Mitt's tax plan: Cut taxes for the rich, raise them on everyone else

[Torie]

Beet, to pick at one of your points at random, unfortunately rank is a pyramid, so there are far more "overpaid" folks at the low end, than underpaid folks at the high end. And if the higher end folks are underpaid, why don't they quit, and get a job commensurate with the market for their skill set?  Maybe there are reasons they choose to work for less than they are worth, as it were. In which event, they don't need to be paid more, no?

Granted, state and local government employees is where the real abuse is, more than the Feds with the GS system, which does keep things from spinning totally out of control.  Plus federal employees in my experience do tend to be of higher quality in my experience than the state and local government all too often slugs - particularly at the higher end, where some of them are excellent.

And aside from pensions, not that much money really is involved relatively speaking. Which gets back to entitlements. Sigh.

[Torie]

Now we are sinking into an entropic semantical cat fight here.

[Torie]

I'd like to point out that this threads title is highly misleading. He doesn't intend to raise taxes on everyone other than the rich, just slash entitlements.

This is false. He wants to gut the safety net because he doesn't care about average people (or couldn't be bothered to care), he wants to eliminate the deductions that help working people (like the mortgage deduction), and he wants to end the estate tax (which disproportionately benefits the wealthy). How is the thread title misleading again?

Because eliminating deductions and credits isn't the same thing as "raising taxes", even if a higher burden for some is the cumulative effect.

That is a ridiculous distinction. If he got his way, people at the very top would pay less, some a lot less, while people in the middle pay more. 'nuf said.

Maybe. I am not conceding that yet, in part because Mittens denies it. We will get to the truth in due course. Stay tuned.

[Torie]

Not true.  There is no tax increase on anyone other than the "rich" in his plan.  Where did that study come from anyway?  Romney's plan calls for making the Bush-era rates permanent and moving toward a flat tax.

If you bothered to read the OP you would see that the plan comes from the independent Tax Policy Center, "a joint project of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute."

Romney's plan calls for a repeal of the Estate Tax (God knows why) which disproportionately benefits wealthy people and investment cuts that also disproportionately affect people like him. So stop claiming ignorance and faux outrage and start reading the links that are posted rather than merely spewing your Fox talking points across threads you know and understand nothing about.

Most wealthy Americans know how to avoid the Estate Tax through estate planning, so it is primarily the middle class that gets hit with it.  And besides, it hurts businesses and the economy.  It's not about what's "fair" based on somebody's definition, it's about doing what's good for America.  And putting undue burdens on our economy because somebody thinks that we need to promote somebody else's definition of "fairness" is not good for America. 

How many middle class folks have a net worth of two million or more (the exemption number if the estate tax law is not amended, starting next year, assuming you use the standard trust device to effectively double the exemption if married, which come to think of it, might mean it bites on gay middle class folks a bit)?  This particular Pub has a certain fondness for the estate tax.