by Molly Ivors
(at right, an AEI Real Fiscal Conservative™, complete with Ken Doll package and G. Gordon Liddy 'stache. Standard model may not include all features seen here.)
Shorter American Enterprise Institute Whores:
While a few of Obama's proposals may be sensible, the overall package would be bad for the economy. Unlike rate cuts for high incomes or reductions in investment taxes, most of Obama's proposed tax cuts would do little to reduce the tax penalty on work and saving. For some households, the penalty on work and saving would even increase because the new tax credits would be phased out as income rises. These proposals wouldn't deliver the economic growth that incentive-based tax cuts would.
See? Only rich people deserve tax cuts! It's simple!
I may be confused: unlike Thers, I have not made the anthropology of wingnuttia my life's work, but I thought that the refrain from the red-meat saliva-drippers on the Right was that taxes are MY MONEY and I can choose how to spend it better than Big Government. If that's the case, then how is a middle-class tax cut bad for the economy? Suddenly, they've rediscovered their Inner Real Conservatives™ and are shocked--shocked, I tell you!--that deficit spending might be in America's Future!
Here's some news, boys. It's fucking here already.
They continue:
Obama would let key parts of the Bush tax cuts expire, causing the top tax rate on ordinary income to go back to 39.6 percent, up from 35 percent today. The capital gains and dividend tax rates would rise to 20 percent from today's 15 percent. Obama might also impose Social Security tax at a rate of up to 4 percent on wages and self-employment income above $250,000, starting in 2019.(emphasis added)
I know I'm in the liberal arts and all that, but let me get this straight: the top tax rate (rumored to begin at $250K) would return to Reagan-era levels, and this is a sign of the apocalypse? People who don't work for their money would have to pay marginally more (but still significantly less than Thers and I pay on our earned income) for their free money? And an imaginary President Obama might tax people a full three years after he leaves office? It's a miracle!
Enjoy the wilderness, you bastards. You might even have to get a real job!