America Without a Middle Class

[Oddball]

You're right, for once...Human nature hasn't changed.

People would rather go get the freebie from Big Daddy Big Gubmint --the heart and soul of Fabian socialist progressivism-- than provide for themselves.

Oh well, at least AFSCME bureaucrats will always be able to extort their way into the middle class anyways.

WHO gets the freebies from Big Daddy Big Gubmint?

This map shows the states that receive more than a dollar back for every dollar they pay in taxes (which they've coded red), and the states that receive less than a dollar back for every dollar they pay in taxes (which they've coded blue). Just to repeat: Red states are getting a good deal, and blue states a bad one. Here's the map:

There is a very strong correlation, then, between a state voting for Republicans and receiving more in federal spending than its residents pay to the federal government in taxes (the rust belt and Texas being notable exceptions). In essence, those in blue states are subsidizing those in red states.

As has already been pointed out several times, military bases and federal lands count in those statistics for spending to the red states in general and the western states in particular.

You don't think that running the massive missile and gunnery ranges (i.e. White Sands) and administering lands in the states where the feds own upwards of 65%-90% of the lands comes cheaply, do you?

 

[Bfgrn]

You're right, for once...Human nature hasn't changed.

People would rather go get the freebie from Big Daddy Big Gubmint --the heart and soul of Fabian socialist progressivism-- than provide for themselves.

Oh well, at least AFSCME bureaucrats will always be able to extort their way into the middle class anyways.

WHO gets the freebies from Big Daddy Big Gubmint?

This map shows the states that receive more than a dollar back for every dollar they pay in taxes (which they've coded red), and the states that receive less than a dollar back for every dollar they pay in taxes (which they've coded blue). Just to repeat: Red states are getting a good deal, and blue states a bad one. Here's the map:

There is a very strong correlation, then, between a state voting for Republicans and receiving more in federal spending than its residents pay to the federal government in taxes (the rust belt and Texas being notable exceptions). In essence, those in blue states are subsidizing those in red states.

As has already been pointed out several times, military bases and federal lands count in those statistics for spending to the red states in general and the western states in particular.

You don't think that running the massive missile and gunnery ranges (i.e. White Sands) and administering lands in the states where the feds own upwards of 65%-90% of the lands comes cheaply, do you?

In the western states there are federal water projects that subsidize water for farmers, artificially low grazing fees for ranchers, and leases for hard rock mining and oil drilling on federal lands that have historically charged artificially low prices. Perhaps the biggest federal redistribution program of all is massive agricultural subsidies. The four congressional districts that receive the most in farm subsidies are all represented by “conservative” Republicans, located in Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, and Texas. (Michele Bachmann’s family farm apparently received $250,000 in such farm payments between 1995 and 2006.)

Red States, Blue States and the Distribution of Federal Spending

 

[Oddball]

Whatever.

Fact remains that a lot of the spending that dweebs like you claim to be welfare is actually spent on military bases, BLM, USFS, and various and sundry "national monument" lands out in the middle of nowhere.

Fool.

 

[Bfgrn]

Whatever.

Fact remains that a lot of the spending that dweebs like you claim to be welfare is actually spent on military bases, BLM, USFS, and various and sundry "national monument" lands out in the middle of nowhere.

Fool.

I didn't 'claim' the money went to welfare. But the concept of less government certainly doesn't reside in the Republican Party or on the right. The right's concept of a 'nanny state', save the $10,000 per family in public assistance, and spend $40,000 per PERSON in incarceration.

The right wing 'Nanny State'

The 'Conservative' Revolution

 

[rdean]

You're right, for once...Human nature hasn't changed.

People would rather go get the freebie from Big Daddy Big Gubmint --the heart and soul of Fabian socialist progressivism-- than provide for themselves.

Oh well, at least AFSCME bureaucrats will always be able to extort their way into the middle class anyways.

WHO gets the freebies from Big Daddy Big Gubmint?

This map shows the states that receive more than a dollar back for every dollar they pay in taxes (which they've coded red), and the states that receive less than a dollar back for every dollar they pay in taxes (which they've coded blue). Just to repeat: Red states are getting a good deal, and blue states a bad one. Here's the map:

There is a very strong correlation, then, between a state voting for Republicans and receiving more in federal spending than its residents pay to the federal government in taxes (the rust belt and Texas being notable exceptions). In essence, those in blue states are subsidizing those in red states.

Texas is having a lot of problems between Republicans and Democrats because there has been such a huge influx of liberals and Democrats moving to Texas. Also, Texas has a lot of oil.

 

[Dr Grump]

I grew up in the 50's and 60's. It was never 'luxurious standards', but it was a situation where a family could meet expenses without the need to go into debt. Buying a house was the only debt taken on. My family and all my friends families had a father that worked, and a mother that stayed at home. My grandparents never had a credit card, and my parents never had one until my dad was forced to have one in order to book a flight to attend his 11th Airborne reunion.

What defined this nation was the middle class. But along came the pied piper to serfdom...Ronbo Reagan.

Not too sure of the exact figure, but about three years ago, an economic study in NZ showed, that the average house cost about 5 years full salary in 1970. Today it is about 15-20 years of a full slaray to pay for an average house...

 

[Bfgrn]

I grew up in the 50's and 60's. It was never 'luxurious standards', but it was a situation where a family could meet expenses without the need to go into debt. Buying a house was the only debt taken on. My family and all my friends families had a father that worked, and a mother that stayed at home. My grandparents never had a credit card, and my parents never had one until my dad was forced to have one in order to book a flight to attend his 11th Airborne reunion.

