead based toys. Cut local taxes and sacrifice roads, schools, colleges, or police? No support for that either. Amnesty on some crimes so that some of the prison system can shut down? Nope, and we need harsher sentencing too. So basically all they agree on cutting is wasteful ‘pork’ spending that makes up less than 1% of the total budget and maybe a little more of the welfare system that barely exists anymore. Now there are libertarians (Ron Paul) who have actually had the gual to suggest that lower taxes should be accompanied by cuts in all of these national services (Rep. Paul has said on a few occasions that he doesn’t see how a hurricane on the Gulf coast should be considered a problem for a state in the NW) but, on the national level, they have generally met the fate of all politicians who confront their constituents with reality.
If you want to help the situation write your Congressman/Senator and ask for a balanced butget amendment, and support specific spending cuts. However just showing up at a tea party and expressing outrage at the idea of higher taxes only encourages your government to continue to not tax and spend, to run trillion dollar deficits, and in general to make sure that their constituents can avoid the unholy horror of taking collective responsibility for their purchases.
Well, I went to my local tea party protest today, Panda. About 800ish people were there I guess. It was pretty fun.
As for Perrotfish’s post, It’s pretty much just one huge straw man and false dilemma. So I won’t even attempt to dissect it. But I will touch on one point.
The reason why conservatives believe that you can lower taxes without a drop in tax revenue is the economic phenomena called the “Laffer curve” and the fact that we believe we’re still on the right side of the Laffer curve. Therefore, when taxes drop, due to increased private sector production, tax revenue rises.
Oh, and as a first time poster, I should introduce myself. I’m an Economics and English student(so yes, still young) who’s thinking of becoming a Physician, yes, even after reading Panda and many other Medical blogger for years. So I know I’m not going to waltz into some dream job.
Finally, Thanks for all the useful information you’ve given me over the years, Panda.
Oh sweet merciful crap the Laffer curve, the CAM of economics. Not evidience based, flying in the face of almost 30 years of economic data, but it’s proponents still cling to it because it seems like such a nice idea. Yes I’ve heard it before, I get the theory, but the fact is the Laffer curve has been around for all 20 years of Repblican presidents that I’ve lived through and through all their tax cuts, and they ALL ran huge deficits. Every successive tax cut (without spending cuts) by every successive Republican has increased the deficit, exactly the way you’d expect when you spend a lot of money that you don’t have, and every Republican president has therefore argued, against all sanity, that the problem was that we didn’t cut taxes enough. Which of course resonates with a public who likes the idea of getting expensive things for free. Just how low does the tax rate need to go before Laffer lovers admit that either this theory doesn’t work, or that we were on the wrong side of the curve all along?
Honestly arguments like this are the reason it’s hard to respect the conservative ‘protests’ I saw today, which was pretty much the point of my first post. What we have here is an economics major who is basically arguing that, if we stop asking people to pay for their government, that makes even the most obscene government spending sprees free. According to this theory big government is fine, you just need to keep taxes low enough that the money to pay for all of it will magically appear. How is this any less irresponsible from an individual buying a house he can’t afford and hoping it goes up in value enough to make his investment worthwhile? Is the idea that tax cuts correspond to spending cuts really so odious and self-evidently wrong that it now qualifies as a straw man argument?
Again, tax cuts are cool, just tell me what you want to cut to pay for them. Military? FEMA? Regulatory agencies? Space Program? Social Security? Medicare? Medicaid Schools? Roads? Police? If you’re a Ron Paul I can get a straight answer to that question (in his case, cut the military, disaster relief, regulatory agencies, and federal entitlement programs but keep all the local government stuff like schools and roads: basic states rights, isolationist philosophy). The majority of Republicans, though, just cooly condescend to me that when I learn a little more about life I’ll realize that all government services are free as long as I really want them to be.
Anyway, I’m done blog stalking for awhile. Thanks for the reading material, glad you enjoyed the protest.
Always I hear about these ‘pansy’ European nanny state and how horrible it would be for the US to become like them in any way.
These guys have the highest standard of living, consistently rate as the most educated and happiest populations, lowest infant mortality rates, and so on, all while living thoroughly Western lifestyles and with universal health care.
What’s the problem again? Maybe this is not sustainable but they’ve been doing well for a long while.