America's Tea Party like Poland's Solidarnosc?

Do you agree with the following interpretation:

Jamie Radtke, chairwoman of the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Federation says that the right wing movement which secured some successes in the midterm elections this week is the US equivalent of Poland’s 1980s Solidarity movement.

“The strength of the Tea Party is in the fact that we are a spontaneous movement, which has many features in common with Poland‘s "Solidarity," Radtke told the Rzeczpospolita daily.

“The Tea Party brings hope today. It shows that the anger of ordinary citizens can make a difference, if only they know how to organize and have determination,” said Radtke, a key personality in the conservative anti-establishment Tea Party movement

Solidarność was socialistic.

Solidarity wasn't bank rolled by billionaires. They were as mentioned above, socialists. And Solidarity members were beaten up, thrown in jail, and of course, murdered.

The only spontaneous bit of the tea party was when it was Ron Paul supporters getting together and raising money for his campaign. After the election, the "Tea Party" was formed based on the grass roots organization that supported Ron, and injected with cash and steered towards a socially conservative direction.

I don't think you can compare the two.

Although they are not in the same position on the political spectrum, they are both agents of change. I have a suspicion that the original grass roots Tea-Party movment in the US may have been hijacked by an "Organized" party at some point along the way No proof, just a suspicion.

I hope Sarah Palin will be president, because I'm convinced this will cure everyone.

Actually, if one does an honest and impassive overview, no human solution to how soceity should work has ever really succeeded. How to reconcile rich and poor, privileged and disadvantaged, sick and healthy, dynamic and lethargic, honest and dishonest...?

Privatise everything (like Thatcher) or retain state control? Create a huge and costly nanny state or leave most decisions to citizens. Print more money like Obama or keep tight monetarist control? Beef up law enforcement or decrminalise...? Every option produces its own set of negative consequences.

Some were, some weren't. Solidarity was a broad movement. Most of major politicians of both PO and PiS were members of It, also some from PSL and even SLD.

Define succeeded. It isn't always black and white / win or lose. Success of a society may best be measured by comparative means, but you need a way to objectively measure your subjective benchmarks.

PiS, PSL and SLD are all socialists. PO have quite a few social democrats too.

It depends on how much you trust and believe in people to be able to take care of themselves. What I do believe works, is local government. Unfortunately, we keep outsourcing decision making further and further away from the people affected by the decisions. People become disillusioned thinking that their vote no longer means anything. That's one of the reasons that we now just support parties instead of individual issues. In the US, it's happening by diluting the citizens vote by not increasing members of the House proportionate to the population. A member of the House today represents well over 10 times as many people as 200 years ago. In Europe, decisions are being made on an EU level, which most of the voters don't know or care about.

Representational Democracy works well when the people are represented....

Well, the best examples are Sweden and Switzerland - both have terribly strong local governments, and both are success stories. Centralisation never seems to work - isn't one of the reasons America is so competitive is due to the way that the individual states have quite a lot of control over taxation?

Therein lies a part of the difficulty in determining the level of a nanny state. Do you make laws under the assumption that all people can take care of them selves, or all people cannot. As I pointed out earlier, it ain't all black and white. There does need to be a safety net to catch those that can't, and weed out those that won't.

Just make sure everyone is valued and respected, able to participate in society and are allowed to have a sense of a social life. Most workers who have no other options than to work for minimum wage today don't have a social life whatsoever, because they're usually broke after paying their bills. The more qualified workers seem to manage quite alright, but maybe one of them should speak for him or herself?


Even worse, we keep outsourcing every possibility someone would like to have in order to get somewhere. And my vote? It doesn't mean jack anymore. I mean, just read this forum and how people respond to a bit of social awareness most of the time. I'd say that's laughable. (I could almost swear it's anti-social and sociopathic behaviour sometimes.)

But that is at least partially due to their own desire - those on minimum wage often don't want much more than some lager and television.

