If you think our biggest problem is that the super rich aren’t super rich enough, the GOP is fighting for you
Take a look at this:
Watch the income distribution in America change pic.twitter.com/WS80BT2UlT
— Conrad Hackett (@conradhackett) December 18, 2016
If you look at this, you’d think that one of the biggest problems in our economy — if not the biggest — is that all the growth is going to the richest, who have never been richer.
To fix this, you’d do some of the things that have been done in the Obama Administration like increasing taxes on the rich, especially the super rich, to do things like fund health insurance for the working poor.
Unless, you’re Paul Ryan, you wouldn’t look at this and think, “Know what? We need fewer tax brackets — and the rich need to pay less.”
Rather you’d say, it’s kind of insane that a guy who earns $500,000 a year pays the same tax rate as someone who earns $50 million a year. And it’s pretty batty that we cap payroll taxes at just over over $100,000 a year when there is so much income who flowing to the very rich, who are the people who are living the longest.
Instead Trump and the GOP are about to unleash a series of policies that will almost exclusively benefit the rich and their corporations, who are already experiencing record profits.
These plans include:
- Tax breaks that will mostly go to the rich.
- Affordable Care Act repeal that will begin with a huge tax break for the super rich.
- An infrastructure plan that privatizes public assets while delivering more tax breaks for the rich.
- Even Trump’s vaunted pro-worker trade policies will likely include massive giveaways to corporations.
And while the economy is being devoured by those who need it the least, Trump will deliver his symbolic and highly effective PR stunts that save a few jobs while everything else he can to hollow out the middle class.
We already know what this looks like in practice.
See America after 7 years of Bush/Cheney.
See Kansas after six years of Sam Brownback:
Trump is already taking credit for the Obama economy. (Is there anything more Trump than a white guy who did nothing trying to take credit for 8 years of work from a black guy he called lazy?) And he likely has a long glide path where his party’s efforts to deregulate, uninsure and generally rip off every dime of savings we have can wreck its full havoc.
The question is: When it all falls apart, will Trump’s expertise at distraction and distortion powerful enough to overwhelm the failures he’s inviting?
