re: Ryan tax plan would cut taxes on rich and RAISE THEM on middle class - WaPo

quote:

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The plan that Ryan (R-Wis.) and his colleagues in the House have put forward would not substantially reduce taxes for the middle class, and many households would pay more.

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I'm so sick of poorly written garbage like this. Totally crafted to be inciteful but not insightful.

Raised by how much? $1, $10, $10,000?

Here's the math... there is A LOT more "middle class" tax payers than "rich" taxpayers. So a small increase across a wide population will take in more revenue than a huge increase on "the rich".

The. WaPo presents this gem...



Notice how by switch to "% after tax income". Bastards. Looking at that chart two things jump out. The amount of tax increase seems to be less than 2%. Which isn't much. Further those increases are in the top 10% and top 5% brackets.

Top10% is about $100k/yr. I've been reminding people that think hey are "middle class" that they are rich for years. And yes, they are going to be target of tax increases. Why?



That group makes most of the income in this country. Not "the rich". Ryan's plan overlays almost exactly with the largest bars in that chart. (roughly $100k is top10%, 250k top5% iirc)

My guess is Ryan is trying to maximize revenue while maximizing the amount to tax relief. And it makes sense from a mathematic and revenue perspective.

It makes no sense from the political perspective.

The problem here is the preception that people making a top10% income (~$100k/yr) are "middle class". They aren't. And since in aggregate they make the majority of the income... they are inevitably going to be the subject of tax increases in the future (from both parties).