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It's 1981. A Republican president and his allies in Congress are promising large, broad tax cuts that will benefit the middle class and strengthen the economy.
It's 2001. A Republican president is promising broad tax cuts that will benefit the middle class and strengthen the economy.
It's 2003. That same president is promising another round of broad tax cuts that will benefit the middle class and strengthen the economy.
It's 2017. Yet another Republican president is promising broad tax cuts that will benefit the middle class and strength the economy.
With each new Republican administration, it is the same promise. With each round of tax cuts, it is the same result: vast benefits for the wealthiest Americans and a pittance for everyone else. There is little growth but widening inequality and an even starker gap between the haves and have-nots.
President Ronald Reagan's 1981 tax cuts, which inaugurated the pattern, slashed the top tax rate on investment income to 50 percent from 70 percent and the capital gains rate to 20 percent from 28 percent. "New tax benefits for business were so generous," Michael J. Graetz writes in "The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America," "that corporate tax receipts declined from about 15 percent to less than 9 percent of federal revenues." The law, he continues, "substantially cut taxes on income generated from wealth, increased opportunities for tax-free savings by upper-income Americans and greatly expanded tax-shelter opportunities for high-income individuals and corporations." It also "reduced taxes on transfers of wealth from the richest Americans to their descendants by exempting all but a small fraction of the wealthiest 1 percent" from the estate tax.
Over the next decade, Reagan and his successor George H.W. Bush were forced to raise taxes as a result of this profligacy. Reagan signed deficit-reducing tax increases in 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1987. Bush signed a significant tax increase in 1990, breaking his "Read my lips" election-year promise not to raise taxes.
George W. Bush rejected his father's fiscal heterodoxy in favor of the unrepentant supply-side orthodoxy of Reagan's first year. Sold as middle-class tax relief, the $1.7 trillion George W. Bush tax cuts -- passed in 2001 and 2003 -- were by and large a handout to the wealthiest Americans. As Graetz notes, they "reduced federal revenues from 20 percent of G.D.P. in 2000 to 15.6 percent in 2004," and when all the changes were phased in, "they raised the after-tax incomes of people in the top 1 percent by nearly 6.5 percent -- $54,000 on average -- compared to about 1 percent, or an average of $207, for the bottom 40 percent." In a 2017 analysis of the legacy of the George W. Bush tax cuts, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that the top 1 percent of households received an average tax cut of over $570,000 from 2004 to 2012. Not surprisingly, it also found that these cuts "did not improve economic growth or pay for themselves, but instead ballooned deficits and debt and contributed to a rise in income inequality."
We can basically copy and paste this dynamic from Reagan and George W. Bush to Donald Trump, who sold his 2017 tax cuts as -- you guessed it -- middle-class relief. "Our focus is on helping the folks who work in the mailrooms and the machine shops of America," he told supporters in the fall of 2017. "The plumbers, the carpenters, the cops, the teachers, the truck drivers, the pipe fitters, the people that like me best."
Except -- surprise! -- a vast majority of the benefits of the $1.9 trillion Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went to the highest earners -- millionaire chief executives and billionaire owners of large companies. Americans in the middle received an average tax cut of $910. Americans in the top 1 percent received an average cut of $61,090. The 2017 law also cut estate taxes and gave new advantages to real estate investors, direct benefits for Trump and his family.
We are now looking at another round of Republican tax cuts. Yet again the claim is that this will benefit most Americans. "The next phase of our plan to deliver the greatest economy in history is for this Congress to pass tax cuts for everybody," Trump said in his March 4 address to Congress. But as Paul Krugman points out in his Substack newsletter, this latest package is both a shameless giveaway to the rich and a ruinous cut to safety net programs for lower-income and working Americans.
The tax and benefit cuts are, in fact, two sides of the same coin. To pay for the more than $1.1 trillion in tax cuts for people with incomes above $500,000, the House Republican framework would cut $300 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- snatching food assistance away from millions of low-income families -- and $800 billion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, leaving an estimated 10 million or more Americans without health insurance, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The top 0.1 percent of earners would see their income grow; the bottom 20 percent would see it plummet.
It remains to be seen whether Republicans can pass their bill in the form they want. They have had some trouble moving it out of the House of Representatives and into the Senate. But if they can, it's hard to imagine that there will be much appetite to kill the president's "big, beautiful bill."
Which is all to say that it's 2025, and a Republican president has promised a broad tax cut that will help the middle class and strengthen the economy. I think we know what is going to come next.
