Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Republicans And Class Warfare

As Bruce Bartlett points out, Republicans participate in class warfare, they're just on the side of the rich:
I’m still waiting for the growth Republicans promised under George W. Bush after they cut the top federal income tax rate to 35 percent from 39.6 percent, the top rate on qualified dividends to 15 percent from 35 percent and the top rate on capital gains to 15 percent from 20 percent. All of these actions significantly lowered taxes for the rich without raising economic growth at all. Why will more tax cuts for these same people do any good now?
A January poll from the Pew Research Center shows that two-thirds of Americans see strong conflict between the rich and the poor, up from 47 percent in 2009. People are also more inclined to see the wealthy as having gotten that way through family fortune, rather than through their own hard work and education. And a number of polls show that Americans support higher tax rates on millionaires by a ratio of 2-to-1 or more.
I think the Republican nominee, especially if it is the ultrarich Mitt Romney, is going to have a hard time switching gears once he is no longer seeking the votes of just the G.O.P.’s hard-right base, which constitutes the bulk of primary and caucus voters. He is going to have to contend with some difficult facts, like those in a new paper by the economist Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley.
That just isn't going to help them having a guy with $20 million whose wife doesn't see them as rich.  What do I care, I want them to lose anyway.

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