Tea bag altruists?

by David Safier
There's something that's always confused me, and it hit me as I looked across Swan last Friday at the Tea Party demonstrators. I saw signs reading "Taxed Enough Already." Then I looked at the people in the crowd and asked myself, "How many of them make over $300,000 a year or have estates worth over a $1 million?"

My answer is, not many. I'll bet most of their yearly incomes are a quarter that level, and their estates, unless they bought a home years ago that wildly appreciated in value, don't approach the $1 million level.

See, I read in this morning's Star that Obama's proposed tax hikes start at the $300,000 income level — if you're single. That person "struggling" to support him/herself on $300,000 would see taxes go up a full $200. No, I didn't leave out any zeroes. That's two hundred dollars. Raise that person's income by 50%, to $450,000, and the tax is raised by $7,100. And for a family of 4 making $450,000, their tax only goes up $1,300.

Never having made $300,000-$450,000 a year myself, I can't really understand what it would mean to have a few hundred or a few thousand dollars added to my tax bill, but I'm going to make a wild guess. It would mean bupkis (Translation from the Yiddish: practically nothing).

But maybe Tea Party members are both more empathetic and altruistic than I, or maybe their empathy and altruism goes in the other direction. I support all kinds of programs that help the poor, knowing the programs won't help me directly, while the Tea Party folks support tax cuts that help the rich, even though most of them are not among the lucky 2% in the country who make enough to see their taxes raised under Obama's proposals.

I have another theory. I think if you pulled people from the Tea Party demonstrations on Swan aside and asked each of them, "Does Obama want to raise your taxes?" most would say, "Hell yeah!" The more knowledgeable among them would point out things like carbon taxes or gas taxes or soft drink taxes, but if you asked them how much that would amount to in their own lives, they'd say, "Plenty!" And if you asked if they would benefit personally from Obama's agenda, they'd say, "Hell no!"

And if you asked them, "Why are you against the estate tax?" the answer would be, "The Death Tax, you mean! Because I want to be able to pass what I own on to my kids without the government getting their hands on a chunk of it!" The fact that the estate tax doesn't kick in until you're worth more than $1 million wouldn't be part of their consideration.

For most of them, this isn't about a philosophical stand about what's best for the country. I think they honestly see themselves as protecting their pocketbooks from the marauding tax-and-spend Democrats, who, in fact, don't want their money — unless they make over $300,000, and even then it's a pittance until they make over $1 million.

The support of the rich by so many people in this country who will never be among the lucky 2% is an example of effective propaganda from the right and weak responses from the left. Their successes at getting out their false message are compounded by our failures to mount an effective counter message.