What I Wrote
I wrote about the MAGA movement's conception of the future.
Trump and his allies are fighting a war on the future and, in particular, on the idea that our technological progress should proceed hand in hand with social and ethical progress -- on the liberal universalism that demands an expansive and expanding area of concern for the state and society. And they are fighting a war for the future insofar as this means the narrowing of our moral horizons for the sake of unleashing certain energies tied to hierarchies of race, gender and sexuality.
Now Reading
Pat Sobkowski on Article II of the Constitution as a suicide pact, for Liberal Currents.
The Supreme Court's enabling of presidential aggrandizement has made Article II of the Constitution into a suicide pact. The court's normative arguments for accountability have, unsurprisingly, led to less accountability in government.
Phil Christman on persecution, for The Christian Century.
Since January, God has been subtly, unmistakably saying yes to certain brave Christians, some of them mainliners. The form of that yes is MAGA's no. The Trump administration hates the fact that so many churches and parachurch ministries help refugees and immigrants resettle in this country, in direct obedience to a command found in both Testaments, and it hasn't scrupled to say so.
Sari Bashi on starvation and exile in Gaza, for The New York Review of Books.
Over the past 19 months of war, the Israeli military has destroyed civilian infrastructure—agricultural fields, water installations, medical facilities, power lines—needed to sustain life in Gaza. The devastation has intensified the pre-existing crisis created by Israel's nearly two-decade closure of the coastal enclave, which blocked access to educational opportunities, separated families and short-circuited economic activity. Now the Israeli military's campaign has left Gaza's two-million-plus residents—nearly half of whom are children—unable to grow crops, process food or pump clean water. Already dependent on humanitarian aid, they have become still more so—even as Israeli authorities have allowed lifesaving supplies into the strip at only a fraction of the volume the population requires.
David Sims on the American film industry's existential panic, for The Atlantic.
The issue of how outsourcing jobs affects the economy is obviously a valid one. It's just that, when it comes to American filmmaking, it's neither novel nor of the greatest consequence to the industry's health; decades have passed since the age of New Hollywood when it seemed like every production was happening in L.A.. Perhaps more pressing concerns especially domestic audiences/studios should be decline theatergoing . Instead Hollywood busy reckoning new alarmist proclamations.
Clare Malone on Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post ,for The New Yorker .
Dozens staffers have left The Post recent months . Earlier year ,after Philip Rucker ,a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor ,received offer from CNN ,Lewis scheduled meeting with him . It supposed final attempt keep high-profile journalist ,but Lewis canceled last minute . Hundreds staff members had sent letter Bezos day ,asking intervene paper . “We deeply alarmed recent leadership decisions led readers question integrity institution ,broken tradition transparency prompted some our most distinguished colleagues leave ,with more departures imminent,” authors wrote .
Photo of the Week
Every so often, I take a picture that I actually like, and this one fills the bill. In particular, I like that there are multiple layers to this composition, from the imposing background to the stray person biking into the scene, seemingly covered in shadows.
Now Eating: Pasta With Garlicky Spinach and Buttered Pistachios
One of those very quick meals you should have in your repertoire for when -- to use a random example -- you need to quickly feed hungry children with ingredients you have at home. (I happen to keep pistachios on hand. They are my second-favorite nut to eat.) The only addition that I have for this recipe, which is from New York Times Cooking, is to toss lemon zest in with the butter and put a squeeze of lemon juice into the sauce. Otherwise, follow the directions as written.
Ingredients
- Kosher salt and black pepper
- 12 ounces mezze rigatoni or other short pasta
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
- ½ cup roasted salted pistachios, almonds or hazelnuts, chopped
- 4 garlic cloves, chopped
- 2 tablespoons capers, drained
- 12 ounces spinach, stems trimmed to 1-inch length, or Swiss chard, trimmed and chopped
- Grated Parmesan, for serving
Directions
- Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook according to package instructions until al dente.
- After pasta has been cooking for about 2 minutes, melt the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the pistachios, garlic and capers and cook, stirring to keep the garlic from scorching, until fragrant, about 1 minute.
- Add spinach to skillet one handful at a time; season with salt and cook until wilted.
- Using tongs or slotted spoon transfer pasta directly into skillet along with some reserved cooking water; toss everything together over medium heat until combined well (about 2 minutes). Serve topped generously with Parmesan cheese!