The middle class doesnt want a tax cut. It wants better government.
By Steven Pearlstein at the Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/09/27/the-middle-class-doesnt-want-a-tax-cut-it-wants-better-government/?utm_term=.50f21bbe6cc7
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One of the great canards of American politics these days is that the “struggling” middle class needs and wants a tax cut. It doesn’t. What it needs and wants after years of tax and spending cuts is more and better government services for the taxes it already pays.
According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the average rate of income tax paid by the American middle class — the 20 percent of households in the exact middle of the income ladder — has been going down for decades, and was at 2.6 percent of gross income in 2013, the last year for which statistics are available. For the 40 percent of household below them — what you might call the working class — the average household not only paid no tax, but because of refundable tax credits actually got money back from the government equal to 1.2 percent of income, helping to offset payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare) that averaged around 8 percent. To whatever extent the middle class is struggling, it ain’t because of income taxes.
Indeed, when Gallup asked Americans in April about the taxes they pay, a majority — 61 percent — said they felt the income tax they paid this year was fair. A Pew study found that only 26 percent of Americans felt they paid too much in taxes, in contrast to the 60 percent who felt corporations and the wealthy paid too little. A poll by Bloomberg found that taxes were well down on the list of Americans’ public policy priorities, with only 4 percent claiming it was their top concern.
Obviously, there’s nobody who wouldn’t enjoy the extra spending or saving that a tax cut would bring, but as the researchers at Pew found in April, what Americans would like even better is for government to spend more to educate their children, rebuild infrastructure, and provide health care and an income safety net for the elderly, veterans and the deserving poor. Despite years of politicians railing against “big government,” Pew found that as many Americans today wanted government to be bigger as to be smaller.
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