What defined this nation was the middle class. But along came the pied piper to serfdom...Ronbo Reagan.

Not too sure of the exaxt figure, but about three years ago, an economic study in NZ showed (again not exact figures), that the average house cost about 5 years full salary in 1970. Today it is about 15-20 years of a full slaray to pay for an average house...

From the OP article that I left out...

Families have survived the ups and downs of economic booms and busts for a long time, but the fall-behind during the busts has gotten worse while the surge-ahead during the booms has stalled out. In the boom of the 1960s, for example, median family income jumped by 33% (adjusted for inflation). But the boom of the 2000s resulted in an almost-imperceptible 1.6% increase for the typical family. While Wall Street executives and others who owned lots of stock celebrated how good the recovery was for them, middle class families were left empty-handed.

The crisis facing the middle class started more than a generation ago. Even as productivity rose, the wages of the average fully-employed male have been flat since the 1970s.

But core expenses kept going up. By the early 2000s, families were spending twice as much (adjusted for inflation) on mortgages than they did a generation ago -- for a house that was, on average, only ten percent bigger and 25 years older. They also had to pay twice as much to hang on to their health insurance.

To cope, millions of families put a second parent into the workforce. But higher housing and medical costs combined with new expenses for child care, the costs of a second car to get to work and higher taxes combined to squeeze families even harder. Even with two incomes, they tightened their belts. Families today spend less than they did a generation ago on food, clothing, furniture, appliances, and other flexible purchases -- but it hasn't been enough to save them. Today's families have spent all their income, have spent all their savings, and have gone into debt to pay for college, to cover serious medical problems, and just to stay afloat a little while longer.

 

[loosecannon]

And it will shift back but only after the federal government goes bust and has to cut back on the empire.

exactly. Monroe doctrine and all of that.

 

[loosecannon]

What has killed the middle class is the instant gratification culture of being ENTITLED to anything and everything they want.. More, more, more, now, now, now, I want, I want, I want.

The idea of working for what you have, has become a thing of the past. The idea of buying it now on credit and paying for it later( somehow) rules the day. The knowledge that the state will catch you if you fall flat has become a insane safety net. The idea of saying " i cant afford it" has become a forgotten phrase.

that pretty close I think..I would add that the shifting of responsibility, in that the entitlement state has reached far more folks , with 43% of the country paying no net taxes, that gives them a reason to vote one way, while the others who pay have a dog in the fight, its their money thats being redistributed for less return, folks below that 43% consume or are provided a much larger portion the pie of the goods and services the gov. provides......

and they work the shit jobs getting dirty, doing actual work, often menial and boring and the pay is, well what does working in a chicken processing factory pay?

Face it, we already have a two tier society.

And please stop pretending that because somebody earns a sub standard wage they pay no taxes. EVERYBODY in the USA pays taxes. Even street beggars.

 

[Bfgrn]

And it will shift back but only after the federal government goes bust and has to cut back on the empire.

exactly. Monroe doctrine and all of that.

If government goes bust, do you think the real problems will evaporate?

The Boston Tea Party was a rebellion against the British East India Company

Our founding fathers created a government, NOT a corporation.

There is NO possibility of this nation recovering, when a large percentage of the population are clueless pea brains that shouldn't be allowed to cross the street alone.

 

[loosecannon]

And it will shift back but only after the federal government goes bust and has to cut back on the empire.

exactly. Monroe doctrine and all of that.

If government goes bust, do you think the real problems will evaporate?

The Boston Tea Party was a rebellion against the British East India Company

Our founding fathers created a government, NOT a corporation.

There is NO possibility of this nation recovering, when a large percentage of the population are clueless pea brains that shouldn't be allowed to cross the street alone.

cool, but in reality it is quite likely that our founding fathers did indeed found a corporation.

Google

And the tea party was a rebellion against a tea tax, not a tea corp.

Boston Tea Party - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Bfgrn]

exactly. Monroe doctrine and all of that.

If government goes bust, do you think the real problems will evaporate?

The Boston Tea Party was a rebellion against the British East India Company

Our founding fathers created a government, NOT a corporation.

There is NO possibility of this nation recovering, when a large percentage of the population are clueless pea brains that shouldn't be allowed to cross the street alone.

cool, but in reality it is quite likely that our founding fathers did indeed found a corporation.

Google

And the tea party was a rebellion against a tea tax, not a tea corp.

Boston Tea Party - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The real Boston Tea Party was a protest against huge corporate tax cuts for the British East India Company, the largest trans-national corporation then in existence. This corporate tax cut threatened to decimate small Colonial businesses by helping the BEIC pull a Wal-Mart against small entrepreneurial tea shops, and individuals began a revolt that kicked-off a series of events that ended in the creation of The United States of America.

They covered their faces, massed in the streets, and destroyed the property of a giant global corporation. Declaring an end to global trade run by the East India Company that was destroying local economies, this small, masked minority started a revolution with an act of rebellion later called the Boston Tea Party.

On a cold November day in 1773, activists gathered in a coastal town. The corporation had gone too far, and the two thousand people who'd jammed into the meeting hall were torn as to what to do about it. Unemployment was exploding and the economic crisis was deepening; corporate crime, governmental corruption spawned by corporate cash, and an ethos of greed were blamed. "Why do we wait?" demanded one at the meeting, a fisherman named George Hewes. "The more we delay, the more strength is acquired" by the company and its puppets in the government. "Now is the time to prove our courage," he said. Soon, the moment came when the crowd decided for direct action and rushed into the streets.

