My brother is The Christian conservative Right in the flesh. He is a graduate of a private, Christian university in the Midwest and a youth pastor. He is a supply-side, capitalist supporter who has never (by his own admission) voted for a Democratic Party candidate in his entire life. This morning, we had a little discussion about the so-called "Tea Parties" being organized by conservative media sources - including Fox "fair and balanced" News.
Amazing how unemployment could be cut in half subsequent to President Clinton's 1993 Omnibus Tax Reconciliation...when upper-income marginal tax rates were increased to 39.6%, the same as what President Obama has proposed and 10.4% less than what Reagan allowed to remain in place for most of his presidency
My brother is a good person - he really is. He devotes the vast majority of his life to helping young people stay out of trouble and move their lives in a productive direction. He does this while being paid a salary so low that were he left to the devices of his own compensation, he would probably need public assistance to pay his bills (Ironic that he is a conservative, but I digress...).
Politically, however, he is a hard-headed and stubborn person. He has never been wrong in an argument...just ask him and he'll tell you. In addition to this, he is not one of those debaters who bring facts and descriptive statistics to the table to validate his points. He takes the Limbaugh/Beck/O'Reilly approach and yells loudly as to drown out any educated and intelligent dissent and/or reason.
Today, I decided to turn the tables on him a bit. I softly and politely asked him to fill me in on the purpose of the "Tea Parties". He began by telling me that people like him were sick and tired of paying for the bills of others i.e. welfare for the poor, illegal immigrants, and "lazy bums who refuse to work". He then remarked that the true taxpayers (because the working poor do not pay taxes, according to him) were overtaxed and needed to have the tax rates under the Reagan administration restored because they represented a fair rate of taxation.
Because I was resigned to remain calm while listening to this rubbish, I addressed both reasons individually:
- Paying for the bills of others: I reminded him that George Bush, with the stamp of approval of congress, had spent nearly a trillion dollars on wars that I felt were unjustified during almost all of his eight years in office. I reminded him that I had not withheld taxes or failed to spend as a consumer (thus resulting in more paid taxes on the state and local levels) during that time - even as my income group's median family income was decreasing during the span of this decade.
I asked him how he, a strong war supporter, would feel if the treasury ran out of tax money because progressives decided to stop paying taxes due to their opposition to President Bush's wars - thus resulting in the removal of our troops from combat and/or less financial support for their operations.
His reply? Silence
- Reaganomics: My brother is not a graduate student, statistician, economist, or anyone else who delves into the world of qualitative and quantitative research on any level. Therefore, I approached this issue with the expectation that he would have some basic (but not extensive) knowledge on the subject of tax rates. He does, after all, listen to Sean Hannity each day (I know, I know...that was a cheap shot...).
My brother was stunned to learn that the upper-income marginal income tax rate increase proposed by President Obama from 35% to 39.6% for income exceeding the first $250,000 is over 10% (10.4%, to be exact) less than the upper-income marginal tax rate Reagan allowed for the bulk of his presidency (50%). In addition, Reagan's 50% rate was applicable to income exceeding anywhere from $85,600 in 1982 to a max income amount of $175,250 in 1986. In other words, a return to Reaganomics would represent a severely higher jump in marginal tax rates for the wealthy than what President Obama is proposing.
His reply? Stunned silence.
Fellow progressives, this is the sort of enlightenment that those of us working in the Hoosier State during the 2008 Presidential Election faced every single day. It was the battle of our lives to not only bring newly-registered voters to the polls for President Obama, but to covert lifelong Republicans to progressives by doing nothing more than acquainting them to indisputable facts. As a result, we turned a blood-red state in 2004 to a Blue one in 2008.
The fight we face now is equally formidable. These "Tea Party" organizers represent the segment of the ignorant Right that bellows the loudest. They get the uninformed all riled up with talk of revolution, fairness and socialism - when it is these exploited souls who are hurt the worst by the economics of the Right. However, as I learned today, a little patience and a stack of facts can go a long way toward converting closed-mindedness to class consciousness. If my brother can have his eyes opened, imagine what we can accomplish collectively if we stay the course and march forward!
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