The Wall Street Journal (hardly a hotbed of wealth redistribution) published this interesting graph showing the tax load for various income levels under Bush’s tax policies versus Obama’s tax policies:
It turns out that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire will only hurt people earning more than $300,000 per year. And it appears as if keeping the Bush tax cuts in place would force people earning $60-150,000 to pay slightly more.
Even Alan Greenspan said the cuts should be allowed to expire.
Ezra Klein has a similar graphic in the Washington Post. Gee, the Post agrees with the Journal!
UPDATE: Centrist Zealot zeros in on the problem: while we all claim we want to reduce the deficit, we aren’t willing to reduce spending, and we sure as hell aren’t willing to raise taxes.
6 Comments
This is only going to confuse those who believe the opposite. Er, well, it probably won’t confuse them because even if they read it, it will strike them as fantasy and therefore easily dismissed.
Ezra Klein’s graph is cooler, cause it uses large balls.
Some other thoughts on the deficit from the Centrist Zealot is here…..
http://centristzealot.com/2010/07/deficit-hawks-kinda/
Now the Wall Street Journal needs to publish an article stating what Politifact.com confirmed recently: the common conservative talking point of saving small businesses from tax hikes – like most conservative talking points – is complete crap.
http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/aug/04/randy-neugebauer/lawmaker-claims-democrats-want-hit-small-businesse/
@Schmitty – enjoyed the clip on your lead page. Catchy words with neat graphics for emphasis. Very nice.
@ZJD – I hadn’t looked at Politifact.com for a while and I’m glad they’re digging a little deeper into their analysis of what folks are saying.
If congress is serious about reducing the debt and deficit, they need to let all the tax cuts expire, reduce spending and incentivize small and med business, cut out big corp tax breaks and run a tight ship for the next 5 years to pay down the debt. OK sorry, I’m awake now. What was I saying….
Schmitty, love your article on the deficit hawk pretenders. At least a majority want to reduce spending on war, but not anything else. Never underestimate the ability for Americans to want their cake, after they have already eaten it.