That is how I tell the story of the Boston Tea Party, now that I have read a first-person account of it. While striving to understand my nation's struggles against corporations, in a rare book store I came upon a first edition of "Retrospect of the Boston Tea Party with a Memoir of George R.T. Hewes, a Survivor of the Little Band of Patriots Who Drowned the Tea in Boston Harbor in 1773," and I jumped at the chance to buy it. Because the identities of the Boston Tea Party participants were hidden (other than Samuel Adams) and all were sworn to secrecy for the next 50 years, this account is the only first-person account of the event by a participant that exists. As I read, I began to understand the true causes of the American Revolution.

I learned that the Boston Tea Party resembled in many ways the growing modern-day protests against transnational corporations and small-town efforts to protect themselves from chain-store retailers or factory farms. The Tea Party's participants thought of themselves as protesters against the actions of the multinational East India Company.

Although schoolchildren are usually taught that the American Revolution was a rebellion against "taxation without representation," akin to modern day conservative taxpayer revolts, in fact what led to the revolution was rage against a transnational corporation that, by the 1760s, dominated trade from China to India to the Caribbean, and controlled nearly all commerce to and from North America, with subsidies and special dispensation from the British crown.

Hewes notes: "The [East India] Company received permission to transport tea, free of all duty, from Great Britain to America..." allowing it to wipe out New England-based tea wholesalers and mom-and-pop stores and take over the tea business in all of America. "Hence," wrote, "it was no longer the small vessels of private merchants, who went to vend tea for their own account in the ports of the colonies, but, on the contrary, ships of an enormous burthen, that transported immense quantities of this commodity ... The colonies were now arrived at the decisive moment when they must cast the dye, and determine their course ... "

A pamphlet was circulated through the colonies called The Alarm and signed by an enigmatic "Rusticus." One issue made clear the feelings of colonial Americans about England's largest transnational corporation and its behavior around the world: "Their Conduct in Asia, for some Years past, has given simple Proof, how little they regard the Laws of Nations, the Rights, Liberties, or Lives of Men. They have levied War, excited Rebellions, dethroned lawful Princes, and sacrificed Millions for the Sake of Gain. The Revenues of Mighty Kingdoms have entered their Coffers. And these not being sufficient to glut their Avarice, they have, by the most unparalleled Barbarities, Extortions, and Monopolies, stripped the miserable Inhabitants of their Property, and reduced whole Provinces to Indigence and Ruin. Fifteen hundred Thousands, it is said, perished by Famine in one Year, not because the Earth denied its Fruits; but [because] this Company and their Servants engulfed all the Necessaries of Life, and set them at so high a Price that the poor could not purchase them."

After protesters had turned back the Company's ships in Philadelphia and New York, Hewes writes, "In Boston the general voice declared the time was come to face the storm."

The citizens of the colonies were preparing to throw off one of the corporations that for almost 200 years had determined nearly every aspect of their lives through its economic and political power. They were planning to destroy the goods of the world's largest multinational corporation, intimidate its employees, and face down the guns of the government that supported it.

The queen's corporation

The East India Company's influence had always been pervasive in the colonies. Indeed, it was not the Puritans but the East India Company that founded America. The Puritans traveled to America on ships owned by the East India Company, which had already established the first colony in North America, at Jamestown, in the Company-owned Commonwealth of Virginia, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi. The commonwealth was named after the "Virgin Queen," Elizabeth, who had chartered the corporation.

Elizabeth was trying to make England a player in the new global trade sparked by the European "discovery" of the Americas. The wealth Spain began extracting from the New World caught the attention of the European powers. In many European countries, particularly Holland and France, consortiums were put together to finance ships to sail the seas. In 1580, Queen Elizabeth became the largest shareholder in The Golden Hind, a ship owned by Sir Francis Drake.

The investment worked out well for Queen Elizabeth. There's no record of exactly how much she made when Drake paid her share of the Hind's dividends to her, but it was undoubtedly vast, since Drake himself and the other minor shareholders all received a 5000 percent return on their investment. Plus, because the queen placed a maximum loss to the initial investors of their investment amount only, it was a low-risk investment (for the investors at least--creditors, such as suppliers of provisions for the voyages or wood for the ships, or employees, for example, would be left unpaid if the venture failed, just as in a modern-day corporation). She was endorsing an investment model that led to the modern limited-liability corporation.

After making a fortune on Drake's expeditions, Elizabeth started looking for a more permanent arrangement. She authorized a group of 218 London merchants and noblemen to form a corporation. The East India Company was born on December 31, 1600.

By the 1760s, the East India Company's power had grown massive and worldwide. However, this rapid expansion, trying to keep ahead of the Dutch trading companies, was a mixed blessing, as the company went deep in debt to support its growth, and by 1770 found itself nearly bankrupt.

The company turned to a strategy that multinational corporations follow to this day: They lobbied for laws that would make it easy for them to put their small-business competitors out of business.

Most of the members of the British government and royalty (including the king) were stockholders in the East India Company, so it was easy to get laws passed in its interests. Among the Company's biggest and most vexing problems were American colonial entrepreneurs, who ran their own small ships to bring tea and other goods directly into America without routing them through Britain or through the Company. Between 1681 and 1773, a series of laws were passed granting the Company monopoly on tea sold in the American colonies and exempting it from tea taxes. Thus, the Company was able to lower its tea prices to undercut the prices of the local importers and the small tea houses in every town in America. But the colonists were unappreciative of their colonies being used as a profit center for the multinational corporation.

