I love tea parties!

It seems highly unlikely that a progressive would ever have something in common with a member of the Tea Party movement. However, as Katrina vanden Heuval rightly points out, there's a great deal of common ground that could be reached between the two seemingly-disparate groups.

I think the middle and working classes pay too much of the tax load. I think that the federal government intrudes in our lives a little too much. I also think that the federal and state governments try to seize too much control over the life of the everyday American. Further, I think that our federal debt is getting unwieldy, and I think that the federal government should take more steps to balance out the budget, even in these tough economic times.

The difference is in the implementation of these changes.

Generally, the Tea Partiers demand fewer taxes -- period. There's no differentiation in their rhetoric with regard to whether there ought to be a progressive tax, whether we ought to place more of the tax burden on the wealthy and corporations, or whether we ought to adjust our taxation policies to better serve economic realities. No, the average Tea Party site simply complains of the tax burden. That's all. Their solution: less spending. This is the basis for their argument against federal stimulus activities, which have, from all accounts, helped to slow the disintegration of the over-inflated American economy.

This, of course, is a short-sighted approach to the matter.

The fact is that the economy is spurred by spending. Jobs are not created when spending is tight, and if the American consumer is not spending -- and they are not -- then someone or something is going to have to "spend" in order to keep businesses afloat. This is a simple and unescapable reality: in order for jobs to be created, there must be spending. If the American people cannot afford it -- and they cannot -- then the burden falls on the government.

Obviously, there has to be a way to make up this spending. This has been the trap of Republicans since Reagan, a trap that was avoided by Bush, Jr., by either calculation or stupidity. When Reagan dropped taxes for the wealthy, he discovered that social programs simply could not remain. Medicare and Social Security loomed high in the horizon. So, like a wise conservative, Reagan bit the bullet and raised taxes in the next year. George Bush, Sr., made the promise of no new taxes, but had to raise taxes after a drop in order to secure payment for the increase in spending that was required at the end of the savings-and-loan scandal, and to ensure that the government would continue to float after Desert Storm. However, unlike his Republican predecessors, Bush, Jr., decided that it would be best to make record tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations in the wake of the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. He did it when he added benefits to Medicare and reformed bankrtupcy laws. In short, the only President to think it would be a good idea to lower taxes in the face of increased spending was George Bush, Jr. That's it. If you're a Reagan fan, therefore, you have to recognize the fact that you need to raise taxes in order to fund your government projects.

So, you need the stimulus, and you need to raise taxes in order to keep the entitlement programs running. You can't slap the middle class around because they are the hamsters that keep the consumption-machine of the American economy running. What's the harm in taxing the rich folk that benefit from the toil and labor of the weak?

In fact, if we all took a moment to go back to our Capitalism textbooks, we would find that Adam Smith himself proposed that those who benefited the most from capitalism and the protection of laws ought to pay the highest level of taxes. Productive labor should not be taxed because the result would increase production costs; unproductive labor, however, should be taxed because it has less of an effect upon the cost-pricing of goods. The difference between the dollar an investor earns as a dividend from ownership of stock and the dollar earned by the laborer on the job is, therefore, the fact that the investor put neither time nor effort into the production of the good or service provided. Subsequently, the dollar the investor receives has been taken out of the productive economy, and put into his pocket.

If the Tea Party folks and the progressives actually sat down and talked, they would probably find room for negotiation and understanding. There's nothing wrong with wanting to lower taxes for the middle and working classes. They deserve it. However, so long as the Tea Party movement continues to cling to out-dated and incorrect asssumptions about how a capitalist economy works, there will always be a difference that cannot be bridged.

We call that difference "ignorance".