Goal post shift much fskimo?
Nope, just correcting the misleading or incomplete statements you're making.
I was responding to the fiction in this thread that this is a tax cut for the rich. It will only be so if it makes it to 2027+, and what are the odds of that?
The top 1% of households get 83% of the benefit from this tax cut which is by any rational definition a tax cut for the rich. You are trying to peddle the fiction that it is somehow not. If you want to argue that the top 1% of the population getting 83 times their relative share of the tax cut isn't a tax cut for the rich I'm excited to hear you make that argument.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publ...is-conference-agreement-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act
As for it surviving to 2027, the idea that we should evaluate a tax plan more favorably because future congresses will cut out the awful parts is ridiculous and you know it. If they didn't want those tax increases to be law then they shouldn't have made them law. They did, and so that's what they should be evaluated on.
The other fiction you're pushing, about lowering benefits, is a presumed increase in ACA costs due to eliminating single payer mandates, and then forcing low income earners out?
Perhaps you should read
this, from Time in 2016 before the tax cuts. Doesn't really look much different. 6% per year increase in cost each year for the next 10 years, borne by tax payers. ACA is and was a failure.
This is a non-sequitur. If you want to debate the ACA I'm down to do that as it's been a tremendous success but that's not related to this tax bill.
In any case you are equating not doing as large of a freebie hand-out to people who effectively pay no tax, with this being a tax cut for the rich.
Nope, I'm simply saying that this bill reduces incomes and benefits to low income households relative to current law. As for them paying 'effectively no tax' this is yet another fiction you're peddling where you try to make paying no federal income tax equal paying no tax. This is demonstrably false. In fact, when you count in fees and state/local/sales taxes those lower income brackets pay nearly the same proportion of their income in taxes as the rich do. (slightly less)
And again as we already covered since the top 1% of households get 83% of the benefit it's a tax cut for the rich.
It demonstrably is a significant tax cut for middle income households.
It is demonstrably not. About 44% of households will see their taxes reduced by more than $500 next year. About 40% of households will see their taxes go up. By 2027 only 16% of Americans will see a tax cut, and those are overwhelmingly the rich.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...r-the-senate-gop-plan/?utm_term=.eb67ce5cdbb3
How about this - the top 50% of income earners pay 97% of taxes. Any tax cut is not going to affect the bottom 50% much because, well, they don't pay taxes.
So in your world, any tax cut must be evil, right?
Yet another fiction! The top 50% of income earners may pay 97% of FEDERAL INCOME taxes, but there are many different types of taxes. As for a tax cut not affecting the bottom 50% that's comically ignorant. There are tons of ways they could cut taxes for the lower 50% if they wanted to, but they didn't want to. You could reduce payroll taxes, you could increase tax credits for child care, you could up the EITC, you could give more aid to states in exchange for them lowering their regressive tax rates, etc, etc. Hell, even if they wanted to just concentrate on people paying federal income taxes they could have started lowering/eliminating tax brackets from the bottom up. That way everyone who paid federal income taxes would get the same tax break.
Why is it that I can come up with all these ways to cut taxes for the bottom 50% yet all these super smart Republicans can't? lol. They didn't do that because they didn't want to cut taxes for regular people. They wanted to cut taxes for the rich. This is common among conservatives who are trying to find ways to rationalize their clear desire to give money to rich people as if they had no other choice. They had plenty of other choices that they chose not to make.
So in my world where I look at all of taxation instead of only the types that allows me to dishonestly frame my argument in favorable ways I can think of loads of good tax cuts. Strangely enough conservatives aren't interested in those. Gee, I wonder why.
