The Lunch Bunch

The other day, I told my colleagues at lunch that I was going to participate in the Albuquerque Tea Party.

And when I later told my husband about our conversation, he said, "Knowing your situation there at work, I would not have brought it up."

But I'm so tired of being in the closet. I decided two weeks ago that I can't keep hiding out in my office during lunch, that I had to face my liberal colleagues and stand up for my values. And since the O's inauguration, politics as a topic seem to have died down. The only thing that came close was when one colleague complained that her young son was wanting to get into the Boy Scouts. She said, "'Hon,' I told him, 'we're atheists. And then I had to explain to him what homophobia is.'" When a more moderate colleague laughed at that and said, "That's nuts!" (I was choking on my food), she asked, "You mean the Boy Scouts won't make my son a Bible-thumping homophobe?" That had been one of my forays out of my office, and it had sent me fleeing back.

But now that I've determined I NEED to eat lunch with the old lunch bunch, I've found their discussion to be ordinary, dealing with lazy or clueless students, questionable administrator decisions, and family issues. The one friend did tell me her son was getting his first badge in the Boy Scouts. "So you decided to let him join?" She nodded. "That's big of you."

"Well, his best friend is in it."

"Friends are important." And we left it at that.

So anyway, on another day, when asked what I was up to, I told the lunch bunch that I was going to go to the Albuquerque Tea Party. They looked at me blankly. "You know, like the Boston Tea Party. Protesting."

"What are you protesting?"

"Taxes."

"How are you being taxed?"

I blinked. I thought I was ready for whatever they might say or ask, but this blew me away. I began to think, okay, what would they be thinking to ask such a question? That we are NOT being taxed? Oh, yes, we are still under the tax brackets and the same percentages as there were under Bush. Obama didn't immediately repeal the most recent tax cuts that were set to sundown in 2010. (That's a pleasant surprise.) But he has promised to let them sundown.

Or were they thinking that being middle class, we are NOT going to be taxed, according to Obama's promise?

I merely responded, "With all the irresponsible spending, we WILL be taxed."

And with that the conversational ball bounced another direction. And I was left feeling my position was semi-weak. (I often correct my students who use a future result to support a present action in their essay writing.) I have no doubt that we WILL be taxed because taxes included in the stimulus bill and the omnibus government budget bill already enacted, taxes geared toward punishing "the rich" (which includes individuals and all businesses making over $250,000 a year -- that is, MANY small businesses, some of which I know personally) will be recouped by the businesses raising the price of products, which we the consumers pay. This area of economics is called "tax incidence" and says that the entity on which tax is imposed is not necessarily who bears the burden of the tax.

In addition, cap and trade tax will raise the cost of energy, so ANYTHING in our life that uses energy -- electricity, gas, petroleum -- will be much more expensive. WE WILL pay the taxes.

And that's not even counting one way the government will attempt to pay for its deficit: by raising taxes and applying them to more people and more activities. (The other way is by printing more money, which means inflation, for which -- you guessed it -- we pay.)

Well, okay, so at least the topic was brought up to the lunch bunch. Maybe they changed the topic because they were concerned themselves about their taxes. Only time will tell.