An interesting take on how Tea partiers view government, and how what they believe may not coincide with reality. Bruce Bartlett:
On March 16 the Tea Party crowd showed up for yet another demonstration on Capitol Hill… Curious about the factual knowledge these people have regarding the issues they are protesting,… David Frum enlisted some interns to interview as many Tea Partiers as possible on a couple of basic questions. … (Survey results are here.) The first question that was asked concerned the size of government. Tea Partiers were asked how much the federal government gets in taxes as a percentage of the gross domestic product. According to Congressional Budget Office data, acceptable answers would be 6.4%, which is the percentage for federal income taxes; 12.7%, which would be for both income taxes and Social Security payroll taxes; or 14.8%, which would represent all federal taxes as a share of GDP in 2009
Tuesday’s Tea Party crowd, however, thought that federal taxes were almost three times as high as they actually are. The average response was 42% of GDP and the median 40%. …
This explains a lot. The perceived basis for protest is lost on some mythical plane, where things exist only in the minds of the protesters. They are not armed with facts, or anything remotely resembling them. Only venom, and hatred, and intolerance.
<<<<Read more Bruce Bartlett and The Tea Party>>>>>
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
No Comments so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.