US families spend more on the so called public goods than their EU counterparts not because of taxes, but because payments for these goods have been collected by private parties (cf. insurance premium or private tuition). The big difference is that these private fees are not cognitively frames as taxes but as "voluntary" payments for services. Hence, most people do not make a connection between taxes and public services, siunce they have to purchase the latter through private vendors. Never mind that they have to pay much higher price than their EU counterparts - they see it as purchasing something they value, whereas taxes are perceived as 'waste.'
To sum it up - the issue is not taxation per se, but how it is cognitively framed in the US - and that this framing is done almost exclusively by pro-business propaganda.
Wojtek
On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 2:48 PM, michael perelman <michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
> wrote:
> I was asked by our weekly paper to give some thoughts on the Tea Party
> movement. Here is what I came up with:
>
> The Tea Party movement combines ignorance, anger, and justifiable
> indignation. For some, this ignorance reflects a degree of racism and
> ethnic hostility.
>
>
>
> The anger has been nurtured by the demise of journalism along with a
> cynically crafted rhetoric of hate. Former Speaker of the House Newt
> Gingrich was a master of this mode of communication. In 1990, four years
> before Gingrich ascended to his leadership position, his organization, GOPAC
> circulated a memo instructing Republicans about the most effective method of
> communication in the political arena. The memo recommended that his fellow
> travelers adopt a vocabulary built upon confrontational words, such as
> "decay, sick, unionized bureaucracy, greed, corruption, radical, permissive,
> and bizarre." Without a responsible media, this strategy went largely
> unchallenged until it became common practice.
>
> More at:
>
>
>
> http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/thoughts-on-the-tea-party/
>
> --
>
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
> Chico, CA 95929
> 530-898-5321
> fax 530-898-5901
> www.michaelperelman.wordpress.com
>
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