Trump: Tax Cuts For The Top 5%, Tax Hikes For The Rest

 

The non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy issued a report yesterday, "A Distributional Analysis of Donald Trump's Tax Plan," and it exposes the real impacts of "working class hero" Malignant Loser's tax policies:

Former President Donald Trump has proposed a wide variety of tax policy changes. Taken together, these proposals would, on average, lead to a tax cut for the richest 5 percent of Americans and a tax increase for all other income groups.

If these proposals were in effect in 2026, the richest 1 percent would receive an average tax cut of about $36,300 and the next richest 4 percent would receive an average tax cut of about $7,200. All other groups would see a tax increase with the hike on the middle 20 percent at about $1,500 and the increase on the lowest-income 20 percent of Americans at about $800.  [snip]

Measured as a share of income, the tax increases faced by most Americans would fall hardest on working-class families. As illustrated in Figure 3, the middle 20 percent of Americans would face a tax increase equal to 2.1 percent of their income, while the poorest 20 percent of Americans would face a tax increase equal to 4.8 percent of their income – all while the top 5 percent get a tax cut...

The report goes on to detail the aspects of the Malignant Loser's proposals that impact tax policy.  This chart summarizes the changes (click to enlarge):

This should surprise no one, since regressive "trickle down" tax policy has long been a hallmark of Republicanism, now metastasized into the MAGA Trump cult.  The most recent example of this was the 2017 tax cut for billionaires and corporations.  That the reality of these "tax cuts for me, tax raises for thee" proposals haven't registered with those low- and middle- class voters who favor the way they "think" the Malignant Loser would run the economy is more than a little mind- boggling, and a communication failure of epic proportions.  But we have to wonder, even if they had the information as laid out in this report, would it make any difference in their support, even if their prime concern is "the economy"?  Even if the answer to that is no, the truth needs to keep being told, over and over again.

Here's $1,000 For You, A Pink Slip For You...

Con-man and pathological liar Donald "Rump" Trump was trump-eting the $1,000 "bonuses" that some corporations (with lucrative regulatory issues and business before the Government, no less) handed out to their employees ostensibly due to the tax giveaway to the top 1% and those same companies. It was a transparent move to ingratiate themselves with the praise-needy Rump, who will be looking at mergers and acquisitions affecting them in the coming weeks and months, and a nod to the failed theory of trickle-down economics. The vast majority of benefits from the tax giveaway will go to corporations buying back shares of their stock.

However, there's new reporting that a couple of those massive corporations are now laying off workers. Comcast laid off 500 sales employees right before Christmas, while AT&T is laying off thousands of employees. According to the report:

"Comcast and AT&T were among the businesses that claimed Republican lawmakers’ effort to restructure the tax code in favor of wealthy corporations would allow them to be more generous to their workers, and publicly announced $1,000 year-end bonuses for their employees. The CEOs of both companies specifically cited the tax bill in separate press releases touting these 'special' bonuses....But Larry Robbins, the vice president of CWA Local 4900, told the IndyStar that AT&T started privately notifying its workforce of impending layoffs at the same time as it publicly celebrated the benefits of the tax bill. 'We believe the $1,000 bonus and the promise of 7,000 new jobs are all a publicity stunt,' Robbins said."

Rump used the corporate bonus stunt to cover for a reactionary policy that will overwhelmingly benefit not workers or the middle class, but corporate executives and wealthy shareholders. As with his dishonest pledge to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., it falls apart with just minimal scrutiny and time.

(Photo: A Very Stable Genius)

Sunday Reflection

"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." -- George Bernard Shaw

Watch who supports the Rethuglicans' tax "reform" legislation, one designed to increase the flow of benefits to the wealthiest, and cut corporate rates without plugging the loopholes that they use. The deceitful ads are already making their way to the airwaves, depicting "reform" as a means to lift the middle class and create new jobs. Three words: trickle down economics. Meanwhile, most Americans don't feel the need for the Rethuglicans' "reform," and see it as another giveaway to those that have made great income gains already. Resist.

All You Need To Know About Trump's Economic "Plan"

In one tweet:

Moody's Analytics, effects of economic plans compared to current law in 2020: Clinton +3.3-M jobs, Trump -7.6-M jobs

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) August 6, 2016

That's plus 3.3 million jobs under Clinton's plan, and minus 7.6 million jobs under Trump's.

That's not even touching on the effect of Trump's "plan" on the national debt (adding $12 trillion), the reliance on debunked "trickle down" economics through tax policies favoring the rich and corporations, and gutting regulations to allow the polluters and banksters to run roughshod over the environment and economy.  So much for Trump's phony populism.  As one writer put it:

On immigration and trade, he is a pitchfork-wielding Pat Buchanan Republican; on taxes and regulation, he is a dark-suited Paul Ryan Republican. Perhaps the old saying is right and consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Little hands, little, uh, mind.

