Tea Parties

I visit my local deli almost every morning at about 5:45 a.m. to get a mint tea. It's a sort of soothing ritual until I realize that the guy at the cash register at 5:45 a.m. is still there at 5:00-6:00 p.m. when I pick up some milk or some other item. The guy is about my age and is always really nice to everyone and seems almost oddly cheerful (or delerious). I think he works about 16 hours a day.

To me, that ought to be the basis for a Tea Party movement. (I already have the wardrobe and slogan in my head: "I sell or serve tea 16 hours a day and all I get is this lousy t-shirt.") I'll get the numbers a little bit wrong but a very large plurality of Americans pay no federal taxes (except their share of payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare). It's not because they don't work. It's because they don't make enough money to justify the government taking a nickel from them.

I pulled double shifts when I was a kid working in a restaurant. (Not only does it build character as our parents probably told us; for many of us, it solidified our desire to get through undergraduate and graduate school.) I hardly ever logged the minimum hours when I became a manager at a state agency. Usually, it was about 10 hours a week more. Most of my colleagues did the exact same thing. Most of my colleagues ate at their desks. The difference is we were already getting paid a living wage and had health insurance.

Shouldn't the Tea Party movement be about the guy at my local deli? That would mean that people who do pay taxes would advocate for those whose incomes don't justify taxes. They would have to demand universal health care access and an increase in the minimum wage along with a willingness to pay more for groceries brought to your local market by people who earned a living wage. Wealthier people might not like to hear it, but they get government subsidies every day. They can usually write off mortgage interest for two residences. Renters can't. Their grocery bill is subsidized by tolerating poor wages for farm workers (and then decry the fact that we have uncontrolled, undocumented immigration that no concrete wall will fix). The domestic services they pay for are rarely above minimum wage. Those services are often supplied by the same ethnic groups who are undocumented immigrants who are afraid to speak up and risk deportation.

The economic elites in the Tea Party movement conveniently forget how lucky they are and then recruit poor people to show up at their events to protect the rights of the elite and work against their own interests.

Am I missing something here? I'm going to finish my tea, now.