Boston's million-dollar tea party

And so, Hewes says, on a cold November evening of 1773, the first of the East India Company's ships of tax-free tea arrived. The next morning, a pamphlet was widely circulated calling on patriots to meet at Faneuil Hall to discuss resistance to the East India Company and its tea. "Things thus appeared to be hastening to a disastrous issue. The people of the country arrived in great numbers, the inhabitants of the town assembled. This assembly, on the 16th of December 1773, was the most numerous ever known, there being more than 2000 from the country present," said Hewes.

The group called for a vote on whether to oppose the landing of the tea. The vote was unanimously affirmative, and it is related by one historian of that scene "that a person disguised after the manner of the Indians, who was in the gallery, shouted at this juncture, the cry of war; and that the meeting dissolved in the twinkling of an eye, and the multitude rushed in a mass to Griffin's wharf."

That night, Hewes dressed as an Indian, blackening his face with coal dust, and joined crowds of other men in hacking apart the chests of tea and throwing them into the harbor. In all, the 342 chests of tea--over 90,000 pounds--thrown overboard that night were enough to make 24 million cups of tea and were valued by the East India Company at 9,659 Pounds Sterling or, in today's currency, just over $1 million.

In response, the British Parliament immediately passed the Boston Port Act stating that the port of Boston would be closed until the citizens of Boston reimbursed the East India Company for the tea they had destroyed. The colonists refused. A year and a half later, the colonists would again state their defiance of the East India Company and Great Britain by taking on British troops in an armed conflict at Lexington and Concord (the "shots heard 'round the world") on April 19, 1775.

That war--finally triggered by a transnational corporation and its government patrons trying to deny American colonists a fair and competitive local marketplace--would end with independence for the colonies.

The revolutionaries had put the East India Company in its place with the Boston Tea Party, and that, they thought, was the end of that. Unfortunately, the Boston Tea Party was not the end; within 150 years, during the so-called Gilded Age, powerful rail, steel, and oil interests would rise up to begin a new form of oligarchy, capturing the newly-formed Republican Party in the 1880s, and have been working to establish a permanent wealthy and ruling class in this country ever since.

Thom Hartmann: The Real Boston Tea Party was Against the Wal-Mart of the 1770s

 

[loosecannon]

Hartman is revising history based on the account of exactly ONE person.

Boston Tea Party - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Tea trade to 1767

As Europeans developed a taste for tea in the 17th century, rival companies were formed to import the product from the East Indies.[2] In England, Parliament gave the East India Company a monopoly on the importation of tea in 1698.[3] When tea became popular in the British colonies, Parliament sought to eliminate foreign competition by passing an act in 1721 that required colonists to import their tea only from Great Britain.[4] The East India Company did not export tea to the colonies; by law, the company was required to sell its tea wholesale at auctions in England. British firms bought this tea and exported it to the colonies, where they resold it to merchants in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston.[5]

Until 1767, the East India Company paid an ad valorem tax of about 25% on tea that it imported into Great Britain.[6] Parliament laid additional taxes on tea sold for consumption in Britain. These high taxes, combined with the fact that tea imported into Holland was not taxed by the Dutch government, meant that Britons and British Americans could buy smuggled Dutch tea at much cheaper prices.[7] The biggest market for illicit tea was England—by the 1760s the East India Company was losing £400,000 per year to smugglers in Great Britain[8]—but Dutch tea was also smuggled into British America in significant quantities.[9]

In 1767, to help the East India Company compete with smuggled Dutch tea, Parliament passed the Indemnity Act, which lowered the tax on tea consumed in Great Britain, and gave the East India Company a refund of the 25% duty on tea that was re-exported to the colonies.[10] To help offset this loss of government revenue, Parliament also passed the Townshend Revenue Act of 1767, which levied new taxes, including one on tea, in the colonies.[11] Instead of solving the smuggling problem, however, the Townshend duties renewed a controversy about Parliament's right to tax the colonies.
Townshend duty crisis
For more details on this topic, see Townshend Acts.

Controversy between Great Britain and the colonies arose in the 1760s when Parliament sought, for the first time, to directly tax the colonies for the purpose of raising revenue. Some colonists, known in the colonies as Whigs, objected to the new tax program, arguing that it was a violation of the British Constitution. Britons and British Americans agreed that, according to the constitution, British subjects could not be taxed without the consent of their elected representatives. In Great Britain, this meant that taxes could only be levied by Parliament. Colonists, however, did not elect members of Parliament, and so American Whigs argued that the colonies could not be taxed by that body. According to Whigs, colonists could only be taxed by their own colonial assemblies. Colonial protests resulted in the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1765, but in the 1766 Declaratory Act, Parliament continued to insist that it had the right to legislate for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever".

