Tuesday, September 20, 2016

99.6% of Paul Ryan's Tax Plan Benefits Top 1%

Steven Benen wrote Wealthy would reap a windfall under Paul Ryan's plan:

Ryan’s tax plan is crafted in such a way as to give 99.6% of the benefits to the wealthiest of the wealthy by 2025. The other 0.4% would be divided up across the other 99% of us.

This is a feature, not a bug, of the House Speaker’s approach to economic policy. Ryan genuinely believes that massive tax breaks for those at the very top will spur economic growth that would, in time, benefit everyone. For the Wisconsin congressman, trickle-down policy, its track record notwithstanding, remains the most responsible course to broad national prosperity.

If that means designing a tax plan that’s ridiculously tilted towards the rich, so be it. Anyone who questions the wisdom of such a proposal will face accusations of ‘class warfare’ – a phrase intended to end all conversations – as if Ryan isn’t trying to redistribute wealth from the bottom up.

In March, asked about tax reform, the House Speaker told CNBC, ‘I do not like the idea of buying into these distributional tables.’ In other words, Ryan doesn’t like any kind of analysis that shows who benefits most (and least) from his economic plans."

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