Tax day came and went with the typical anxiety and hurried trips to the post office. However, this tax day had a little different twist to it–it became a day of protest for thousands of Americans. Hosting Tax Day Tea Parties in about 2000 locations across the country, many felt the need to show their discontent over swiftly growing government spending, federal debt, and sure to follow increasing individual tax burdens.
Perhaps the even more interesting part of the historic event is the starkly contrasting viewpoints on the silliness or importance of these Tax Day Tea Parties:
Paul Krugman had this opinion in the New York Times:
Beyond that, Republicans have become embarrassing to watch. And it doesn’t feel right to make fun of crazy people. Better, perhaps, to focus on the real policy debates, which are all among Democrats.
One way to get a good sense of the current state of the G.O.P., and also to see how little has really changed, is to look at the “tea parties” that have been held in a number of places already, and will be held across the country on Wednesday. These parties — antitaxation demonstrations that are supposed to evoke the memory of the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution — have been the subject of considerable mockery, and rightly so.
While Karl Rove saw it slightly different in his Wall Street Journal opinion:
Derided by elitists as phony, the tea-party movement is spontaneous, decentralized, frequently amateurish and sometimes shrill. If it has a father it is CNBC’s Rick Santelli, who called for holding a tea party in Chicago on July 4. Yesterday’s gatherings were made up of people who may never meet again (there’s no central collection point for email addresses). But the concerns driving people to tea parties are real, growing and powerful. Politicians ignore them at their peril.
If that anger persists, it may give Republicans a leg up in the 38 gubernatorial elections over the next two years, as well as in key state legislative races that will determine which party redraws congressional and state legislative districts after the 2010 census. Expect voters to hear a lot about jobs being created in low-tax states in the coming years.
But the center of the debate is in Washington, not the states. The fear of future federal tax hikes is fueling the tea-party movement.
Mortgage Industry Perspective?
What are your thoughts on these events? Are these issues important and significant? How do they or will they effect the mortgage industry and your mortgage business?
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It’s important if you consider that all these bailouts are being paid for with taxpayer funds. Somebody’s going to have to pay for it down the road, and that’s what’s scary about it.
At present, though, I’d say the mortgage industry is benefiting from the bailouts, without which there would have been a wholescale massacre. And it’s not over yet, so people here would be well advised to not support the tea parties, and if you do, then you’re a hypocrite for taking teh money and then complaining about it.
I think my logic is pretty simple, but if it’s wrong, please feel free to educate me.