As if we needed more evidence that Liberals literally fail at basic economics, this anti-Tea Party piece is floating around Facebook as if it actually proves something: So you say you hate taxes? … well here is the solution. Here’s a sample of the 102 items listed (they really put a lot of work into this logical fallacy!):
1. Do not use Medicare.
2. Do not use Social Security
3. Do not become a member of the US military, who are paid with tax dollars.
4. Do not ask the National Guard to help you after a disaster.
5. Do not call 911 when you get hurt.
I imagine that most of you will quickly spot the straw man fallacy: The Tea Party never claimed to want taxes to be zero. Never. They even used the “backronym” of Taxed Enough Already. Therefore, the “but taxes pay for good things” argument is meaningless. It proves nothing. It was just an extended-play, petty vehicle to demonize one’s ideological opponents.
And you’ll probably realize that just because we need taxes for some things — and the Tea Partiers agree that some taxes are necessary — it doesn’t mean:
- That taxes should be raised
- That the current tax proceeds are being used efficiently and effectively
- The tax proceeds are being spent in Constitutionally correct ways
- That increasing tax rates will increase revenues. For example, lowering the corporate tax rates would keep more jobs here, resulting in more personal income and Social Security tax receipts.
Side note: The commenters on the Facebook page included the typical “tea bagger” pejorative. It occurred to me that the anti-Tea Party people must be real homophobes. After all, why would they consider it to be such an effective insult to refer to Tea Partiers by a term describing a gay sex act?
Eternity Matters 
Everyone, including in my local newspaper today in editorials and letters-to-the-editor, blame the Tea Party for the economic problems. The claim is that they are against bringing in more revenue and demanding reductions in spending, and that this is causing more economic problems. Can you imagine running one’s household budget this way?
HELLO!! No more taxes are needed, which is why we can say we are “taxed enough already.” There is more than enough tax dollars to pay for what the Feds are needing to pay for, but the problem is all the unconstitutional expenditures, pork-barrell projects, entitlements, etc, etc, etc. CUT THE FAT and no new taxes will ever be needed. Basic common sense, which doesn’t seem to be common any more.
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To Put It All In Perspective ….
The U.S. Congress sets a federal budget every year in the trillions of dollars. Few people know how much money that is so we created a breakdown of federal spending in simple terms. Let’s put the 2011 federal budget into perspective:
U.S. income: $2,170,000,000,000
Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000 (about 1 percent of the budget)
It helps to think about these numbers in terms that we can relate to. Let’s remove eight zeros from these numbers and pretend this is the household budget for the fictitious Jones family.
Total annual income for the Jones family: $21,700
Amount of money the Jones family spent: $38,200
Amount of new debt added to the credit card: $16,500
Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
Amount cut from the budget: $385
Whew! I’m glad they got that all worked out to our benefit, aren’t you?
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Excellent perspective.
Sent from my iPhone
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1. Do not use Medicare.
I don’t.
2. Do not use Social Security
I don’t.
3. Do not become a member of the US military, who are paid with tax dollars.
I didn’t.
4. Do not ask the National Guard to help you after a disaster.
Never have.
5. Do not call 911 when you get hurt.
Never have.
I’m doing my part. How many more people in America do we need to be responsible for themselves before we can cut these bloated inefficient and Unconstitutional (Except for the Military) government usurpations of personal freedom?
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Do you ever find yourself wondering how in the heck the US got along for all those centuries WITHOUT Medicare and Social Security and all the rest?
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