How One of the Biggest Tax Cuts in History Became Known as a Tax Increase

Ladies and gentlemen, allow Digby to present our self-absorbed media in action:

And on the subject of economics, their perspective is from the perch of the upper class, particularly those media celebrities who pretend they are men and women of the people, but who aren’t good enough actors to hide that they don’t want to see their taxes go up under the Obama budget.

Barack Obama has proposed a budget that, among other things, would reduce taxes on over 90 percent of the population and increase taxes on around 2 percent of the population. Flipping through the Sunday talk shows, it’s striking to see how uniformly wealthy media celebrities think it makes sense to characterize this is a “tax increase” or “raising taxes” and to leap immediately to a discussion of what the impact of these “higher taxes” will be. I think that the majority of people whose taxes are set to go down might be more interested in learning about the impact of lower taxes.

Gee, ya think?

As Sean Quinn noted one reporter saying after the briefing, “Did you notice all the questions about taxes came from reporters making over $250,000 a year, especially the TV guys?”

Jamison Foser tackled this today, especially the way in which the media acted like this was a brand new idea and not a central part of the President’s campaign platform:

What sparked this sudden concern about “class warfare”? President Obama indicated that in order to fund things like health care, the very wealthiest Americans (individuals who make more than $200,000 and families making more than $250,000) might have to pay slightly more in taxes, via the expiration of President Bush’s tax cuts for those earners. Under this plan, the wealthiest Americans (again, those making more than $200,000) would be subject to the same income tax rate they paid in the 1990s — when, it should be remembered, the rich got richer and the economy did quite well.

If this plan — raising taxes slightly on people who make more than $200,000 a year in order to pay for things like health care for people who don’t — sounds familiar, it’s because Obama campaigned on it for roughly two years. Conservatives, amplified by the news media, ridiculed it with labels like “socialism” and “class warfare” and used all kinds of scary rhetoric. And the American people voted for it anyway.

In droves, even. And, considering Obama’s popularity keeps increasing, I do believe everyone’s still happy with Obama’s plans, except for those poor dears who will be thrown into poverty because they’re paying a few extra percentage points’ worth of taxes on their already obscene salaries.

The vast majority of our nation’s media is about as ridiculous as the Republicon party. And it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if they became just as irrelevant.

{advertisement}
How One of the Biggest Tax Cuts in History Became Known as a Tax Increase
{advertisement}

One thought on “How One of the Biggest Tax Cuts in History Became Known as a Tax Increase

  1. 1

    I so very badly want to write something in response to the whole “a paltry half-mil won’t let us attract the best and brightest!” complaint from those poor destitute Wall Street firms holding out their hands for bailout money. I don’t know if I’ll ever have time to do it properly, but it would go something like this:I once (in 1998) made something like $80k for a year’s worth of work. It felt luxurious. I was socking money away at a rate of about $1k a month, and that was after supporting two households and a kid. (Mind you, my then-spouse was making another $20k or so, which covered most of the expenses back home… so we’ll call it $100k that felt luxurious and allowed us to maintain two homes and a kid.)$100k is the kind of salary which lets you drop everything you’re doing and be wherever the job is within two weeks. I know this from experience, because I did it for a mere $60k (which is roughly what the offered hourly wage would have come to if there hadn’t been absurd amounts of overtime thrown in).So, Wall Street… for $500k, I and my 4 smartest friends (who are probably each twice as smart as your “best and brightest” CEO, and actually know some math) will happily move to Manhattan and help you fix the failing business of your choice.What, you say? We don’t have the necessary experience? Right, like what you want now is someone experienced in the practices which got you into this mess in the first place.Oh, but we aren’t the “right sort” of people? Ah yes, that cuts to the heart of it, doesn’t it. What you really mean by “the best and brightest” is “the people who move in our kind of circles, who have the sort of influence we need”.You’re not really running a business, are you.

Comments are closed.