Lol
thanks for the laugh.
It is a good laugh!!!
Curious about the factual knowledge that these people have regarding the issues they are protesting, my friend David Frum enlisted some interns to interview as many tea partiers 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 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.
Not everyone follows these numbers closely and tea partiers may have been thinking of figures from a few years ago, before the recession when taxes were higher. According to the CBO, the highest figure for all federal taxes since 1970 came in the year 2000, when they reached 20.6% of GDP. As we know, after that George W. Bush and Republicans in Congress cut federal taxes and they fell to 18.5% of GDP in 2007, before the recession hit, and 17.5% in 2008.
Tuesday's tea party crowd, however, thought that federal taxes were almost three times higher than they actually are. The average response was 42% of GDP and the median was 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 partiers 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 and the median was $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 the 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.
Ignorance Is Bliss for the Tea Party Crowd | Capital Gains and Games
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.
It's hard to explain this divergence between perception and reality. Perhaps these people haven't calculated their tax returns for 2009 yet and simply don't know what they owe. Or perhaps they just assume that because a Democrat is president that taxes must have gone up, because that's what Republicans say that Democrats always do. In fact, there hasn't been a federal tax increase of any significance in this country since 1993.
