The 2009 Tea Parties

Do you know about the Tea Parties? You probably heard about them. I didn't go. There was one in Grand Rapids, and I thought about it... I'm frustrated with my government, and if this is a way to show it, you could probably count me in. But I like to be sure. I don't want to half-heartedly protest anything. In case, you know, some counter-protesting occurs and someone hunts me down, gets me into an argument and finds me ill-prepared to defend my presence and inherent support, and converts me to a communist. And I do not want to become a communist. So I didn't go to the Tea Parties.

Plus, I was working.

So I started to look into them. I followed a little bit of the media coverage, and sure enough: There's some counter-protesting going on. And plenty of mockery. On the surface, the tea parties are a bunch of people who are angry about tax increases, many of whom haven't seen a tax increase, probably won't for a while, and maybe never will. People at the bottom end of the tax bracket pay only a small part of the federal income tax - I've mentioned this before. So I'll admit the protesting seems a little ironic.

But I think there's more to it than tax increases. You see, there's a small chunk of people left who actually want the government to take less money and do less stuff. I count myself among them. We're fiscal conservatives who want to take care of ourselves, and we want the government to do less. But we see the government getting bigger. Yeah, I know, it started under George W. Bush. We're mad at him too.

We're mad about - I shudder at the word - bailouts. Remember when GM got too big to fail? Remember how Bank of America got too big to fail? What happens if our government gets too big to fail? The more the government does, the bigger it gets, the closer it gets to that line. People see their freedoms shrinking, and the government growing, and that's why they're getting upset.

I'm not going to sound the Socialism alarm. Maybe we're there, maybe we're not, maybe it's the worst thing ever, maybe no one's really going to care or notice in fifty years. That evaluation is far beyond me and the B I got in three credit-hours of undergraduate macroeconomics. I can't begin to tell you the basic merits and demerits of socialism, but I'm pretty sure they don't entirely jive with this wacky but unshakable idea I have that the government should do less and take less money.

My financial life is okay in this system. But it's the trajectory that bugs me. If the government is getting a little bigger today, where will it be tomorrow? In a year? In ten years? If I'm a little annoyed and curious about it, imagine how many more people are scared and angry and marginalized enough to get organized and to raise a ruckus and dump tea in the Grand River. And all over the rest of the country.

There's a significant number of people who don't feel well-represented by their government, and they have every right to protest. You can protest whatever you want. You protest when your rights erode, hopefully you start doing it before they're gone. It makes sense for people to protest a tax increase.

Naturally, they got mocked. And of course, the easiest way to make fun of tea-parties is to make a tea-bagging joke. If you don't know what that is, and you really want to know, go ask the Urban Dictionary. Suffice it to say it's an innuendo that would draw snickers from frat boys. And some of the rest of us, but only in our weaker moments. I swear. And apparently, Anderson Cooper, too. Dubbing a tea-involving protest as tea-bagging is an easy joke, a comparison expected from anonymous, edgy political bloggers and humorists like Jon Stewart. Likening a movement to a sex-act is a convenient way to devalue it. It bugs me to see otherwise professional journalists slough off a widespread, reasonable protest.

I'm amazed at the ease with which some people are laughing it off. A bunch of white, rich tea-baggers want to keep their money and they're finally raising a stink about it, right? Is someone out of touch here, though? Is it the people protesting out of concern for a government growing too big to fail? The same legion of people who choose Fox News over CNN, the ones who built the conservative talk radio audience? The wealthy ones who bear the load of the tax burden, who feel underrepresented and have reached a tipping point and are taking their frustration to the streets? Or is it the people making teabagging jokes?




From the movie Network

Naivejim, taxpayer

I pay taxes.

I just don't pay very many of them.

It goes something like this: I deliver pizzas, the government visits my paycheck before I do and makes a few withdrawals to buy $500 hammers and medicine for old people, I deliver more pizzas. Then, once a year, the government decides to test everyone and see if they paid more or less than they should have. You file your 1040s, then they cut you a check or ask you to cut one for them. Everyone's happy. Except people who have to give the government more money.

Since I am a lowly pizza man, I get away with not paying much for income taxes, (except those that go to the state of Michigan. For some reason, they don't like to give money back. Usually, because our economy blows, I end up giving them more money.)

Naturally, each year I wonder "If I'm not paying taxes, who is?" Don't you worry, someone is. But I know why I don't pay much income tax: I'm in the bottom half of the tax bracket. Do you know how the percentages break down? I'll spare you any big, long, complicated numbers, (because I don't understand or have them) and give you the gist of it:

Percentile of wage earners (Bottom income of respective percentile) : Percentage of Federal income tax paid by that percentile: (source: IRS)

Top 1% ($364,657) : 39.38%
Top 5% ($145, 283) : 59.67%
Top 10% ($103,912) : 70.30%
Top 50% ($30,881) : 96.93%

In other words, nearly 40% of all federal taxes are taken from the top 1% of the population, and 97% of the income tax is paid by half the population. So, if you're doing the math:

Bottom 50% (<$30,881) : 3.07%

The bottom half pays just 3% of the federal income tax. I'm in this bracket, and that's why I get a check back every year. Apparently, Michigan has not gotten the memo that, being a relatively poor pizza man, they should let me keep more money.

Who does most of the investing in this picture? I'd venture it's the people in the top ten percent who bear 70% of the tax burden. These are the people who own businesses and start new ones.

Say you're in that segment, and you have an extra $100,000 lying around, and you see that there's an unserved part of the population needing an astronaut-themed ethiopian restaurant. So you think to yourself, "Self, I'd like to open an astronaut-themed Ethiopian restaurant." So you take your $100,000 and open an astronaut-themed Ethiopian restaurant. You rent a space in the local strip mall, buy some supplies, meet some suppliers, start buying food and hiring staff. Soon, you're serving a payroll of $400,000 and doing $1,000,000 in business each year. You give poor Jim, an astronaut-loving trained ethiopian chef, a job when his pizza delivery gig falls through. All because you had an extra $100,000 lying around.

Now imagine that someone got elected and, in the name of equality, decided it was a bad idea for some people to have a lot of money when others have so little. They say, "Well, let's just make a few adaptations to those tax laws, and take a little more from the rich folks and help the po' folks out a bit." And everyone says, "Yeah, that's a great idea. The rich folks can spare it." So you, wishing to take a risk and open an ethiopian astronaut-themed restaurant, get bumped up into a new tax bracket and no longer have your $100,000 lying around. Jim, having had his pizza delivery gig fall through, gets no job. Good news, though: He gets government-commissioned dentistry, provided he fills out the proper forms and waits the 6-8 weeks for approval. In 7-10 years, he'll be cavity-free.

More dumbed-down economics for us simple folks: Barstool Economics.