The Tea Party's Distorted World View

At Forbes.com today, Bruce Bartlett crunches the numbers on our FrumForum tea party survey, and discovers a view of the world at variance with some basic economic realities.

Bruce Bartlett crunches the numbers on our FrumForum tea party survey, and discovers a view of the world at variance with some basic economic realities.

Tuesday's Tea Party crowd, however, thought that federal taxes were almost three times as high as they actually are. The average response was 42% of GDP and the median 40%. The highest figure recorded in all of American history was half those figures: 20.9% at the peak of World War II in 1944.

Tea Partyers also seem to have a very distorted view of the direction of federal taxes. They were asked whether they are higher, lower or the same as when Barack Obama was inaugurated last year. More than two-thirds thought that taxes are higher today, and only 4% thought they were lower; the rest said they are the same.

As noted earlier, federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became president.

Read it all in Bruce Bartlett's column in today's Forbes.com.