When new taxes were levied in the Townshend Revenue Act of 1767, Whig colonists again responded with protests and boycotts. Merchants organized a non-importation agreement, and many colonists pledged to abstain from drinking British tea, with activists in New England promoting alternatives, such as domestic Labrador tea.[12] Smuggling continued apace, especially in New York and Philadelphia, where tea smuggling had always been more extensive than in Boston. Dutied British tea continued to be imported into Boston, however, especially by Richard Clarke and the sons of Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson, until pressure from Massachusetts Whigs compelled them to abide by the non-importation agreement.[13]

Parliament finally responded to the protests by repealing the Townshend taxes in 1770, except for the tea duty, which Prime Minister Lord North kept to assert "the right of taxing the Americans".[14] This partial repeal of the taxes was enough to bring an end to the non-importation movement by October 1770.[15] From 1771 to 1773, British tea was once again imported into the colonies in significant amounts, with merchants paying the Townshend duty of three pence per pound.[16] Boston was the largest colonial importer of legal tea; smugglers still dominated the market in New York and Philadelphia.[17]
Tea Act 1773
Main article: Tea Act

The Indemnity Act of 1767, which gave the East India Company a refund of the 25% duty on tea that was re-exported to the colonies, expired in 1772. Parliament passed a new act in 1772 that reduced this refund to three-fifths of the 25% duty, which effectively left a 10% duty on tea imported into Britain.[18] The act also restored the tea taxes within Britain that had been repealed in 1767, and left in place the three pence Townshend duty in the colonies. With this new tax burden driving up the price of British tea, sales plummeted. The company continued to import tea into Great Britain, however, amassing a huge surplus of product that no one would buy.[19] For these and other reasons, by late 1772 the East India Company, one of Britain's most important commercial institutions, was in a serious financial crisis.[20]

Eliminating some of the taxes was one obvious solution to the crisis. The East India Company initially sought to have the Townshend duty repealed, but the North ministry was unwilling because such an action might be interpreted as a retreat from Parliament's position that it had the right to tax the colonies.[21] More importantly, the tax collected from the Townshend duty was used to pay the salaries of some colonial governors and judges.[22] This was in fact the purpose of the Townshend tax: previously these officials had been paid by the colonial assemblies, but Parliament now paid their salaries to keep them dependent on the British government rather than allowing them to be accountable to the colonists.[23]

Another possible solution for reducing the growing mound of tea in the East India Company warehouses was to sell it cheaply in Europe. This possibility was investigated, but it was determined that the tea would simply be smuggled back into Great Britain, where it would undersell the taxed product.[24] The best market for the East India Company's surplus tea, so it seemed, was the American colonies, if a way could be found to make it cheaper than the smuggled Dutch tea.[25]

The North ministry's solution was the Tea Act, which received the assent of King George on May 10, 1773.[26] This act restored the East India Company's full refund on the 25% duty for importing tea into Britain, and also permitted the company, for the first time, to export tea to the colonies on its own account. This would allow the company to reduce costs by eliminating the middlemen who bought the tea at wholesale auctions in London.[27] Instead of selling to middlemen, the company now appointed colonial merchants to receive the tea on consignment; the consignees would in turn sell the tea for a commission. In July 1773, tea consignees were selected in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston.[28]

The Tea Act retained the three pence Townshend duty on tea imported to the colonies. Some members of Parliament wanted to eliminate this tax, arguing that there was no reason to provoke another colonial controversy. Former Chancellor of the Exchequer William Dowdeswell, for example, warned Lord North that the Americans would not accept the tea if the Townshend duty remained.[29] But North did not want to give up the revenue from the Townshend tax, primarily because it was used to pay the salaries of colonial officials; maintaining the right of taxing the Americans was a secondary concern.[30] According to historian Benjamin Labaree, "A stubborn Lord North had unwittingly hammered a nail in the coffin of the old British Empire."[31]

Even with the Townshend duty in effect, the Tea Act would allow the East India Company to sell tea more cheaply than before, undercutting the prices offered by smugglers. In 1772, legally imported Bohea, the most common variety of tea, sold for about 3 shillings (3s) per pound.[32] After the Tea Act, colonial consignees would be able to sell it for 2 shillings per pound (2s), just under the smugglers' price of 2 shillings and 1 penny (2s 1d).[33] Realizing that the payment of the Townshend duty was politically sensitive, the company hoped to conceal the tax by making arrangements to have it paid either in London once the tea was landed in the colonies, or have the consignees quietly pay the duties after the tea was sold. This effort to hide the tax from the colonists was unsuccessful.[34]

The colonists were not revolting against a corporation with monopolistic domain, but against a tax levied against a popular product by an empire asserting it's right to levy taxes on subordinate colonies.

If anything the controversy was between that of taxed British tea and untaxed Dutch tea, smuggled into the colonies illegally.

Hartman be damned.

 

[william the wie]

There was also the problem of the Hudson Bay Company fighting a shooting war with French Canada and later America from the 1670s until the 1840s in order to enrich the royal family. The French and Indian wars was simply spill over to south of the border. Taxes to pay for this reckless endangerment of American lives added insult to injury.

 

[Bern80]

What has killed the middle class is the instant gratification culture of being ENTITLED to anything and everything they want.. More, more, more, now, now, now, I want, I want, I want.

The idea of working for what you have, has become a thing of the past. The idea of buying it now on credit and paying for it later( somehow) rules the day. The knowledge that the state will catch you if you fall flat has become a insane safety net. The idea of saying " i cant afford it" has become a forgotten phrase.

Total bullshit. Human nature DIDN'T change in the last 30 years. Moving away from the success of progressivism and toward the failure of conservatism DID.

Oh yes it did. If you can't see that you are a fucking idiot. Syrenn is spot on. We are an instant gratification society. The proof of that is dumbasses like you who blame everything and everyone for the problems you have EXCEPT yourself. It's NEVER your fault is it? It's never your fault you wracked up a credit card debt. Learn this and learn it well. You can not change what you don't acknowledge and if people don't start taking a hard objective look in the mirror and figure out how they contributed to the problem, nothing will get better. And you can not tell me that all of the various individuals who complain like you do are blameless. Why is the middle class disappearing. Here's a crazy thought. Maybe people aren't willing to do what it takes to be middle class anymore.

