Paul Ryan has always been a fan of trickle down economics. It's a cornerstone of his economic plans. But how can corporations avoid paying that supposed 'trickle down' capital to the people at the top (shareholders) instead of people further down the chain?
In the real world it works like this: Corporations post profits. Shareholders vote on how those profits will be distributed. Some of it goes back into the corporation, some of it pays dividends to shareholders. With a big tax break to corporations, a certain percentage of that newly realised profit will perforce be redirected back to shareholders. That's not avaricious capitalism or dewy eyed idealism at work, it's just the reality of how corporations apportion money. So it's a payoff to Wall Street, no matter which side of the political/economic spectrum you fall on.
Paul Ryan's notion of tax cuts to corporations is foundational to his economic theories, and as just illustrated, completely misses the point. It's not that there aren't morally upright CEO's who won't bow to the lure of posting corporate tax cuts as dividends, it's that they can't avoid it.
26
Republican tax policy since Reagan:
Economy in bad shape: Tax cuts for wealthy donors.
Economy in good shape: Tax cuts for wealthy donors.
USA at peace: Tax cuts for wealthy donors.
USA at war: Tax cuts for wealthy donors.
Social Security in bad shape: Tax cuts for wealthy donors.
Social Security in good shape: Tax cuts for wealthy donors.
Big budget deficits: Tax cuts for wealthy donors.
Small budget deficits: Tax cuts for wealthy donors.
Trump, Pence, McConnell, Ryan, aren't leaders or government officials, they're just bag men for their wealthy donors and American oligarchs.
151
Thank you Prof. Krugman and NYT for not focusing on Trump and the Trump tax plan!
The elephant in the room has in fact been the elephant in the room. Republicans have for more than 40 years been proposing or suggesting if not rhetorically arguing for brazen tax breaks for the rich. They do this because the rich bring home the bacon to the party. The geniuses (I use the word loosely) in the party decided long ago that it was a heck of lot easier to tap a few millionaires+ for campaign contributions than try to reach out to millions upon millions of nickel and dimer core voters.
All they had to do is craft a message that covertly siphons off the money of the middle class to pay for huge tax breaks for the rich. It is not hard to do when the rich control the media and can act as propagandists for the party. It should be extremely easy to do it when you control the Congress and the Executive branch.
Quid pro quo should be banned from politics but how do you prove it? Plus democrats figured out that the Republican strategy works and now they are on board.
Bottom line is that the American People suffer from a corrupt political duopoly which given the political divide in America, few are willing to admit.
38
Dr. Krugman,
"professionals" at CBO.
After digging in on this proposal. I have concluded that the team that built this worked overtime to produce the worst proposal that could be produced. It fails in every way I can think of. It does not address the economic problems that we face and makes the serious income and wealth inequality problem worse. This is reverse Robin Hood on steroids.
Because it reduces home equity, the primary investment of Americans, this proposal runs the risk of a cataclysmic shrinkage of the largest portion of the GDP. Think about the materials and movement of goods and jobs and services that are fundamental to homemaking in our society.
It removes a major rung of social mobility for people. What were they thinking? Clearly, it smashes what most educated people believe is fundamental to the so called market based economy.
Our economic problem is income and wealth inequality. This proposal makes it worse. We need more brackets not less to create a clear progressive slope to the tax curve. I strongly believe that we need to lift the cap on social insurance and then project the new income and reduce the social security payroll taxes.
If we want to improve the GDP rate we need to mobilize our government labs to improve the commons, e.g. new sources of clean energy, more efficient transport, and more protection of our coastal populations from flooding and foul weather including hardening of electric power and communications infrastructure.
39
If we can afford this, then we can share it equally. But this tax break overwhelmingly goes to the rich, so obviously we cannot afford this.
20
Anti-estate tax (taxing wealthiest 0.2% of people, bad), but anti-state and local deductions (taxing almost every other income tax payer twice, good). Yes the federal tax system is progressive, but almost every other state and local tax is regressive.
The party of logical fallacies is definitely in charge.
24
"Lets call the "tax plan" what it is: Thievery. Plain and Simple. Robbing the poor to pay the rich. That is what the Republican Party is all about. They are owned and operated by the super-rich fascists who have taken over our country. Donald Trump is just a putrid cherry on the fetid sundae that is the GOP. And the low education white voters are scarfing it all up without a single question.
52
The Republican Tax Plan, "Hang the Deficit, Buy Now, Pay Later" means that generations ahead of us will be saddled with debt beyond our lifetimes.
But Hang On....not discussed too widely:
Corporations will be switched to a Territorial Tax System "of sorts" ?
So if "Corporations are People", why is there no information about how people, American People, also working and earning overseas, will ALSO be switched to the Territorial Tax System?
We have been lobbying for this system, paying taxes only where we earn the money, scraping the taxation on worldwide income, eliminating the mind numbing paperwork that goes on all year. Only the USA and Eritrea does this. What about us?
9
One justification argued for lowering the corporate tax rate is to encourage repatriation of vast sums which the make and keep outside the country in order to avoid the current tax rate. Is there anyone around this discussion who knows the ins and outs of this issue to be able to clarify the merits of this issue? Without any relevant expertise, I could imagine a couple of things to talk about: (a) The claim is that such a repatriation flood in domestic corporate hands could go far toward creating the jobs necessary to alleviate the economic plight of the "left-behind-by-the-economy", working class voters who are understood to be the heart of Trump's base. But I, personally, don't know of any such effect from such tax giveaways, with the more usual (if not universal) effects being more toward higher income and assets for (and more investment speculation by) the 1%, rather than investment in meaningful, productive, infrastructure, education, health, housing and the other things that those voters have needed increasingly during the last 30-years while their earnings stayed functionally flat. (b) Since it is (at least to me) inconceivable that there will ALWAYS be the capability (if not the desperate need) of at least some other countries to maintain lower corporate tax rates than ours, is there some lower U.S. corporate tax rate which, along with other advantages of doing business here, that actually could be effective to achieve the repatriation?
7
This is not a new idea of the past few days, but I think that all of us who are against the new tax bill should be talking about "Why not take this $1.5 trillion and invest it in directly creating new jobs in the United States without depending on corporations who currently have little incentive to do so?" If I am betting my $1.5 trillion on corporations growing new jobs or on actually creating new jobs via infrastructure build out, in vestments in better education (we are near the world bottom on education now), innovation, etc., I will take the latter every time. It is 100% safe assuming Trump can be kept out of the equation.
