Willingly Brainwashed
by digby
If you watched Fox and listened to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck all day, you’d be ignorant too:
On March 16 the Tea Party crowd showed up for yet another demonstration on Capitol Hill in Washington. Curious about the factual knowledge these people have regarding the issues they are protesting, my friend David Frum enlisted some interns to interview as many Tea Partyers as possible on a couple of basic questions. They got 57 responses–a pretty good-sized sample from a crowd that numbered between 300 and 500 people. (Survey results are here.)
The first question that was asked concerned the size of government. Tea Partyers 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%. The highest figure recorded in all of American history was half those figures: 20.9% at the peak of World War II in 1944.
To follow up, Tea Partyers were asked how much they think a typical family making $50,000 per year pays in federal income taxes. The average response was $12,710, the median $10,000. In percentage terms this means a tax burden of between 20% and 25% of income.
Of course, it’s hard to know what any particular individual or family pays in taxes, but according to IRS tax tables, a single person with $50,000 in taxable income last year would owe $8,694 in federal income taxes, and a married couple filing jointly would owe $6,669.
But these numbers are high because to have a taxable income of $50,000, one’s gross income would be higher by at least the personal exemption, which is $3,650, and the standard deduction, which is $5,700 for single people and $11,400 for married couples. Owning a home or having children would reduce one’s tax burden further.
[…]
Tea Partyers also seem to have a very distorted view of the direction of federal taxes. They were asked whether they are higher, lower or the same as when Barack Obama was inaugurated last year. More than two-thirds thought that taxes are higher today, and only 4% thought they were lower; the rest said they are the same.
As noted earlier, federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became president. And given the economic circumstances, it’s hard to imagine that a tax increase would have been enacted last year. In fact, 40% of Obama’s stimulus package involved tax cuts. These include the Making Work Pay Credit, which reduces federal taxes for all taxpayers with incomes below $75,000 by between $400 and $800.
According to the JCT, last year’s $787 billion stimulus bill, enacted with no Republican support, reduced federal taxes by almost $100 billion in 2009 and another $222 billion this year. The Tax Policy Center, a private research group, estimates that close to 90% of all taxpayers got a tax cut last year and almost 100% of those in the $50,000 income range. For those making between $40,000 and $50,000, the average tax cut was $472; for those making between $50,000 and $75,000, the tax cut averaged $522. No taxpayer anywhere in the country had his or her taxes increased as a consequence of Obama’s policies…
In fact, there hasn’t been a federal tax increase of any significance in this country since 1993.
I’m guessing that most of these people don’t know much of anything that’s true they’re just consumed with inchoate rage that the “bad guys” are in power and therefore they must be doing all the bad things everyone tells them they are doing.
The modern conservative movement propaganda holds that government is the problem not the solution. The corollary is that is you have a problem, government must be the cause. You are short of money? It must be because of taxes. People don’t have health care? It must be because the government is running it. Crime? Big government. Lack of jobs? Government.
This isn’t about issues, it’s about a delusional worldview formed by people who listen to a bunch of hucksters who have successfully looted the country while persuading about half the people that the government was doing the looting and giving it in the form of “handouts” to people who didn’t deserve it. It’s a great scam and a lot of people have made a lot of money promoting it.
It’s a shame that these same people are getting screwed six ways to Sunday, but I’m getting less and less sympathetic as I see them throwing dollar bills into the faces of disabled citizens and telling them go somewhere else looking for a handout. These aren’t just misguided souls. They are cruel jerks.
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