And your asanine notion that everyone has to go into debt to have a modicum of a decent standard of living is simply that. It's that things that were once considered luxuries or didint even exist yet are now taken for granted to be necessities. News flash mommy. Your 10 year old doesn't need a fucking cell phone. When you grew up in the 'glory days' Every member of your family didn't have a cell phone bill, or internet bills, or cable bills/satellite bills. HELLO! Obvioulsy adding those things into what we appalling consider a basic standard of living is obviously going to make said standard of living cost more. Which means it's going to cost more for people to be middle class than it did in your 'glory days'.

 

[loosecannon]

There was also the problem of the Hudson Bay Company fighting a shooting war with French Canada and later America from the 1670s until the 1840s in order to enrich the royal family. The French and Indian wars was simply spill over to south of the border. Taxes to pay for this reckless endangerment of American lives added insult to injury.

hence the phrase "taxation without representation".

 

[william the wie]

There was also the problem of the Hudson Bay Company fighting a shooting war with French Canada and later America from the 1670s until the 1840s in order to enrich the royal family. The French and Indian wars was simply spill over to south of the border. Taxes to pay for this reckless endangerment of American lives added insult to injury.

hence the phrase "taxation without representation".

OOps! That bit was intended as reinforcement of your argument. The Stewart/Hanover dynasty wanted to finance the British empire out of their portfolio, as in New York was intended to be the personal estate of the King's eldest brother. The Whigs wanted the empire financed out of public taxes that parliament controlled. Setting off the American Revolution was from a British viewpoint an unfortunate sideeffect of not being able to reapportion parliament until the finance issue was settled.

 

[Bfgrn]

Hartman is revising history based on the account of exactly ONE person.

Boston Tea Party - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Tea trade to 1767

As Europeans developed a taste for tea in the 17th century, rival companies were formed to import the product from the East Indies.[2] In England, Parliament gave the East India Company a monopoly on the importation of tea in 1698.[3] When tea became popular in the British colonies, Parliament sought to eliminate foreign competition by passing an act in 1721 that required colonists to import their tea only from Great Britain.[4] The East India Company did not export tea to the colonies; by law, the company was required to sell its tea wholesale at auctions in England. British firms bought this tea and exported it to the colonies, where they resold it to merchants in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston.[5]

Until 1767, the East India Company paid an ad valorem tax of about 25% on tea that it imported into Great Britain.[6] Parliament laid additional taxes on tea sold for consumption in Britain. These high taxes, combined with the fact that tea imported into Holland was not taxed by the Dutch government, meant that Britons and British Americans could buy smuggled Dutch tea at much cheaper prices.[7] The biggest market for illicit tea was England—by the 1760s the East India Company was losing £400,000 per year to smugglers in Great Britain[8]—but Dutch tea was also smuggled into British America in significant quantities.[9]

In 1767, to help the East India Company compete with smuggled Dutch tea, Parliament passed the Indemnity Act, which lowered the tax on tea consumed in Great Britain, and gave the East India Company a refund of the 25% duty on tea that was re-exported to the colonies.[10] To help offset this loss of government revenue, Parliament also passed the Townshend Revenue Act of 1767, which levied new taxes, including one on tea, in the colonies.[11] Instead of solving the smuggling problem, however, the Townshend duties renewed a controversy about Parliament's right to tax the colonies.
Townshend duty crisis
For more details on this topic, see Townshend Acts.

Controversy between Great Britain and the colonies arose in the 1760s when Parliament sought, for the first time, to directly tax the colonies for the purpose of raising revenue. Some colonists, known in the colonies as Whigs, objected to the new tax program, arguing that it was a violation of the British Constitution. Britons and British Americans agreed that, according to the constitution, British subjects could not be taxed without the consent of their elected representatives. In Great Britain, this meant that taxes could only be levied by Parliament. Colonists, however, did not elect members of Parliament, and so American Whigs argued that the colonies could not be taxed by that body. According to Whigs, colonists could only be taxed by their own colonial assemblies. Colonial protests resulted in the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1765, but in the 1766 Declaratory Act, Parliament continued to insist that it had the right to legislate for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever".

When new taxes were levied in the Townshend Revenue Act of 1767, Whig colonists again responded with protests and boycotts. Merchants organized a non-importation agreement, and many colonists pledged to abstain from drinking British tea, with activists in New England promoting alternatives, such as domestic Labrador tea.[12] Smuggling continued apace, especially in New York and Philadelphia, where tea smuggling had always been more extensive than in Boston. Dutied British tea continued to be imported into Boston, however, especially by Richard Clarke and the sons of Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson, until pressure from Massachusetts Whigs compelled them to abide by the non-importation agreement.[13]

Parliament finally responded to the protests by repealing the Townshend taxes in 1770, except for the tea duty, which Prime Minister Lord North kept to assert "the right of taxing the Americans".[14] This partial repeal of the taxes was enough to bring an end to the non-importation movement by October 1770.[15] From 1771 to 1773, British tea was once again imported into the colonies in significant amounts, with merchants paying the Townshend duty of three pence per pound.[16] Boston was the largest colonial importer of legal tea; smugglers still dominated the market in New York and Philadelphia.[17]
Tea Act 1773
Main article: Tea Act