18
Be Careful What You Wish For
Some time ago, saw Lawrence O'Donnell interview Harvard Law Professor, Lawrence Tribe ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBFzd6q6kHI
While I don't see Donald J. Trump lasting a full four-year term as president of these "United" States, I am petrified to imagine President Michael Pence.
I believe a Mike Pence/Paul Ryan/Mitch McConnell coalition would be a very potent and a very negative force in American politics. Therefore, I hope Trump can "hang on" until very close to the mid-term elections. Perhaps by then the American electorate will get its head out of the sand, inform itself, and get rid of more than a few of those wonderfully gerrymandered Republicans.
If there has ever been a time in which we should be careful what we wish for, it is now."
Of course I live in one of the most right-wing towns in America (most of my neighbors have Mort Künstler originals hanging over their mantels), and my next-door-neighbor, knowing my perspective, responded ...
"Since declaring for the presidency, Trump has proven the pundits wrong on every controversy. We 'lock her up and drain the swamp" voters want an outsider. We will never abandon him."
Can you just imagine Pence, Ryan, and McConnell running the show?
Being careful what I wish for is becoming ever more difficult.
18
Krugman. On Fire!!!
10
Paul Ryan would have benefited from military service. I remember a sergeant who used to yell at us all about the Six Ps: Prior Planning Prevents Pi.. Poor Performance. Yup, Paul Ryan never served in the US Army.
16
Not only are the Republicans proposing this warmed over tax bill, they are also now going to try and dismantle the ACA in tandem with it (according to the NY Times) What a Christmas bonus for the wealthy the Republicans have planned. For the rest of us, it will be lumps of coal. There will certainly be plenty of it available for all our stockings, yet another bonus for the coal industry.
19
The Republicans continue to peddle the ridiculous theory of tickle down economics even though it has never worked and never will. Corporations will only share profits with their shareholders, not their employees. The super rich will continue to sock their money away in off shore bank accouts and invest in the stock market. This always results in the middle class paying more taxes to make up for lost revenue. I will never understand why low and middle income people continue to vote for Republicans.
43
And Republicans thought health care reform was hard. LOL!
17
I'm fine with limiting the mortgage interest tax deduction, since it's a regressive policy that lowers taxes for people who own homes.
I'm also fine with lowering the corporate rate to whatever the "effective rate" is that companies seem to achieve through loopholes anyway. Let's simply the code and stop picking winners and losers.
Dispense with the rest. Republicans can still claim they lowered the corporate rate, and the mortgage thing brings in more revenue. The deficit shrinks.
3
Clearly there are substantial financial issues which need to be addressed if the United States is going to provide windfalls for the nation's wealthiest investors and corporations.
One idea which hasn't received sufficient consideration (even as the Trump administration is renegotiating NAFTA) would be for the United States to acquire and recapitalize our neighboring countries, Canada and Mexico. Wilbur Ross and Steve Schwartzman, among others, are well-versed in the financial techniques necessary to complete these transactions. President Trump could apply his legendary deal-making skills here.
Why waste time on multi-billion dollar investments involving corporations, when we could be doing LBO's of entire countries? The transactions could be financed with equity from the U.S. Treasury, with debt financing provided by the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund. After acquiring the countries, private equity value-added management could prepare the countries for sale, possibly to China or a club deal involving several countries.
Profits from the sale of Canada and Mexico could easily pay off the U.S. national debt. And people, let's think really bigly! What about a leveraged buyout of Germany and Japan?
11
A "win-win-win situation", Mr Krugman, is where the proverbial chicken gets plucked. The "Cut, Cut, Cut Act" is similarly a silly pitch; and all of its babies must go bye-bye-bye now.
Presenting the 'aw shucks' evidence for going $1.5T deeper into debt for the certain enrichment of corporations, US Rep Kevin Brady (R-TX): "We can change the direction of the economy. But have to act. The status quo, leaving things as they are, I don’t think that’s an option for families."
That was the Ways and Means Chairman's best attempt to answer PBS Newshour Judy Woodruff's question: "How do you know that cutting taxes on these employers is going to lead to more jobs, more hiring, and higher wages?"
The Republicans have no answer because there is no answer.
When bankers give Ayn Rand as required reading to new employees, the fate of capitalism is linked to their new duties to pull any and every trigger to "earn" the most-profitable foreclosures.
Now it is Paul Ryan's turn to prove his commitment to laissez faire economics, and to pull that trigger for corporations. Will Ryan succeed and become further inured to Citizens United? Or will America snatch the bald from infant Brady's head?
11
I find it amazing how Trump voters/GOPers, tethering on the bottom half of the economic rung, are excited about the bomb their president and congress is about to drop on them. They obviously didn’t learn from George W. Bush and the hardships he brought on this country.
Guess it’s like the battered spouse, who refuse to grasp reality.
15
In a live webcast today for all our company's employees, someone inquired if the proposed tax windfall for corporations would mean higher salaries for staff. There was a lot of hemming and hawing and finally the response was "Well, that would be a decision at a much higher level than mine (she being the President of the division)." I take that as a no.
27
And why should tax cuts even be on the table? Many are saying that it is a distraction from the Russian affair investigation.
14
I swear, I'm going to change my name to Cassandra because EVERYTHING I said this administration and congress would do, they've tried to do. They have only been stopped by tump's severe narcissistic need for attention and the competing GOP narrative that got him into the white house. We all know that after elections Populists need to help their loyalists yet every impulse in this party is to stick it to their white, poor, and rural base to help their donors. It's so weird but I'm terrified that tump is going to get pushed out by the donor class and Mike pence will be installed. Without the drama will anyone care what we cassandras shout to the sky or will we be called chicken littles until the sky really does fall with the bottom dropping out of the market? We just went through a recession can American democracy survive a depression? Can the world? Uhg, I wish I could just hibernate until November of 2020. Wake me up for the midterm and I'd be good.
9
Stop the STOP (Screw the Ordinary People) Bill. Great rallying cry for the opposition. The left needs to come up with names that are descriptive and to the point. For too long the right has been the ones to use language to their advantage.
