For those who think the Boston Tea Party was just a protest over a small tax on tea, it was actually a protest against something much more insidious and extremely common today. Leveraging the machinery of government to provide advantage to one organization over another or others. The East India Tea Company was actually EXEMPT from the tax. From author Thom Hartmann - The primary purpose of the Tea Act was to increase the profitability of the East India Company to its stockholders (which included the King and the wealthy elite that kept him secure in power), and to help the Company drive its colonial small-business competitors out of business. Because the Company no longer had to pay high taxes to England and held a monopoly on the tea it sold in the American colonies, it was able to lower its tea prices to undercut the prices of the local importers and the mom-and-pop tea merchants and tea houses in every town in America.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 13:50:35 +0000