The Indemnity Act of 1767, which gave the East India Company a refund of the 25% duty on tea that was re-exported to the colonies, expired in 1772. Parliament passed a new act in 1772 that reduced this refund to three-fifths of the 25% duty, which effectively left a 10% duty on tea imported into Britain.[18] The act also restored the tea taxes within Britain that had been repealed in 1767, and left in place the three pence Townshend duty in the colonies. With this new tax burden driving up the price of British tea, sales plummeted. The company continued to import tea into Great Britain, however, amassing a huge surplus of product that no one would buy.[19] For these and other reasons, by late 1772 the East India Company, one of Britain's most important commercial institutions, was in a serious financial crisis.[20]

Eliminating some of the taxes was one obvious solution to the crisis. The East India Company initially sought to have the Townshend duty repealed, but the North ministry was unwilling because such an action might be interpreted as a retreat from Parliament's position that it had the right to tax the colonies.[21] More importantly, the tax collected from the Townshend duty was used to pay the salaries of some colonial governors and judges.[22] This was in fact the purpose of the Townshend tax: previously these officials had been paid by the colonial assemblies, but Parliament now paid their salaries to keep them dependent on the British government rather than allowing them to be accountable to the colonists.[23]

Another possible solution for reducing the growing mound of tea in the East India Company warehouses was to sell it cheaply in Europe. This possibility was investigated, but it was determined that the tea would simply be smuggled back into Great Britain, where it would undersell the taxed product.[24] The best market for the East India Company's surplus tea, so it seemed, was the American colonies, if a way could be found to make it cheaper than the smuggled Dutch tea.[25]

The North ministry's solution was the Tea Act, which received the assent of King George on May 10, 1773.[26] This act restored the East India Company's full refund on the 25% duty for importing tea into Britain, and also permitted the company, for the first time, to export tea to the colonies on its own account. This would allow the company to reduce costs by eliminating the middlemen who bought the tea at wholesale auctions in London.[27] Instead of selling to middlemen, the company now appointed colonial merchants to receive the tea on consignment; the consignees would in turn sell the tea for a commission. In July 1773, tea consignees were selected in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston.[28]

The Tea Act retained the three pence Townshend duty on tea imported to the colonies. Some members of Parliament wanted to eliminate this tax, arguing that there was no reason to provoke another colonial controversy. Former Chancellor of the Exchequer William Dowdeswell, for example, warned Lord North that the Americans would not accept the tea if the Townshend duty remained.[29] But North did not want to give up the revenue from the Townshend tax, primarily because it was used to pay the salaries of colonial officials; maintaining the right of taxing the Americans was a secondary concern.[30] According to historian Benjamin Labaree, "A stubborn Lord North had unwittingly hammered a nail in the coffin of the old British Empire."[31]

Even with the Townshend duty in effect, the Tea Act would allow the East India Company to sell tea more cheaply than before, undercutting the prices offered by smugglers. In 1772, legally imported Bohea, the most common variety of tea, sold for about 3 shillings (3s) per pound.[32] After the Tea Act, colonial consignees would be able to sell it for 2 shillings per pound (2s), just under the smugglers' price of 2 shillings and 1 penny (2s 1d).[33] Realizing that the payment of the Townshend duty was politically sensitive, the company hoped to conceal the tax by making arrangements to have it paid either in London once the tea was landed in the colonies, or have the consignees quietly pay the duties after the tea was sold. This effort to hide the tax from the colonists was unsuccessful.[34]

The colonists were not revolting against a corporation with monopolistic domain, but against a tax levied against a popular product by an empire asserting it's right to levy taxes on subordinate colonies.

If anything the controversy was between that of taxed British tea and untaxed Dutch tea, smuggled into the colonies illegally.

Hartman be damned.

There is no revisionism going on with Hartmann's article. He is using the accounts of a person who was THERE!... George Robert Twelves Hewes

You cite Wikipedia, do you even know who authored and edited that information? Did you even take the time to read any farther in Wikipedia?

From: Boston Tea Party - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Resisting the Tea Act

The protest movement that culminated with the Boston Tea Party was not a dispute about high taxes. The price of legally imported tea was actually reduced by the Tea Act of 1773. Protestors were instead concerned with a variety of other issues. The familiar "no taxation without representation" argument, along with the question of the extent of Parliament's authority in the colonies, remained prominent.[39] Some regarded the purpose of the tax program—to make leading officials independent of colonial influence—as a dangerous infringement of colonial rights.[40] This was especially true in Massachusetts, the only colony where the Townshend program had been fully implemented.[41]

Colonial merchants, some of them smugglers, played a significant role in the protests. Because the Tea Act made legally imported tea cheaper, it threatened to put smugglers of Dutch tea out of business.[42] Legitimate tea importers who had not been named as consignees by the East India Company were also threatened with financial ruin by the Tea Act.[43] Another major concern for merchants was that the Tea Act gave the East India Company a monopoly on the tea trade, and it was feared that this government-created monopoly might be extended in the future to include other goods.[44]

Legacy

According to historian Alfred Young, the term "Boston Tea Party" did not appear in print until 1834.[64] Before that time, the event was usually referred to as the "destruction of the tea". According to Young, American writers were for many years apparently reluctant to celebrate the destruction of property, and so the event was usually ignored in histories of the American Revolution. This began to change in the 1830s, however, especially with the publication of biographies of George Robert Twelves Hewes, one of the few still-living participants of the "tea party", as it then became known.[65]

 

[loosecannon]

The Boston Tea Party was a rebellion against the British East India Company

There is no revisionism going on with Hartmann's article.
From: Boston Tea Party - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Resisting the Tea Act