12
We do not recognize a home-grown insurgency when it is right in front of us. We need a fecal expert to replace Paul Ryan.
The fiscal minds are available to help solve the fiscal problems. There just isn't a lot of space for them once all of the lobbyists fill the seats.
One wonders what it is going to take for us these interlopers for what they truly are.
P.S. Creepy picture
3
I predict this so called tax reform bill that clearly favors the rich at the expense of fthe middle classes will be the Congressional GOP's Bridge Too Far. Once again it is time or ordinary citizens to take to their computers, phones, and stationery, and tell their elected officials what they think if this bill. It may require some fast street demonstrations and civil disobedience for the Trump Administration and the GOP Congress to get the message that (a) the American public is not as stupid as they think, and (b) American voters out number Elected officials by several magnitudes and they will be replaced should they carry on this charade. When this bill goes down to defeat, the Trump administration will have bupkiss to show for a year of the GOP in charge of everything. This rampant GOP greed grab must stop.
12
The Republicans are nothing more than thieves looting during a catastrophe - the Trump administration. What a disgusting bunch.
14
As a a Senior my current Standard deduction and Personal Exemption total $11,900 and with the new tax bill they will total $12,000 Standard Deduction and Personal Exemptions is eliminated. In the current tax bracket I will save $15 on that $100 difference. Now I have to figure out where I can spend the savings. Then again, my taxable income may put me into a new tax bracket which could either save me some money or cost me a lot. This whole new tax plan stinks.
19
I think elimination of personal exemptions for children is the first measure they've ever proposed to discourage people from procreating.
1
You will be able to buy a new home with this hundred dollars after the collapse of the real estate market following this atrocious bill.
7
Paul Ryan claimed that he had a marathon time of under four hours. If you look at his actual time it was over four hours. This man just loves lying. Be careful people, we are in for a very, very bumpy ride. It is going to be hell.
24
On wonders if Ryan cheats while catching fish with his bare hands by cranking a generator to shock them silly first.
3
Paul Ryan lies, the republicans lie, the media lie, the DNC lies..show me whom can we trust. Paul Krugman lost our trust a long time ago.
4
"Why do any of this?" Remember, the Republicans have always been drooling to privatize any current government program except defense (including Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and utility programs). If they slash funding from all those programs, then of course those programs will falter and fail, giving the Republicans the opportunity to say that they can save these failing programs by privatizing them. Not that different from Trump's trying to ruin the ACA by cutting off funding for it and by not allowing advertising for it.
13
These tax breaks for big corporate tax dodging companies isn't going to fix things here in America. We have already been outsourced for jobs by China, who makes just about everything that's useful in America. America is now only a service provider for other Americans. So I ask how is a tax break for the wealthy here going to change our trade imbalance? There's no correlation; no as usual we are getting screwed again by the powers that be.
12
Paul opines, "And why should tax cuts even be on the table? We have budget deficits, not surpluses, and lots of unmet needs for future spending. U.S. taxes are low, not high, compared with other wealthy countries. Predictions that tax cuts will lead to rapid economic growth have been wrong time and again. And by large margins, voters want taxes on corporations and the wealthy to go up, not down."
The simple answer, Paul, is that we are taxed too much already. There is no limit to how much you would want to tax corporations or whoever you would label as "rich". They are convenient targets; it's easy to get the average American angry at how much they make. You perpetuate the "class warfare" aspect of the Democratic Party.
The problem, Paul, is the structure of our tax code. This latest attempt at tax cuts does nothing to counter decades of lobbying by any and every special interest group you care to name. Business exemptions, subsidies, and the like distort markets. We get stupid taxes like the Estate Tax that try to make up some of the shortfall. Personal exemptions increase taxes on other groups. No one has the courage to look at all these exceptions and eliminate them. In exchange, we could have a much simpler and lower tax rate.
All you can see Paul, is the need for more spending more of other people's money. Tax cuts may not lead to rapid economic growth, but I contend that those people know better how to spend their money than does the federal government.
2
The fact is, we are fairly lightly taxed in this country compared to other leading industrialized nations. And Krugman isn't ranting about raising taxes on workers, just the opposite.
And massive tax cuts for corporations that are posting record profits exacerbates income inequality and shifts the tax burden from corporations to the middle class.
If the middle class has less money to spend, the economy slows.
You get these simple points, right? Now, trying posting something that isn't total nonsense.
16
You get other people's money through public spending yourself.
3
What is "too much" ? Is there a number ? Doesn't it depend on countries needs ?
I would guess most of you right wingers had their pom poms out and cheered us into multi trillion dollar wars and disastrous life long health and psychological lifelong needs that those who served require. Who pays for that ? I know I know-none if you supported those asinine decisions at the time.... So disingenuous.
8
First Billionairecare for health care. Now Billionairecare for taxpayers. That's what we get when we elect a Congress of mostly Ayn Rand ideologues and kleptocrats.
17
Little did atheistic Ayn Rand imagine that she would become a goddess in Ryan's juvenile cult.
10
I am one of the lucky ones that has some money to save. If you give me a tax break how do I behave? I save that money and invest it overseas. Why overseas? Because my job, my house, my business, my social security, and my pension are in the US, denominated in dollars, and tied to US performance. Thus, I am massively invested in the US already. To diversify risk, I must invest my "excess" income overseas. It is well documented that this is how the wealthy behave, every time you give us a tax cut. In contrast, if you cut taxes on the poor, they immediately spend the money in the US, stimulating the US economy, and they are strongly incentivized to earn more. This is how I behaved when I was poor. If you want to stimulate the US economy then you either build infrastructure inside the US that cannot be moved overseas, or you lower taxes on the bottom 50% of earners. For the sake of all our children, and our country, it is wiser to give my tax cut to the poor, to the middle class, and to infrastructure. Come on Republicans; take back the party from the global plutocrats and work to build America by investing directly in average Americans. Global corporations do not need your help, and neither do the rich. Until then, give my vote to the Democrats, who are the only available patriotic capitalists left to vote for.
29
Some time ago the Republican party lost its way. Some became involved with the Koch brothers, others with the Tea Party, some with the Evangelicals. There are ultra-conservative party members and a very few who still put country before politics. In other words, the GOP is a house divided against itself and thus unable to get anything substantive done.
Paul Ryan's behaviors in Congress indicate that he cares more for increasing the means of the wealthy and taking away from the neediest Americans. I still recall how it was reported that he had dreamed while in in college of depriving the poor of healthcare. I'm sure he dreamed of much more than that. When a person hasn't experienced any need or want in his life, it is particularly hard for him to have compassion on those who have had to struggle. I'm afraid this might be true of most of the members of the Republican party.
This doesn't excuse them, though, because any human being of any intelligence is capable of imagination, and if they talk to their constituents they could learn first hand what their experiences are - if they cared.
The more I listen to these Congress members, the more I feel that they are living in some alternate reality of their own making. They are trying very hard to manipulate the rest of us into believing their version of it. I'm sorry, but just because something is said out loud, doesn't make it a fact. If this tax bill passes it will be an incredibly destructive travesty.
23
The GOP is a collection of fools who propose utterly irrelevant actions to achieve magical effects.
6
Not to mention, the end of the STUDENT LOAN INTEREST DEDUCTION! The republicans kick people where it hurts to squeeze out even more riches for the upper class! We should be working towards the opposite to help our students get out of this life destroying debt, not make it worse. Oh Wait! We have Betsy Devos who just got rid of any protections our student borrowers had under...dare I say it?? OBAMA! The Republicans are single handedly destroying a whole generation of our young.
23
Betsy wants you to home-skule your own kids.
8
Making Goldman Sachs, Wall St., and Hedge Funds Great Again!
17
A rotten stinking cheese head slippery lying eel who looks more like he should be gracing the cover of GQ magazine then passing himself off as some sort of fiscal wonderkid wonk!
11
The tax proposal is a political document - not any meaningful government revenue plan. It is designed to secure wealthy support AND, MOST IMPORTANT, HARD WIRE POLARIZATION. IT PITS COAST AGAINST HEARTLAND, URBAN AGAINST RURAL. It aims to buy the most from our constitution's weaknesses: the Electoral College, the Senate and state's ability to gerrymander. It is a plot to further promote the tyranny of the minority.
24
Yes, it is the war between the states waged by tax policies. The Congress simply will not intervene to prevent states from undercutting each other.
2
I don't think stenographers taking instructions from plutocrats count as "congressional leaders," any more than do the fellows scurrying behind Kim Jong Un with notebooks and pencils at the ready.
19
Well here's the thing: by ballooning the money held by the wealthy, without changing anything in the material reality that money grows out of and interacts with, this tax change will force a very rapid readjustment in markets in order to bring the new numbers back into relation to the underlying material facts of production and exchange. The most likely pathway to reconciling the newly re-cooked books with the underlying material reality is another asset bubble followed by a massive crash. That process is a perennial phenomenon in capitalism, and happened most recently in the US just before Obama got elected (though of course not for the first time). This time, if it happens again (and why shouldn't it? Life is not a huge accident; it follows rules), it will happen to a nation whose government is deep in debt.
Choose your own adventure: then what will happen? Maybe monkeys will fly out of Don Imus' nose. Maybe this is all just a dream. But ... probably we're looking at serious wreckage in a lot of people's real lives.
Whatever, right?
18
With multi-national corporations currently generating record profits, somebody please tell me why they need even more tax cuts? Let us not be naive, their duty is to their shareholders, not to the American people! They simply will use their exaggerated profits to buy back more shares of their companies as a gift to their loyal share holders and generate higher returns for them. There are no safeguards whatsoever in this Republican proposal to insure that these profits will translate into higher wages and history has shown this time and time again (think Reagan voodoo economics).Beware America, Greenspan was right when he said corporate greed will bring this system down. And Elizabeth Warren was equally right that this bill is a gift to the corporate donors that paid for the Congressional races that put these people in office in the first place. Finally, somebody tell me how gifting more inheritance money to the 1% helps Make America Great Again? Clearly, Emperor Trump has no clothes!
26
These board members who vote to buy back shares are using the profits of all shareholders to concentrate their own holdings. This is why I vote proxies against share buybacks.
6
At some point, the grownups need to oust the GOP from political power and understand that, to have a functional civilization and society, you have to have taxes. That taxes are the price you pay for having all those things that make civilization possible.
The GOP has peddled pixie dust since Reagan onward, the mythology of cutting taxes and raising revenue, which amounts to the snake eating its own tail.
You want a massive military? You have to pay for it with taxes. You want a social safety net? Taxes. Roads? Taxes. Infrastructure? Taxes. Etc.
The Pentagon has been able to avoid serious budgetary scrutiny, but at some point, the standing army colossus either needs to be reduced in size to free up money from that particular lockbox, or taxes need to go up.
The US is lurching toward a monumental economic catastrophe, and the GOP is accelerating that slide with their quixotic and corrupt policies.
14
Oh, they've been looking at the military for a decade, I can tell you. Looking at the tricare benefits for active duty and retirees, the defined benefits package (which they already cut for soldiers that enlisted after 2011 from 50% of base pay after 20 years to 40%) and the VA in general.
Nothing from the f-35 that has cost us already 1.56 TRILLION DOLLARS AND STILL CAN'T FLY IN THE RAIN but you know, the expendable things.
8
No repeal of the perverse, unjustified "carried interest" loophole. And the medical expense and student loan deductions are sacrificed so that the greed beyond greed hedge-funders and private equity plutocrats can retain their tax scam. Time to grab the pitchforks citizens!!!
25
This kind of 'thinking' is part of the far right's attempt to pit ordinary Americans against each other. When we no longer have the idea of a common good, of an American where all are welcome, and where people are valued (I know that's rosy, but at least that was the IDEA), then fewer and fewer people understand that taxes are for the common good: for roads, for infrastructure, for education, for all the things we depend on the minute we walk out the door into our shared world. Most of the people who receive far reaching government subsidies do not understand that they are subsidized, and, we're all subsidized one way or another. Once we are cut off from each other and it's every man for himself or herself, well, who do we know who epitomizes that?
5
Again, four presidents cut taxes - Harding, JFK, Reagan and Bush, Jr. and the results was an economic boom in each case.
3
https://aneconomicsense.org/2016/04/22/the-impact-of-the-reagan-and-bush.... I can keep going with links but my research says you are incorrect.
5
Was that a typo? Did you intend to write b-o-o-n?
Big cuts to the corporate tax rate were supposed to happen if all of the fancy corporate tax loopholes and avoidance gimmicks were eliminated as well. Then it would be fair for small and larger businesses. Simpler. More transparent.
But no, the loopholes and gimmicks stay, AND a cut in the corporate tax rate. Paid for by - guess what - a HUGE increase in the national debt and reductions in deductions for the middle class. And when the GOP gets religion again about deficits (when a Democrat is in the White House) guess what will get cut to pay for the deficit? That's right - benefits for the middle class!
This is simply a shift in financing the nation from capital to labor. Under a GOP government. What a surprise.
7
I am glad you still have the stomach to beat this drum Paul. Thank you.
You said:
"We have budget deficits, not surpluses, and lots of unmet needs for future spending. U.S. taxes are low, not high, compared with other wealthy countries. Predictions that tax cuts will lead to rapid economic growth have been wrong time and again."
Why anyone believes this bill is good for us, I will never know.
Will we ever have an educated populace able to see through this ridiculousness?
11
I used to feel that these Republican Senators and Congresspeople appeared incapable of guilt for some of their policy recommendations, and ignoring the obvious re 45"s incompetence and dangerous temperament... but they equally appear unable to feel shame!!! Their tax cut proposal is truly SHAMEFUL!!!, and they don't appear to notice it. At least not publicly.
7
"And why should tax cuts even be on the table? We have budget deficits, not surpluses, and lots of unmet needs for future spending. U.S. taxes are low, not high, compared with other wealthy countries. "
I've been saying this all along. Tax cuts with a projected $660 billion deficit this year is just plain crazy!
What about infrastructure spending?
What about improving education?
What about job training for those displaced by technology?
This stupidity that is GOP "policy" is mind-numbingly foolish.
Republican Voters: Please STOP voting for these mad men!
9
The presumption of Ryan, et al, is that money spent by government does not contribute to new wealth creation nor demand for goods and services which will produce the need for more jobs and better pay. The unstated presumption is that if the Federal government does not spend money on health care and other social support programs, these costs will no longer be borne by the commons, the whole country. Both concepts are fundamentally wrong. Government does not have a parallel set of fully governmentally owned industries and service companies which are robbing business from the private sector, the money spent by government are for work done by those in the private sector. The need to take care of people in need will not cost less nor go away just by taking government out of the equation. One only has to look to how things worked before the social support programs existed to see what to expect. Basically, the money returned to the well off and corporations will be used by them for their advantage and according to their preferences. The costs shifted to the individuals for health care et al will be addressed by them, their families, and their communities. The discretionary spending by these people will be reduced accordingly. If they are a significant portion of consumers in this country, that will reduce potential demand that additional investments must find to provide adequate returns for businesses and investors. Without that increased demand, no additional profits.
2
Paul Krugman when there is a Democratic President:
"Deficits don't matter"
Paul Krugman when there is a Republican President
"It's gonna blow up the deficit"
Make up your mind and stick with or you are no better than Trump, Ryan, and the rest.
3
Sounds like the opposite of the Republicans who despised deficits....until last November. Hypocrites.
6
How in the world did this all come to pass? My public education from the 60's has never allowed me to fathom the republicans and their religious conservative followers. George Orwell's 1984 come to life. Lies heaped upon lies. Con men one and all.
20
As an upper-middle class earner living in Manhattan, my taxes will skyrocket.
I'll lose a large portion of my property tax deduction, my entire state and local tax deduction and am likely to see the value of my home go down as property tax and mortgage deductions will now have caps that are ridiculously low for NYC thus making home ownership less desirable here.
My wife and I have 3 children and we will now lose all 5 exemptions. We itemize so doubling the standard deduction won't help us. What a sham!
14
Geez, We you not for raising taxes to help the poor? Seems like this does that.
1
Ryan is able to sound like he knows what he is talking about, in part, because Congressional committees do not hold hearings with experts testifying about the potential effects of major legislation. E.g., when the attempt was made to repeal Obamacare, representatives from the health industry, health insurers, economists, etc. were not called to testify what the effects of the bill would be over time. Instead, the bill is prepared in secrecy and shoved out for a vote. This leaves everyone to read, listen and watch social media, Fox news, etc. for their information.
It is easy for Ryan to sound knowledgeable because it sounds so inviting when you claim to have a found a tax reform path that saves everyone money with no loss of services. But, because it sounds so appealing from the promotion of it, hucksters like Ryan are able to convince people of something a moment's thought should tell them is not possible.
I am not even sure Ryan thinks he is an economic expert. I think he knows that he needs to present himself as such to make headway. Let's hope he is as bad with his salesmanship on this as he and Trump were with healthcare reform.
9
It's my understanding that by using the reconciliation loophole the Republicans don't need 60 votes in the Senate. Yet Mr. Krugman's research is usually quite sound. So what gives?
5
Why are we plagued with such a grossly awful party and president? Will PK ever talk campaign finance?
The big corporate donors call the shots, pick candidates and market them, and over time this establishes norms.
Our norms are different from other capitalist democracies that have voted down their rw parties from ultimate power, even if they got more % of votes than before. These countries have more fair tax rates, adequate to provide health care for all, low cost education, child care benefits, paid family leave----all as a national policy. Not left up to the whims of their states, or corporations.
In the US the stage was set for a con man, with the public being conditioned over years to go for a Reality TV star and party.
The trajectory of our democracy and living standards is down. None of our columnists and TV star pundits ever tackle campaign finance and the politics that results.
Where is a media advocate for what America had in its past ----fairer taxes, stricter govt regulations, strong unions, apprenticeship training and low cost state university tuition? That’s what made the middle class. Now the foundations are torn out from under them, while they’re manipulated by phony political ads swamping our media, and paid for by billionaires.
Do Americans know that other capitalist democracies ban or regulate private ads and private donations to elections? Btw, they've had health care for all at lower cost---for generations.
Make the connection, PK.
10
Uppermost in the minds of the plutocrats is the final destruction of democracy and the permanent installation of an Imperial regime and Emperor. This can't happen till the plebs are back in their cages and that means the utter destruction of the once powerful American Middle class. Paul Ryan is doing everything he can to accomplish this end.
6
Enough said by others on the details, such as they are.
This time around, I find the tax proposals as frightening as the lead - up to the 2nd Iraq invasion - as full of lies, Plus, if they get what they want, the results are going to be just as infernally difficult to unwind.
A recipe for increasing the massive divide in wealth; false promises of reduced taxes for all, carrying an underlying threat of destruction of Social Security and Medicare.
That one promise that drew bipartisan support back in January - bringing US infrastructure into the 21st century? Forget it. There will be a public auction of what's left. to the highest bidders ( likeley Chinese)
7
It took less than a year--for Krugman to flip his hat around backwards. When Obama was busily doubling our national debt (from 10 trillion to nearly 20 trillion), Krugman was the greatest cheerleader for debt accumulation. His argument???...if there's no inflation, borrow, print and spend to your heart's content. He likened it to "investing" in the economy. "Keep doing it until inflation rears its ugly head", he assured us. And anyone who dared disagreed with him earned the malicious label of "Debt Scold".
But now things are different. Republicans are in charge of the government--and the economy--and now Krugman is seriously alarmed that our debt might increase further. Krugman is now the nation's number 1 "Debt Scold"--and that makes him a supreme hypocrite.
I'm not sure how any intelligent person can take this guy seriously. Twice a week Krugman comes here to insult, berate and make sport of anything the Republicans want to do. He is nothing more, and nothing less than a supporter of Progressive ideas, and a shill for the Democrat party.
2
Deficit spending during a depression (winter) and running surpluses during the good times to prepare for winter is classical Keynesian practice (and it's generally considered to be mildly conservative to those that have not dug in on politicizing the economic debate). I know this because Paul Krugman wrote it long before you got here to critique what you do not understand.
4
I'd like to see Dr. Krugman dedicate one column after the other to what each of the provisions in this "bill" will mean for actual taxpayers (as opposed to those using loopholes to pay zero, like Trump).
For example: I've just learned that the bill intends to phase down and out the 250,000/500,00 capital gains exemption for homeowners who sell their houses. That means that when our family sells a home we have lived in for decades at the end of our lives, for example, to use the funds to pay for a nursing or retirement home, we will be paying on its appreciated basis. Whereas, if we were to die before needing that nursing home, our heirs would inherit the full value of the house outright without having to pay any tax on the appreciated value.
How nuts is that?
Also, there's nothing in this bill that curbs the carried interest loophole that allows hedge fund managers to pretend that their income isn't income and therefore to pay tax at a much lower rate. AKA the Mitt Romney less than 15% tax rate benefit for billiionaires.
Please go carefully through the bill and show how it will shaft families with a lot of children, folks with horribly high medical expenses, students drowniing in debt and on and on.
Then also show how rich Ivanka and Don, Jr. and Eric will be when Dad shuffles off his mortal coil. (I'm assuming they will stiff Melania . . . .)
8
The current republican congress isn't just awful leadership, they now border on treasonous as they look the other way while the president continues to act like a third world dictator. Allowing him and supporting him when he calls for the prosecution of Hillary Clinton means they support him undermining the separations of power. The tax bill is nothing more than the congress telling the toddler in chief that he can have candy instead of dinner. It doesn't hurt that they're also giving a huge wet kiss to their donors either.
5
This latest scheme by republicans is simply "benefits cuts" dressed up and called "tax cuts". Let's not dignify this con by calling it "Tax Reform", let us call it by it's rightful name "Benefits Cuts".
Republicans have a long history of couching bad public policy in doublespeak. Let us not let republicans get away with it once again by calling their budget-busting, benefits-cutting plan "tax reform for the middle class". Their actions have but one name: Looting.
If you can't pass a healthcare plan that cuts benefits to the most vulnerable citizens of the country, pass a tax plan that busts the budget and then come in the back door, under the guise of balancing the budget, and force the country to make those same cuts.
5
We have given power in the hands of republican children of the US Congress. Trump, as Child in Chief is competing very hard to be the most unruly of all. Who says we need a bull in the china(OOOPs Russia) shop?
2
I am surprised and disappointed that no one has attacked the number of companies and/or individuals who pay NO taxes.It doesn't matter what the tax rate is if you are exempted. Companies, like GE, Trump Assoc. , and numerous others are able to work the laws, rules, regulations devised by lawyers, agencies, charities, churches, etc so they are immune or minimally taxed.The majority of the people taxed the most do not have many of these immensities at their disposal.
1
It's a basic Bait 'n Switch: measly middle class tax cuts (a few grand here, a few grand there) to buy off the rubes; but a significant drop in the corporate rate WITHOUT(!!!!!) closing the SAME loopholes corporations have always been able to use to lower their Effective (ie actual) tax rate! And while they're at it, let's also get rid of the estate tax entirely.
Without even going into the particulars of the proposal, this thing is a con job simply on principle. Even worse, looking at states which have tried this (Kansas, Ohio, Missouri, North Caroline) it's been an abject failure.
This thing needs to be stopped before the GOP turns the entire nation into Kansas!
4
However the politics turn out... We better hope that they turn out to doom this as they turned out to doom the repeal and replace efforts.
If passed, the damage to the deficit may pale in comparison to how it will exacerbate the widen gap of wealth inequality and its consequences.
4
You said most Americans "need to realize that his party’s congressional leadership is pretty awful, too." Actually, it seems they do. My recollection is that the Congress has even lower approval ratings than the President.
5
I realize the entire Republican party is awful; I have for years and I heartily wish the rest of the electorate would wake up and smell the coffee too! The trouble is, between Faux news brainwashing and Republican gerrymandering, it's not enough for the majority of the public to despise them and want them thrown out. We need more like a 70 or 80 percent howling, pitchfork-waving majority. --Of course, the way the Republicans are going, that may happen.
6
There is one good thing to come out of all this. At least we now have an accurate picture of how many "naive marks" there are in this country, and we can begin revising our education model to correct it. One place I hope this begins: quit focusing on nonfiction exclusively in high schools. It may seem counterintuitive, but understanding patterns of human behavior through the study of literary characters is vital to recognizing how those qualities are manifested in our documents, policies, campaigns, and politicians.
8
Countries tend to end up with the government that they deserve, and the US currently illustrates that beautifully. The qualification would be that this is brought about, for the most part, by that section of the US society that, election after election, insist in voting in favor of a small set of more or less ethereal concepts, and directly against the majority of their own interests, while probably feeling very virtuous and patriotic about it.
3
When your family is fighting with itself, leaving the money-vault open will hardly save lives. That is the order of priority that Mr. Trump has put the economy in.
He doesn't care, he never has, he never will. If Congressman Ryan has gotten away with voodoo economics for the last 7 years, the next 7 days will hardly stop him.
My point is always : How do we make them pay for this fraud on a government scale ?
I don't know ! We need Democrats to behave like Trey Gowdy or David Nunes is shouting loud and long to tell the electorate how they are being conned.
Nobody on the horizon yet to do that. And so again the nation forgets. And its history repeats itself.
I'm sick of being sick of it. The Democrats have no clear solution for winning the House and Senate and Presidency the next time.
( And I suddenly have deja vu all over again. I was saying this at this time last year. And nothing has changed in America. Welcome to the new world, same as the old word. :-) )
2
Will the current formula for determining what percentage of social security benefits paid to retirees is subject to federal income tax be retained? Currently,it maxes out at 85%. Also,the slightly higher exemption for seniors and blind seems to have been eliminated. I don't see any mention of these items. I think seniors should understand how their taxes would change. Hopefully, before this law is passed.
4
As I opened the comments section, there was the number 666---and I had just been thinking these Republicans and this president are becoming terribly ghoulish.
Someone hand Donald Trump a Constitution. He's disappointed to learn he isn't in charge of the Justice Department. He wanted to use it to get even with his many enemies. He's bummed out.
He hates that independent judiciary as well---and can't believe he can't tell judges who rule against him they're fired.
His executive orders repeatedly stopped in their tracks. Wow. 10 months of this is exhausting.
4
Unfortunately this nation and the upper mid-west, such as Wisconsin and Michigan have proven to be full of rubes and naive marks. Ryan is popular, even in a gerrymandered district. Trump used rural resentments and racist appeals to convince enough voters in the Midwest to deliver him an electoral college win. Ironically, despite being a pair of liberal college educated elites who can't stand Ryan and Trump, my wife and I did some back of the envelope/rough calculations and guessed we will probably see a net benefit based on our own circumstances. I suspect a fair number of us urban educated elites will discover the same thing. Meanwhile, working class whites in rural areas will likely see their rates rise or stay the same, while the government services they depend on decline. I am reminded of the saying attributed to Nelson Mandela "resentment is the poison YOU drink, believing it will kill your enemies." The white working class is going to discover this at some point. For their own sake, I hope it is sooner rather than later.
5
OK so let's say Trump gets impeached or otherwise removed from office. We go on to Mike Pence. And if Pence slips on some banana peel, we get - Paul Ryan! What a country.
6
You do realize that the reason we have a con man is because the DNC conned us all big time in broad daylight for more than a year. We are all being punished because the Democratic Party was less than ethical or honest.
3
As an older American living off of the investments of a dwindling retirement account, I will do well under the GOP tax plan; that is as I currently understand it. My taxable income will be reduced and I'll have more money for discretionary spending. My life will improve. I can't say the same for my country, however.
Programs will be cut that help poor and moderate income people with families to support will be cut to pay for my tax reduction and the elimination of the inheritance tax. Not good. To Ryan and Trump and all those true believers who think it best to feed the birds by feeding the horses I say enough! Forget it. I'd sooner see the the tax code stay where it is. If the real economy continues to perform well and produce more revenues for the federal government, I would prefer to see that money spent on paying for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
2
Investment, hiring, increased wages caused by tax cuts for the rich is the myth--the 'clarion call'--of Republicans since Reagan in 1980 (and his still trumpeting 'economist,' Arthur Laffer). It was an easily salable doctrine that wasn't disproved other than later when it failed to produce the desired results and tax INCREASES under Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama did appear to vitalize the economy and produce jobs.
There is, of course, a way to try to make tax cuts work--for corporations anyway: Tie them to required future hiring and investment. A difficult seeming proposition. And deny cuts to the rich who cannot promise that.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/09/28/i-helpe... I’m providing links for those who believe the GOP tax cuts to corporations and the very wealthy will create a thriving economy.
Questions I sent to my Georgia Congressman and Senators :
__
"Question:
What if the corporate tax code gave tax benefits for each employee? That would encourage employment and help lower some corporate tax bills at the same time.
If you had a "living wage" correlation, with a cap to prevent windfalls from exorbitant wages, it might encourage higher wages for those who need it to meet their specific area's cost of living.
This would encourage all people to work and for employers to hire, hopefully not at the expense of either corporations or individuals. Hopefully it could help address the government's budget and debt without pulling the rug out from under individuals or corporations. Another good outcome might be that if employees had more money to spend, it could boost the overall economy once again."
Question:
Why not address the tax loopholes of hedge funds? Why are they special cases?"
__
I'm just a layman, but my first proposal seems one avenue to help working people with a direct cause and effect tax legislation.
On a different (scary sounding) note, during the tv splash presenting the GOP tax plan, the President mentioned that indeed, come to think of it, local news is trustworthy media. Is he already funneling people to Sinclair?
1
Never heard of Bobby Franklin and the National Venture Capital Association, but this tax plan hues to their vision. Call it the National Vulture Capital Association.
1
Thanks again Mr. Krugman. It seems that there are a few, very wealthy individuals who are calling the shots for the Republican Party. Ryan, McConnell, and others must tow the line and to their puppet masters they're dispensable. Get a right wing majority on the Supreme Court; Republicans installed in most state legislatures through gerrymandering; pass laws to suppress the left's ability to vote; pack the Courts with right wing judges; eliminate business regulations to permit exploitation of people and the environment; and get a big tax cut for the rich. Mission accomplished.
4
Like most people, I haven't studied the tax bill in detail, but I've seen enough analyses to figure that it will probably raise my taxes. However, one point I'm sure of is that it will hugely increase the budget deficit, which is absolute insanity. By all means run a deficit when the economy's in recession, but when it's doing well, it's time to pay back.
