Krugman/Chait: Simpson-Bowles is Regressive

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

November 17, 2010, 3:25 pm
Yep, It’s Regressive
PAUL KRUGMAN

Jon Chait takes another look at Bowles-Simpson, this time with numbers from the Tax Policy Center, and is disillusioned. As I surmised, it redistributes income upward: the bottom 80 percent of families would pay higher taxes than they did in the Clinton years, while the top 20 percent — and especially the top 5 percent — would pay less; not what you’d call shared sacrifice.

The only twist here is that the ultra-rich, the top 0.1 percent, who get a lot of their income from dividends and capital gains, would be hit by having these gains taxed as ordinary income. Even so, they would face a smaller tax increase than the bottom 60 percent.

This wasn’t the plan we’ve been looking for; on taxes, what on earth were they thinking?

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/yep-its-regressive/

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/79226/the-debt-commission-plan-no-deal

http://taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/displayatab.cfm?Docid=2846&DocTypeID=2

[Tansy_Gold]

1. Wrong word -- s/b Simpson-Bowles is REPULSIVE n/t

[xchrom]

2. Recommend