The protest movement that culminated with the Boston Tea Party was not a dispute about high taxes. The price of legally imported tea was actually reduced by the Tea Act of 1773. Protestors were instead concerned with a variety of other issues. The familiar "no taxation without representation" argument, along with the question of the extent of Parliament's authority in the colonies, remained prominent.[39] Some regarded the purpose of the tax program—to make leading officials independent of colonial influence—as a dangerous infringement of colonial rights.[40] This was especially true in Massachusetts, the only colony where the Townshend program had been fully implemented.[41]

Colonial merchants, some of them smugglers, played a significant role in the protests. Because the Tea Act made legally imported tea cheaper, it threatened to put smugglers of Dutch tea out of business.[42] Legitimate tea importers who had not been named as consignees by the East India Company were also threatened with financial ruin by the Tea Act.[43] Another major concern for merchants was that the Tea Act gave the East India Company a monopoly on the tea trade, and it was feared that this government-created monopoly might be extended in the future to include other goods.[44]

It wasn't a protest over high taxes, but taxes generally, your own quoted material says so.

Which invalidates your claim that the tea party was a protest over a corporation. It was a protest against taxation imposed by the state legally sanctioning monopolists to act as their agents in collecting taxes from the colonies who were already disturbed by the way they were being taxed to support Britain's wars of conquest.

 

[Bfgrn]

The Boston Tea Party was a rebellion against the British East India Company

There is no revisionism going on with Hartmann's article.
From: Boston Tea Party - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Resisting the Tea Act

The protest movement that culminated with the Boston Tea Party was not a dispute about high taxes. The price of legally imported tea was actually reduced by the Tea Act of 1773. Protestors were instead concerned with a variety of other issues. The familiar "no taxation without representation" argument, along with the question of the extent of Parliament's authority in the colonies, remained prominent.[39] Some regarded the purpose of the tax program—to make leading officials independent of colonial influence—as a dangerous infringement of colonial rights.[40] This was especially true in Massachusetts, the only colony where the Townshend program had been fully implemented.[41]

Colonial merchants, some of them smugglers, played a significant role in the protests. Because the Tea Act made legally imported tea cheaper, it threatened to put smugglers of Dutch tea out of business.[42] Legitimate tea importers who had not been named as consignees by the East India Company were also threatened with financial ruin by the Tea Act.[43] Another major concern for merchants was that the Tea Act gave the East India Company a monopoly on the tea trade, and it was feared that this government-created monopoly might be extended in the future to include other goods.[44]

It wasn't a protest over high taxes, but taxes generally, your own quoted material says so.

Which invalidates your claim that the tea party was a protest over a corporation.

Bullshit...

From the Hartmann article:

A pamphlet was circulated through the colonies called The Alarm and signed by an enigmatic "Rusticus." One issue made clear the feelings of colonial Americans about England's largest transnational corporation and its behavior around the world: "Their Conduct in Asia, for some Years past, has given simple Proof, how little they regard the Laws of Nations, the Rights, Liberties, or Lives of Men. They have levied War, excited Rebellions, dethroned lawful Princes, and sacrificed Millions for the Sake of Gain. The Revenues of Mighty Kingdoms have entered their Coffers. And these not being sufficient to glut their Avarice, they have, by the most unparalleled Barbarities, Extortions, and Monopolies, stripped the miserable Inhabitants of their Property, and reduced whole Provinces to Indigence and Ruin. Fifteen hundred Thousands, it is said, perished by Famine in one Year, not because the Earth denied its Fruits; but [because] this Company and their Servants engulfed all the Necessaries of Life, and set them at so high a Price that the poor could not purchase them."


-----------------------------------------------------

Let's see how our founding fathers treated corporations...

A word that appears nowhere in the Constitution is "corporation," for the writers had no interest in using for-profit corporations to run their new government. In colonial times, corporations were tools of the king's oppression, chartered for the purpose of exploiting the so-called "New World" and shoveling wealth back into Europe. The rich formed joint-stock corporations to distribute the enormous risk of colonizing the Americas and gave them names like the Hudson Bay Company, the British East India Company, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Because they were so far from their sovereign - the king - the agents for these corporations had a lot of autonomy to do their work; they could pass laws, levy taxes, and even raise armies to manage and control property and commerce. They were not popular with the colonists.

So the Constitution's authors left control of corporations to state legislatures (10th Amendment), where they would get the closest supervision by the people.

Early corporate charters were explicit about what a corporation could do, how, for how long, with whom, where, and when.

1) Corporations could not own stock in other corporations,
2) They were prohibited from any part of the political process.
3) Individual stockholders were held personally liable for any harms done in the name of the corporation
4) Most charters only lasted for 10 or 15 years.
5) Corporations had to represent a clear benefit for the public good

And when corporations violated any of these terms, their charters were frequently revoked by the state legislatures.
Abolish Corporate Personhood


The first thing to understand is the difference between the natural person and the fictitious person called a corporation. They differ in the purpose for which they are created, in the strength which they possess, and in the restraints under which they act. Man is the handiwork of God and was placed upon earth to carry out a Divine purpose; the corporation is the handiwork of man and created to carry out a money-making policy. There is comparatively little difference in the strength of men; a corporation may be one hundred, one thousand, or even one million times stronger than the average man. Man acts under the restraints of conscience, and is influenced also by a belief in a future life. A corporation has no soul and cares nothing about the hereafter.
—William Jennings Bryan, 1912 Ohio Constitutional Convention

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan