Pragmatism to Dogmatism: The Laissez Faire Myth and the Disabling of the American Fisc

Abstract

 The authors argue that the recent upsurge in anti-tax sentiment has its roots evolving social conditions and adherence to the laissez faire myth. Content analysis reveals that political anti-tax rhetoric increased in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a time of social distress in the US. This increased political attention provided a rhetorical punctuation whereby a substantial portion of Americans moved toward a much more dogmatic adherence to the laissez faire myth. The result has been to convert the laissez faire myth into a disabling myth that severely limits open discussion of fiscal issues and reduces the options in public finance decisions.

Keywords:

• enabling myth
• tax revolt
• content analysis
• laissez faire
• B52 – institutional/evolutionary
• D70 – general
• H20 – general

Notes

Only one nation, Finland, had a higher value in 1990.

The US had the 66th lowest value of the 68 nations reported.

Perhaps unexpectedly this view of competition places Americans in only about the 60th percentile in terms of their affinity for competition.

From the Tea Party website, http://www.teaparty.org/about.php, 23 November 2010.

The term punctuation comes from the notion of punctuated equilibria in evolutionary biology. By this theory evolution occurs when long periods of stability are disrupted by a relatively sudden change rather than the alternative view of gradual evolutionary change.

This has been recently evident in the Obama administration's difficulty in dealing with the proposed extension of George W. Bush era temporary tax cuts and the 2011 debate over increasing the debt ceiling.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2202/government-loans-automakers-banks-financial-institutions-economic-stimulus-tarp