So the sequester came and went, and the apocalypse did not come after all. Although to be fair it probably did not happen because the Four Horsemen were furloughed, but that's another story. Up until the 2014 midterms, all Americans will hear will be attacks by both Democrats and Republicans as to who is responsible for the sequester. Politically speaking they will each have good points to make, but neither Democrats or Republicans are objectively responsible for the sequester or the fight or the budgeting that led to it. The sad truth is that Americans are wholesomely responsible for the mess in D.C.
That's right, the big fight in D.C. between political fat-cats and their ever present lobbyist friends have literally nothing to do with the fact that the sequester passed. Instead, it is the mix of an overwhelming anti-tax culture and a hidden approval of congressional discourse that has allowed for the U.S. Budget to turn into a political "telenovela" over the last 30 years.
I will begin with the most shocking of the two previous statements; Congress' approval. Congress is actually very well liked by the United States electorate. Congress overall might be lucky to have its approval rating hit the single digits but there is a more applicable approval rate, the local lawmaker approval rating, that should act as the metric by which congressional approval is measured. You see, ask anyone whether or not they support Congress and you are likely to get a resounding "no", at least that is statistically the case. Ask again whether or not that same person supports their local congressman or their respective senators and you will get a much higher chance of acceptance. Last I recall, in my high school civics class, the number floats between 40-50%, but that may vary on year and textbook.
Whatever the number, it makes sense that the generic local congressmen would have more approval than the whole of Congress simply because Congress as a whole still exists. It only took 12% of the Californian electorate to recall then Gov. Grey Davis, and while California is only one state, it goes to show that in practice it doesn't take many petition signatures to send lawmakers packing. Yet with such low approval ratings, Congress is still there today. The problem is that the Congress is made so that individual congressmen are only responsible to their constituency, not the whole country. What that means is that the overall congressional approval rating is in fact useless as a tool for motivating lawmakers into changing things. If anything, it shows that at the polls, there is a much higher candidate retention rate than the overall approval rating would suggest because those disenchanted with the whole of Congress cannot vote to remove all of Congress.
Unfortunately, voter laws and electoral politics are not the core of the reason why the sequester took shape the way it did. Voting laws provide the structure for which a Congress can be universally loathed yet remain in power election cycle after election cycle. The main driver for the sequester instead was a strong anti-tax culture that has been building in the United States ever since the Reagan years.
To clarify, "anti-tax" is a very broad term to play with here, so "anti-tax" in this case cannot simply mean someone who dislikes paying taxes. If that were the case then everyone in the world would fall into this category. What "anti-tax" means here is that there is not simply a dislike of not wrangling in more money on the margins, but that there is a deep moral obligation on the part of the "anti-tax" people to limit government government revenue out of some innate fear of the government having too many resources. To be "anti-tax" is to enter the tax conversation with the idea that the government 1) has no responsibilities to provide any social goods to its citizens 2) is inherently filled with people whose purpose is none other than to harm its citizens in some way 3) exists, by evidence of taxation, only to restrict personal autonomy.
That definition above is purposely set to the extremes not to embellish or ridicule those in this category, but instead to be able to cover all possible reasons of why someone would have a morally visceral reaction to increasing or even paying taxes. This is true of any population in any country, but in the United States at least, there is an elevated level of "anti-tax" sentiment that is, rather poetically, supported from the top and sustained in a trickle-down effect.
The system works like this; you have people like Grover Norquist who generate the organizational level of the "anti-tax" movement. They provide the firms and lobbying groups who create the message in neatly prepared and presentable package. They then find people in the general populace who either 1) are wealthy enough to enjoy a good "anti-tax" message or 2) those who are not at all terribly wealthy but are promised great financial things to come and rescue them from their current situation should they take up the message. Those two sorts of people are then both involved in supplying the public petitions, the Tea Party rallies, and the "Average Joe" soundbites politicians in Congress represent and, by way of electoral politics, must appease in order to maintain the afore-mentioned individual approval rating as high as it is. What's the best way to do this? Sign a tax-chastity pledge designed at the organizational level in order to prove your words with actions.
The end result is political gridlock not caused by party bickering or hateful congressional relationships but instead by electoral hand-tying. This process should come as no surprise to anybody who was paying attention to the details in the sequester fight leading up to the final hours before it finally kicked in. What is surprising is that within that fight, at no point was there ever an argument from the opposition saying that tax revenue was necessary to protect the autonomy of those who struggle financially through little fault of their own. Why this was the case is beyond me, but I can think of a reason why.
If you think about it, the origin story of the United States did not come from an angry set of gods or the spontaneous creation of land emerging from the sea; it came from a tea-soaked tax protest. Colonists went to war for lesser taxes just as much (some would argue more) as they did for human rights. Because of that, having a fear of the government or wanting lower taxes is seen as something patriotic instead of libertarian overkill. Because of this, even those on the left of the political-economic scale in the United States are afraid of touching the subject of tax hikes even if they would in theory provide necessary revenue for programs that truly help people that truly need the help.
That is the very unique issue that the United States has with its taxes. The issue of over-taxation or fraudulent government spending isn't as normal as it is in other countries because it takes root in the very foundation of the country and to some the very definition of being patriotic and perhaps American. Call it mob mentality or peer pressure, this isn't a phenomenon that has been lost over generations since the fight for independence, it is part of the American identity to be wary of taxes and where they go. It becomes a tragedy when those who stand to profit immensely from lower taxes at the top range exploit this soft-spot to favor their tax returns.