BONUS:  Let's give it the Andy Borowitz treatment:

At a speech in Detroit on Monday, the Republican Presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, spelled out the details of his economic plan, which calls for every American to inherit millions of dollars from his or her father.

Rubio: The "Fresh Young Face" On The Republican Voodoo Economics Zombie

(click on image to enlarge)

(Tom Toles, once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle)

Matt O'Brien provides a perspective on Sen. Marco "Glug Glug" Rubio's simple-minded, reactionary "voodoo economics" agenda at Wonkblog (worth an extended quote):

Marco Rubio's toughest political opponent may be math.

That's because his economic agenda has a simple arithmetic problem. He wants to balance the budget—in fact, he wants to amend the Constitution to make that mandatory—but at the same time he wants to cut taxes by $4 trillion or so, increase defense spending, and keep antipoverty spending where it is. That doesn't leave a lot of places to find savings. There probably aren't any in non-defense discretionary spending—things like roads and research—when it's already at a 40-year low. So you'd have to get them all by cutting Social Security and Medicare, and cutting them now. Rubio, though, only wants to "reform" entitlements for future seniors, not current ones. And that leaves you with big, fat deficits for a good, long while.

This is the same problem Republicans have had for 35 years now. That's how long they've been running on deficit-financed tax cuts and fiscal responsibility. So Rubio, who's trying to portray himself as a new kind of Republican, is seizing on the only thing that makes that combination work: saying tax cuts will pay for themselves. Specifically, he's said that the way to balance the budget is with "dynamic economic growth," which, of course, his tax cuts are supposed to provide. That's saying you can eat your cake and have it too, because eating it will make more of it appear. But anyone who remembers the big deficits that came after Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush's big tax cuts knows that's not the case. Indeed, former Bush adviser Greg Mankiw knew this himself, calling people who said otherwise little more than "charlatans and cranks."

But that hasn't stopped the usual supply-side suspects, like the right-leaning Tax Foundation, from claiming that Rubio's trillions of dollars of tax cuts would, after nine years of bigger deficits, actually make tax revenues go up after that by supercharging growth so much. If this sounds like wishful thinking masquerading as actual analysis, well, you're in touch with empirical reality. "This would not pass muster," economist Laurence Kotlikoff told the New York Times's Josh Barro, "as an undergraduate model at a top university."  (our emphasis)

Of course, Glug Glug isn't alone;  every one of his Republican presidential rivals (and the party in general) subscribes to this "wishful thinking masquerading as actual analysis."

Paul Ryan's Most Pressing Issue: Cutting Taxes On The Wealthy

Ayn Rand admirer and soon-to-be-Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee (!) Rep. Paul "Lyin'" Ryan (Galt-WI) has told the right-wing rag the "Weekly Standard" that he thinks cutting the top marginal tax rate for wealthy Americans is an "even more pressing" need than it was in the reign of St. Ronnie of Hollywood, who cut it from 50 percent to 28 percent.

Because we don't have enough income inequality?  Or is this his way of addressing his "new focus" on poverty?

No, he's just showing his long-standing, true colors to his fan base of "Makers," whose philosophy of economic Darwinism drives their Republican Party's failed "trickle down" policies.  It's precisely the wrong formula for a healthy and prosperous middle class, which is the true driver of economic growth.

A Budget That Billionaires Would Love

(click image to enlarge)

We've been referring to the 2014 budget proposal offered by tea bagger favorite Rep. Paul "Lyin'" Ryan as a "reverse-Robin Hood" scheme.  Thanks to Steve Benen at the MaddowBlog, here's visual proof that the after-tax income of the very wealthiest Americans would see huge increases, while people in the bottom 80% would see very little.  One would think that trickle down economics had been completely discredited over the last 30 years, but one would be wrong, since Lyin's budget is treated in the Beltway bubble by Very Serious People as tough, but credible.

BONUS:  Josh Barro at Bloomberg tells us why it's "Paul Ryan vs. the Middle Class."

BONUS II:  Noam Scheiber tells us why the media may finally be onto Paul Ryan.

They Keep Trickling On Us

As we watch the unfolding crisis in Egypt and the demands for greater economic opportunity, Think Progress notes that income inequality in the U.S. is greater than that in Egypt: Egypt is ranked the 90th in inequality, while the U.S. ranks 42nd in inequality of income, according to the CIA World Fact Book. It's another sign that right-wing "trickle down" economics has been a huge failure and a scam. According to the article:

"Currently, the top one percent of households make nearly 25 percent of the total income in the country, after they made less than 10 percent in the 1970′s. Between 1980 and 2005, 'more than 80 percent of total increase in Americans’ income went to the top 1 percent.'"

While there won't be rioting in U.S. streets over this issue, it's a clear sign that the concentration of economic power is increasing -- a result of decades of tax breaks and loopholes, insider dealings, deregulation and other goodies for the richest Americans, who are "trickling down" on the rest of us, but not in a nice way.

(image: Don't Trickle On Me)