Not necessarily. The guy making minimum wage may want a nice cruise around the Mediterranean, but knowing it is beyond his financial means, pares back his expectations.

So you're telling me I don't want much more than television and some lager? Why don't you let those people speak for themselves, or ask them for a change? I want to study Psychology to help myself and help others. Right now, there's hardly any job to be found anywhere, because labour migrants get most of the jobs. Because they, more often than not, work for 3,5 € an hour, and sometimes even less. (You just simply can't live on such wages in my country.) In cases where they get paid minimum wage, employers don't have to pay extra costs or double overtime. I think you can imagine what happens when employers have that choice?

Exactly - and that's the way it should be. I'm all for giving people a roof over their heads, health care and food - but not much more. Certainly, nice holidays are not a basic human right.

It was one of the reasons. Tax burdens for citizens in the US making an average wage are now higher than the majority of EU citizens making the same amount of money, so tax rates are kind of irrelevant now :(


Of course, but that safety net needs to be local. One size fits all doesn't work. That's why planned economies fail. Too much bureaucratic top down legislation, not enough common sense local approaches. If the crackhead on the corner keeps spending money on crack instead of feeding her family, take away the kids and put the mother in rehab...stop sending the woman a check every month.

Come to think of it, the Tea Party is a lot like Solidarity. They both want their handouts.

I don't need your money. I need a job. (Again.)

Learn how to install and configure routers and I'll hire you.

You're kidding me! I did wonder why you flew off.... :P

Apparently the effective tax rate in Ukraine is 15% and yet hardly anyone actually pays 15% of their income. No wonder they all drive round in blacked-out cars ;)


But only for them. And no-one else, and certainly not anyone who doesn't agree with them.


Did you get sacked? :P

What is holding you back? Your educational background? Any in demand specialties?

Americans are taxed on world wide income with a fairly low exemption.

Anyway, check for yourself.

$50k in New York nets you $710 a week

$50k in Paris nets you $822 a week

Poland, $730 a week....


And therein lies a difference. Solidarity had a much larger base of people that were being fought for, and that supported them through action or thoughts...

The 'Tea Party' has already been co-opted by outside forces including money from corporate contributors, Zionist elements, and the most regressive elements of the Republican Party...'Tea Party' is just a label, means nothing except as a television sound bite...Was 'Solidarity' the same as this?

Same as in the UK. Is the tax burden really lower in Paris than in New York/London? Something seems amiss there...


This is one of the strangest things for me - I understand them taxing all income in America, but to tax all their citizens worldwide? That - I don't understand in the slightest. Is there any rationale for it?

Agreed. But in the Canadian Model, one level of government usually tends to "look out for themselves". ie: the provincial government says "we don't have the budget to fund this / that / the other program, let the municipality fund it" (the local city government for example). Then the local city government has to set up a system to take care of that which was downloaded to them, and local tax rates go up, with no correlating decline in Provincial tax rates. In the end, the taxpayer gets shafted.

Citizens responsibility. I don't feel too bad about voting and not living there though...


Which is one of the reasons that 95% of tax revenue shouldn't leave the local government. That remaining 5% can be divided up for national defense and treaties.

That's the "original" Tea Party idea. The new one is a much much more diluted selfish version of that.

Well, if you have to pay tax there, there's no harm in voting there :)

Perhaps if the Polonia paid Polish taxes, then they could have the vote. Seems fair to me.

I like the concept, but I don't know if the formula is right. Also, how many levels of government are really needed?

True, PO also definately is, just ask any liberal economists what they think about this government. In Poland JKM and his people seem to be the only non-socialistic politicians, unfortunatelly they are ridiculed by the media, so have marginal support. However on the other hand all the major political parties in most of EU are socialistic, so then calling somebody a socialist lose its meaning... what I mean is that in a very poor country somebody making 300% of average income shouldn't be called poor, even though that is still not much money, things need to be put in the right context.