Tag: Reaganomics

Blue states will be hit hardest by GOP tax plan’s limits on deductions

NOTE:  Minnesota CD3 Rep. Erik Paulsen supports this legislation.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), joined by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) on Thursday (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

The following article by Carolyn Y. Johnson, Reuben Fischer-Baum and Aaron Williams was posted on the Washington Post website November 2, 2017:

The GOP tax plan’s changes to deductions would hit people in blue states hard, with limits on popular tax deductions that would have the biggest effects on people with high property taxes and expensive homes.

The tax plan doubles the standard deduction to $24,000 for a married couple, meaning most people wouldn’t itemize their mortgage interest or property taxes. But for those who do, the popular mortgage interest deduction would be capped at $500,000 of the loan amount for home purchases made after Nov. 2, 2017, instead of the current $1 million cap.

The deduction of state and local property taxes would be capped at $10,000, and state and local income and sales taxes could no longer be deducted. Continue reading “Blue states will be hit hardest by GOP tax plan’s limits on deductions”

Reaganomics Redux, But Worse

The following article by Jeff Madrick was posted on the Washington Spectator website June 5, 2017:

The tax cut proposals first announced by President Donald Trump this April are, simply put, a fraud. They are about greed and politics, not economic growth or true tax reform. The policy has been proved wrong twice already. As a broadly faithful rerun of the Reaganomics of the early 1980s, Trump’s policies, should they be passed, will end as Reagan’s “voodoo economics” did, a failure by virtually any measure. George W. Bush’s sharp tax cuts in the early 2000s also failed to generate a strong economy, one that was driven by speculation rather than strong investment.

Reaganomics was the name given to the self-serving claims of the wealthy that a huge tax cut for them would pay for itself—by creating incentives to invest and work that would lead to renewed economic growth. Tax revenues would simply rise with a growing economy to plug the revenue hole. Some call it trickle-down economics. John Kenneth Galbraith put it scornfully in The Culture of Contentment: if you give a horse enough to eat, some of the kernels will fall to the ground for the sparrows. Continue reading “Reaganomics Redux, But Worse”

It’s Time to Take America’s Billionaire Class Head On

The following article by David Morris was posted on the AlterNet website February 2, 2017:

Combatting defeatism may be our single most important psychological objective in the wake of the election. We need to revive the spirit embodied in Barack Obama’s vague but hopeful campaign slogan in 2008, “Yes We Can.” At the federal level this is a time to expose, to educate and to resist. But at the state and local level we can act proactively to fashion strategies that both embrace progressive values and directly benefit those who mistakenly voted for Donald Trump as an economic savior. This is the first in a series of pieces focusing on what can be done.

The Giveaway

Over the next 6-12 months Congress will almost certainly give the richest 1 percent of the population an income tax gift totaling some $75-150 billion. The 1 percent, with annual incomes averaging $1.3 million, will capture 47 percent of the tax cuts for an average annual tax saving of $214,000 each, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center estimates based on Trump’s proposal, which does not differ dramatically from that of the House Republicans. Continue reading “It’s Time to Take America’s Billionaire Class Head On”