Sunday, August 1, 2010

Taxes

A registered Independent, mainly because I don't pay enough attention to affiliate directly with one party or another, I recently asked my dad about why the Tea Party followers love Reagan. I found it interesting that at a recent Tea Party rally my parents attended in Michigan they bought t-shirts that featured a Reagan quote, which I now can't remember. While I know that there wasn't a 'Tea Party' during the time prior to the Revolutionary War, I figure a quote by Benjamin Franklin or Samual Adams would be more befitting of a Tea Party t-shirt quote. While my father and I talking politics really pisses my mom off, I just had to ask why the Tea Party supporters love Reagan so much.
It all comes down to money, as always. Reagan cut taxes and therefore more money was spent thus spurring the economy. Now I was a teenager during the Reagan era and I don't remember any of this except, of course, when John Hinckley tried to impress Jodie Foster with his marksmanship skills.
With all of this money being spent the economy improved while the country slowly became drunk on having more, more and more. I readily admit I'm a super-naive and politically uninformed gal, so this is merely an observational query; while all of the Reagan tax cuts helped spur the economy did they also lead to the extravagance of the nineties and the aughts? Extravagance in material things and excess in lifestyles?
I can't tell you if tax cuts are the way out of our current situation and I have no idea if Reagan had it all figured out. The thing I wonder all the time is how much do we all need. How big of a house, how new of a car, how many pairs of shoes or cute little black tops or that new $1500 couch? Tax cuts or not, stimulus package or not, I think one thing the Great Recession is teaching us is that less just might indeed be more.

1 comment:

  1. I love to read what you write. I remember the Reagan era. Moreover, Hinckley is the biggest thing I recall. That's almost to be expected given we were teenagers!

    What we truly need and what we want are worlds apart from one another. Is it tax cuts or marketing? The recession is having some positive impacts. For one, more families are sitting down to have a meal and talking once again.

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