Millionaires’ Gain and Middle-Class Pain

I cannot believe people vote for republicans. They show their hand in everything they do, if only their voters would look. While I'm sure some people understand clearly what the agenda is and vote for it because they LIKE the plan to destroy our democracy and install...I don't know what. Do they want a corpocracy? (A society dominated politically and economically by large corporations).We are nearly there in some respects. Do they want an aristocracy? (Government by a ruling class) You could say we're nearly there too and this plan would probably accomplish it. Maybe a plutocracy? (Government by the wealthy) Well we've always had that to a large degree and with the strength of the lobbyists and the new Citizens United ruling it can only get worse. Andrew Fielding at the Economic Policy Institute looks at the plan:


 Ryan Roadmap proposes:
• Raising taxes only on those Americans making between
$20,000 and $200,000, while slashing taxes in half
for the wealthiest Americans. The middle class would
pay higher average tax rates than millionaires – an
unprecedented reversal of progressive U.S. tax policy.
• Eliminating taxation of corporate income and replacing
it with a consumption tax that would disproportionately hit middle-class Americans.
• Placing the entire burden of deficit reduction on
spending cuts. The Ryan Roadmap prioritizes dismantling social insurance programs, not balancing
the budget.
• Replacing Medicare and Medicaid with inadequate
vouchers to purchase health insurance in a broken
marketplace.
• Privatizing Social Security for wealthy Americans
and ending Social Security’s role as universal social
insurance with benefits tied to lifetime earnings.

There is much more over here.

Here's some takes on the plan:

The Ryan Tax Plan: Higher Taxes for 90% of Americans, Less Revenue for the Government
http://www.bullfax.com/?q=node-ryan-tax-plan-higher-taxes-90-americans-less-revenue-go

From The Fourth Branch:

Frankly, Ryan’s plan is a disaster. The roadmap was designed to take drastic measures to eliminate the deficit and, eventually, the national debt. Not only does Ryan’s roadmap promote draconian and foolish policies in pursuit of a goal of no national debt, it utterly fails to achieve that one stated goal. In fact, Ryan’s roadmap would put the US economy in a far worse position than it’s in today while making American lives miserable in the process.

According to the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, full implementation of Ryan’s roadmap would raise the debt to GDP ratio to 175%, a staggering number which would likely crush the US economy. For perspective, the US debt to GDP ratio has never exceeded 122% which is where the US economy was in 1945 following the Great Depression and World War II.

The article is here

Ezra Klein:

Paul Ryan's budget proposal does not balance the budget

more

All the republicans want to do is take from the middle and lower income people and give to the rich and the corps, even when they claim to care about balancing the budget. No reasonable person can believe they care about the budget, at all, considering their behavior since Reagan was inaugurated.

Here are charts showing increases to the debt and deficit under republican administrations and decreases under democrats.. When something is so consistent, no excuse-making by Heritage Foundation can explain it away. First, the debt:




The deficit:


The income gap: (the Reagan revolution)


At the website Who Rules America you can find charts and analysis telling us things such as the top 5% hold 62% of all the wealth our country had in 2007. The top 1% had 43%. Then there's this: Of all the new financial wealth created by the American economy in that 21-year-period, 1983- 2004, fully 42% of it went to the top 1%. A whopping 94% went to the top 20%, which of course means that the bottom 80% received only 6% of all the new financial wealth generated in the United States during the '80s, '90s, and early 2000. It can only be so much worse now. There is no way someone can claim with a straight face that they vote republican because they believe in balanced budgets, paying down the debt, fiscal responsibility, creating a healthy middle-class or creating a healthy economy. They don't create jobs either but that's for another day.