Some Historical Perspective for Anti-Tax Tea-Party Protesters
Hey look, a timely article for a change! Finally I’m addressing a phenomenon before it happens and not days/weeks after it has passed. Anyway, you may or may not have heard about the “tea-party” anti-tax movement that’s developing around the country. This tea-party movement consists of people gathering in various cities on April 15th holding protests about the “terrible taxes burdening americans”, and what they see as America’s coming descent into socialism. Here’s a quote from one of the two fawning FoxNews articles that were up about it today. From one of the organizers of the tea party protests:
“People are getting killed — they’re getting hammered with taxes and it’s not the way this country is supposed to be run. … We want to fight back,”
Are people really getting hammered with taxes? I don’t challenge their right to gather and protest taxes or whatever they want, but they may want to check a few facts first. And to make it convenient for them, I’ve gathered the pertinent graphs and information after the jump. I should also note before I begin that not all tea-party participants are claiming taxes are too high and that some are doing this for other reasons (to protest the stimulus, just to express their anger that McCain lost etc), I’m not addressing those concerns here. But these tea-parties are being billed as “anti-tax protests” so this is a significant part of what they’re organizing for and this article will address that issue. Anyway, as best as I can deduce, here’s some relevant historical perspective… Continue reading
