Alex Keaton – Tax Ideology of Republicans

From Family Ties (Season 3, Episode 5)

Categories:

Run time: 0:43

Clip Description: In Season 3, Episode 5 of TV’s Family Ties, Alex P. Keaton explains his view that Republicans are the key to fighting higher taxes. This clip could be a useful one when talking about fiscal policy and general views of different political parties. A side note: Since this clip is from the early 1980s — do the views on taxes still hold today?

American Politics Concepts Discussed/Connected To: This clip discusses the concept of different ideologies of political parties in relation to specific policy stances.

Possible Uses in Classroom: This clip can discuss how political parties affect specific ways of viewing policy.

Discussion Questions

Alex’s claim is that one party is the reliable check on higher taxes. Treat that as a testable historical claim rather than a joke. When the show was airing, the top marginal individual rate had just come down from 70 percent to 50 percent under the 1981 tax act, and the 1986 reform brought it to 28 percent; since then it has moved inside a much narrower band under both parties. What does that record actually show about party control and the level of taxation — and is the more durable partisan difference about how much is collected, or about who pays it?
There are two distinct arguments for lower taxes and they usually arrive fused together: an efficiency claim, that high rates change behavior and cost growth, and a claim about desert and liberty, that it is your money regardless of what lower rates do to growth. There are likewise two for higher taxes: that some goods can only be bought collectively, and that concentrated wealth is itself a problem. Separate them. If the empirical growth question were settled tomorrow, which of these arguments would change, and which would not move at all?
The joke in 1984 depended on a teenager being well to the right of his parents on taxes — an inversion of what the audience expected. The coalitions have shifted since, particularly along lines of education and where people live. Where would Alex’s tax position place him in the party system today, and how confident are you? If you are not sure, that uncertainty is the interesting finding: say what it suggests about how stable the link between an ideology and a party actually is.

For AP Students

AP U.S. Government and Politics
Unit 4: American Political Ideologies and Beliefs

Topics: 4.7 Ideologies of Political Parties; 4.9, on ideology and economic policy
Skill: Concept Application (1.C): compare principles, policies and behaviors

Forty-three seconds of a teenager explaining to his own parents why lower taxes are the point of the Republican party. The clip is from the mid-1980s, which is what makes it useful rather than merely dated: students can check how much of the position has held and how much has moved, and the checking is the lesson.

Discussion questions

State the position Alex takes in one sentence, then name the broader ideology it belongs to.
He is arguing with the parents who raised him. Political socialization usually predicts that children resemble their parents politically. Name two things that can break that pattern.
Name one economic position associated with Republicans in the 1980s that still holds today, and one that has shifted. Say what you think moved it.

Short activity

Then and now (10 minutes). Four rows on the board: taxes, trade, deficits, entitlements. Students fill in what each party was understood to favor in the 1980s and what it favors now. Wherever the two columns disagree, they write a single word naming what changed. The exercise sets up the point the unit needs students to carry: an ideological label is a starting assumption about someone’s views, not a reliable prediction of them.

Clip hosted on Critical Commons.