That's right, the big fight in D.C. between political fat-cats and their ever present lobbyist friends have literally nothing to do with the fact that the sequester passed. Instead, it is the mix of an overwhelming anti-tax culture and a hidden approval of congressional discourse that has allowed for the U.S. Budget to turn into a political "telenovela" over the last 30 years.
I will begin with the most shocking of the two previous statements; Congress' approval. Congress is actually very well liked by the United States electorate. Congress overall might be lucky to have its approval rating hit the single digits but there is a more applicable approval rate, the local lawmaker approval rating, that should act as the metric by which congressional approval is measured. You see, ask anyone whether or not they support Congress and you are likely to get a resounding "no", at least that is statistically the case. Ask again whether or not that same person supports their local congressman or their respective senators and you will get a much higher chance of acceptance. Last I recall, in my high school civics class, the number floats between 40-50%, but that may vary on year and textbook.
Whatever the number, it makes sense that the generic local congressmen would have more approval than the whole of Congress simply because Congress as a whole still exists. It only took 12% of the Californian electorate to recall then Gov. Grey Davis, and while California is only one state, it goes to show that in practice it doesn't take many petition signatures to send lawmakers packing. Yet with such low approval ratings, Congress is still there today. The problem is that the Congress is made so that individual congressmen are only responsible to their constituency, not the whole country. What that means is that the overall congressional approval rating is in fact useless as a tool for motivating lawmakers into changing things. If anything, it shows that at the polls, there is a much higher candidate retention rate than the overall approval rating would suggest because those disenchanted with the whole of Congress cannot vote to remove all of Congress.
Unfortunately, voter laws and electoral politics are not the core of the reason why the sequester took shape the way it did. Voting laws provide the structure for which a Congress can be universally loathed yet remain in power election cycle after election cycle. The main driver for the sequester instead was a strong anti-tax culture that has been building in the United States ever since the Reagan years.
To clarify, "anti-tax" is a very broad term to play with here, so "anti-tax" in this case cannot simply mean someone who dislikes paying taxes. If that were the case then everyone in the world would fall into this category. What "anti-tax" means here is that there is not simply a dislike of not wrangling in more money on the margins, but that there is a deep moral obligation on the part of the "anti-tax" people to limit government government revenue out of some innate fear of the government having too many resources. To be "anti-tax" is to enter the tax conversation with the idea that the government 1) has no responsibilities to provide any social goods to its citizens 2) is inherently filled with people whose purpose is none other than to harm its citizens in some way 3) exists, by evidence of taxation, only to restrict personal autonomy.
That definition above is purposely set to the extremes not to embellish or ridicule those in this category, but instead to be able to cover all possible reasons of why someone would have a morally visceral reaction to increasing or even paying taxes. This is true of any population in any country, but in the United States at least, there is an elevated level of "anti-tax" sentiment that is, rather poetically, supported from the top and sustained in a trickle-down effect.
The system works like this; you have people like Grover Norquist who generate the organizational level of the "anti-tax" movement. They provide the firms and lobbying groups who create the message in neatly prepared and presentable package. They then find people in the general populace who either 1) are wealthy enough to enjoy a good "anti-tax" message or 2) those who are not at all terribly wealthy but are promised great financial things to come and rescue them from their current situation should they take up the message. Those two sorts of people are then both involved in supplying the public petitions, the Tea Party rallies, and the "Average Joe" soundbites politicians in Congress represent and, by way of electoral politics, must appease in order to maintain the afore-mentioned individual approval rating as high as it is. What's the best way to do this? Sign a tax-chastity pledge designed at the organizational level in order to prove your words with actions.
The end result is political gridlock not caused by party bickering or hateful congressional relationships but instead by electoral hand-tying. This process should come as no surprise to anybody who was paying attention to the details in the sequester fight leading up to the final hours before it finally kicked in. What is surprising is that within that fight, at no point was there ever an argument from the opposition saying that tax revenue was necessary to protect the autonomy of those who struggle financially through little fault of their own. Why this was the case is beyond me, but I can think of a reason why.
If you think about it, the origin story of the United States did not come from an angry set of gods or the spontaneous creation of land emerging from the sea; it came from a tea-soaked tax protest. Colonists went to war for lesser taxes just as much (some would argue more) as they did for human rights. Because of that, having a fear of the government or wanting lower taxes is seen as something patriotic instead of libertarian overkill. Because of this, even those on the left of the political-economic scale in the United States are afraid of touching the subject of tax hikes even if they would in theory provide necessary revenue for programs that truly help people that truly need the help.
That is the very unique issue that the United States has with its taxes. The issue of over-taxation or fraudulent government spending isn't as normal as it is in other countries because it takes root in the very foundation of the country and to some the very definition of being patriotic and perhaps American. Call it mob mentality or peer pressure, this isn't a phenomenon that has been lost over generations since the fight for independence, it is part of the American identity to be wary of taxes and where they go. It becomes a tragedy when those who stand to profit immensely from lower taxes at the top range exploit this soft-spot to favor their tax returns.
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