What is the Anti-Tax Psychology Anyways?
by Alex Thurston

Reading Sirota’s The Uprising during the summer, combined with conversations I’ve been having with friends lately, plus seeing all the anti-tax rhetoric from both candidates in this election, has got me thinking about the psychology of the anti-tax movement. It’s important to understand this psychology, because eventually someone will have to push back against it. We cannot, after all, lower taxes forever. Even the hardest of hardcore Ron Paulites are not anarchists - and the funny thing is, I imagine most “conservative,” “anti-tax” Americans would fear and mistrust anarchists.

So are we left then with a sizeable group of people who don’t actually want to live without a government, but who do want to starve that government of all resources? And how do we explain that type of thinking?

The harsh view would be that American individualism and selfishness have gone so far that people look at things only through the lens of themselves.

I think that’s too simple, though. I think that if people indulge in that selfishness, it’s because we’ve come to believe that government doesn’t work, and therefore any money we give to it is wasted. That’s partly a view that came about because of Reaganism and the demonization of Johnson’s Great Society, but it’s also partly because it’s true: government wastes billions every year, and many of us feel no positive effects of government in our lives beyond basic social contract stuff like roads, schools, etc. Throw in anger toward the drug war and you get a lot of Americans saying yes, starve the government.

But if government doesn’t seem to be working for Americans now, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t. The demonization of Europe is also necessary to fuel anti-tax rhetoric in America, because it shuts down the examples of governments that by and large do give societies what they pay for.

Do me a favor: read this article. Then come back and tell me what it’s about, cause I didn’t really see a point or a thesis or even real thought behind it: it’s just Europe-bashing. I think conservatives find it necessary to bash Europe on a regular basis, to talk about how goofy Europeans are and how nothing they do works, so that when somebody comes along and says:

“Hey, wait a minute. Why can’t we have high-speed trains between American cities like they do in Europe? You say ’socialized medicine’ is evil, but European voters would reject any politician who tried to dismantle government health care. Why can’t we have more of a social safety net?”

then conservatives can say, “But don’t you remember? Europeans are goofy, we told you. Don’t pay any attention to them.” And in parentheses: (Just keep demanding lower taxes. That way you give us cover to hand public money to big corporations while America burns.)

The other crazy thing about the anti-tax crowd is that if they don’t feel their money is being well-spent, how come they rarely complain about military spending? True, Ron Paul’s platform included the idea of bringing all troops home, but how realistic is that? The American empire isn’t going away with a wave of Ron Paul’s wand. It’s more realistic to talk about us getting rid of some nukes and battleships and aircraft carriers, or getting out of Iraq. It’s crazy, when you think about what Americans have swallowed in the last few years. We pay for war in Iraq to the tune of billions and cheer for it, but then somebody talks about spending a fraction of that money to give all Americans health care and they’re a dangerous lunatic who wants to “waste money.”

The anti-tax crowd is going to wake up too late, I think. Our treasury has already been raided, and middle class and low income Americans are none the better for it. As I’ve said before, when the shit hits the fan and we’re choking our way through the transition to new energy (made far more painful by our dillying and dallying on the issue), and living standards are falling for Americans, is it really going to be enough to vote for the politician who promises to lower your taxes by $1500 instead of $1000? No, you’re going to be screaming for the government to help you like everyone else.

Don’t agree? Then convince me why FDR wasn’t a great president. Go ahead. I want to hear your logic. And you can throw in, just for good measure, how you would’ve handled the Great Depression. But wait, your ideas are already in the dustheap of history, and we call them Herbert Hoover…and now we call them George Bush…and your stupid one-dimensional anti-tax ideology has such a stranglehold on our politics that we probably won’t even get an FDR this time around, and when everybody’s hurting you’ll have only yourselves to blame.

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