@lmdslam republicans and democrats both suck. the new TEA party types are the best answer for us now. Small federal government, less taxation, fewer regulations, strong military.
The above comes from YouTube user "1Makyo". So why focus on boilerplate Teabagger script from some run-of-the-mill YouTube denizen?
Simple.
"Small federal government, less taxation, fewer regulations, strong military."
Let's break this down. In order for the United States to maintain its overgrown yet strong (in most respects) military in 63 countries, with over 250,000 military personnel and countless support staff, including contractors, the U.S. spends over $700 billion per year. That's more than other countries spend on their military forces combined. In contrast, China spends barely over $100 billion on their military.
Now that requires a pretty beefy federal government that's doing a fair bit of taxation. On the other hand, the small federal government desired by the Tea Party wouldn't be able to swing these types of expenditures. At best, the U.S. would have no choice but to cut the military aid, pack up the troops and send them home, and then shut down and gut the bases they were in. America's priority would suddenly shift to homeland defense. No more bodies coming from Iraq and Afghanistan. Cue the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico that the Tea Party wants.
The main problem with that is it will kick America's geopolitical chessboard from under it, and all of the carefully planned chess moves that involved military aid, interventions, counterterrorist works and plain old show of force will be for naught. Neocons will weep in anguish. If the U.S. wants to continue projecting force, something's gonna have to give.
The second problem comes from the taxation end. Given the wealthy and multinational corporations will be the most reluctant to pay their fair share in taxes (or believe what they're paying now is their fair share), the bulk of the tax burden will fall on the usual suspects -- the middle classes and the working poor. The whole idea of activating the "trickle-down effect" to spur consumer spending by relieving the "tax burden" from the wealthy and large businesses fell apart before America's very eyes during most of this year.
All of those tax cuts should have translated into spend-happy businesses and wealthy folk who hired more people and spend more money on more things just for the sake of spending, which should have translated into dollars trickling down from above and into the pockets of ordinary Joe Schmoes. Instead, the recession proved to companies that they could fire half of their workforce, force the other half to work twice as hard, and use the savings from firing the "dead weight" and their tax cuts to give their CEOs performance bonuses and better pay, while sitting on the rest of the money.
Now, how do you expect to fund your overgrown yet strong military if you have to rely largely on an exhausted tax base that is punitively hit with regressive taxes at every turn? Well, the U.S. military could start relying on corporate sponsorship as a way to shore up those funds. Businesses donated to the NYPD to shore up their operating costs during Occupy Wall Street, so there's nothing to stop them from throwing a few bones to the Army or Air Force every once in a while, in exchange for certain services...
You could also push a flat tax akin to Herman Cain's old "9-9-9" or new "9-0-9" tax scheme. And since "half of Americans don't pay taxes," all you have to do is to make them pay by getting rid of certain deductions and credits! Say goodbye to the EIC and Making Work Pay. Of course, this may drive some to partake more heavily in welfare/assistance programs, but you can kick them off the rolls just as well, if those programs even exist anymore. But that still takes a pretty big federal government to pull off.
In the Tea Party-governed world of 1Makyo, the concept of "small federal government" is applied everywhere except the military, while it also receives private bankrolling from corporate sources, in exchange for playing mercenary whenever there's a natural resource that needs securing. As far as "fewer regulations" go, all you have to do is march backwards in time to see the environmental, commercial and health-related damages that will ensue.
Hmm...sounds like business as usual. Perhaps the Teabaggers aren't up for the whole "small federal government, less taxation, fewer regulations, strong military" theme, after all.