4
the gop trickle down plan is based on the laffer curve that has been the main stay of republican economic policy for the last 40 years. the laffer curve predicts that as tax rates are lowered from very high levels federal revenue will increase due to increased economic activity. now while it is true that economic activity will greatly increase from a large decrease in tax rates (a tax rate of zero would very greatly stimulate economic activity) the laffer curve also predicts that tax revenues will at some point fall because the decrease in revenue due to the tax cuts will not be made up by the increased economic activity. furthermore the large increases in the budget deficit and the national debt will at some point result in hyper inflation and economic stagnation or even a significant recession. part of the republican tax plan has therefore always been to drastically reduce federal spending to reduce the impact on expanding deficits that would result from their tax cuts. we know from experience that given the ever increasing levels of spending on the military, medicare and social security federal spending will never be reduced enough to make up for the lost revenue from republican tax cuts. so even though there is not a shred of evidence to support the laffer curve lets all accept it as a proven hypothesis and also accept as fact its prediction that government revenues will fall as a result of cuts to the tax rates and that this will inevitably result in economic disaster.
"it is true that economic activity will greatly increase from a large decrease in tax rates (a tax rate of zero would very greatly stimulate economic activity)"
This is way overstated if not outright false. Even Laffer only claims we'll have a great change in activity when we address the very highest marginal rates, not the middle of the road stuff. Obviously we get zero activity at 100% tax rate but I don't think there's much evidence to show we're anywhere near the point in the curve where revenue would decrease or have a great affect on economic activity due to rate cuts (that experiment has been tried and failed repeatedly).
The old saying goes - in life you often find that your heroes have feet of clay
1
The only wages going up when corporations get their tax cuts will be those of CEOs
4
I don't know about the rest of you, but I am sick to death of a minority view running this country. This is what the Electoral College and gerrymandering does to a democracy.
4
Especially gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is 100% wrong, but this electoral measurement system versus another option is more of a marginal affair. I also prefer no EC, btw.
3
Why should we wealthy residents of NYC get write offs for 1m dollar properties and our local taxes? How is this correct?
The USA has been very good to me .... don't mind paying more. What about the new 6% surcharge on income above 1 million? .. noisy is talking about that. Also fair ...... Don't feel sorry for anybody loosing the +500k mortgage deduction the local taxes ...maybe the states will start watching what they spend.
I don't agree w/ the medical tax -- and legitimate medical device should be tax free.
1
Unfortunately, this whole so-called Tax Reform con job (aka tax CUTS), comes down to one thing.....what's in it for me ?
When it comes to major political issues in this country, it most always seems that the 'mighty dollar' wins out. It's like every person for themselves. Unified purpose, togetherness, one country, the greater good, etc., what a joke! Big Oil, Corporations, Wall Street, Secret Billionaire Donors, Fund Raising Scams, and even 'significant donations from a Foreign Government'....this is what it's all about.....The 'Benjamins', as Biggie Smalls so deftly put it (may he RIP). So, if this sounds all doom and gloom, it's intended to. To have to pick and choose which part(s) of this dead carcass you like, clearly demonstrates the disgraceful position we are in as tax paying citizens. But don't fall for it. The only option available: Get your butt out and Vote !
3
The current Republican leadership and bill writers must have been those "Hail fellow, well met" college students who didn't study anything until the night before the final exam when they would try to cram a semester's worth of learning into an all-nighter. And then they showed up for the exam on lots of stimulants and unjustified optimism that their too late too little preparation would work. What the hay, they just passed the course didn't they? Do you want to know what happened to the really smart kids who studied and did well on the exam? They are not in politics - they are making big money in business. And they are getting all the tax breaks. Now THAT is smart!
2
I hate to tell you this, but it doesn't matter that "most" Americans think Trump is a terrible President if we continue with our current voting system and the DNC continues its current path of divisiveness.
Nearly 3 million more Americans voted for Hillary over Trump, but she still lost by over 60 Electoral College votes. We will need more Americans than ever before to head to the polls and vote Trump and the GOP out of office, but the DNC continues its attempt to court the left of party Bernie supporters. Coupling this with Donna Brazile's revelation, gerrymandering, vote-suppressing voter ID laws, and all those who happily lap up fake news, the GOP will certainly retain their majority and Trump could even win a second term.
2
Dr. Krugman, please explain this again with better words than mine:
When the wealthy, get a tax cut, and the middle class tax rates stay the same, that is an effective increase in middle class taxes. This is because it shifts the relative amount payed by the middle class and the wealthy. And when the bill comes due, it rests more on the middle class.
We should be outraged when someone else gets a huge tax cut.
2
“Why do any of this?” Great question.
Do the wealthy elites and large industries, who have all been extremely successful for years while the rest of us barely made ends meet, do they want to rock the boat of their prosperity for the sake of satiating their greediness at the expense of our health care, education, retirement homes and a Ryan political stunt?
What do they expect will happen when they push the base of the economic pyramid, they lazily sit upon, to the breaking point? The breaking point is what Ryan seeks with his cruel health and economic stunts on behalf of greediness.
3
corporate tax rate will be reduced @ 43%, from 35 to 20 per cent.
Typical family will "ENJOY" a benefit of @ $1200/year.
How much would that a middle class family benefit if their personal income tax were reduced by the same 43% as corporate rate?
The difference is the clearest indicator of the actual beneficiaries, and the size of Mr. Ryan's "deserved break" that is provided.
3
Trump should release his tax returns so that we, and Congress, can decide whether this plan would benefit the country or Trump and friends.
6
It’s more than a con job-it’s blatant armed robbery and they are armed with legions of lies.
4
Jobs.
Yes, we are in the age of marketing and sales where the ignorant pitchmen & women (but mostly not women) get foisted into positions of power. I guess when everything is a commodity, the no-nothing salesmen are in charge and it's all bait and switch.
2
Am I to understand that this Tax Plan Proposal was chiefly written by Kevin Brady, a man with no degree or previous occupation in economics, mathematics or business?
2
Brilliant!!
1
Here's how it works:
The so-called Republican Party seeks only to gerrymander and lie. When they end up in power (apparently, Americans find simplistic too irresistible), they don't need to have any ideas or legislative efforts in hand -- the lobbyists will write the laws and so-called Republicans will pass them.
Why? They need only to serve their political donors. They don't need to worry about deficits, because they lied about the latter's importance when a Dem, especially a black Dem, is in office.
This has been recent history with Regan and Bush "blowing a multi-trillion dollar hole" in the deficit and transferring the payback to the middle class, which takes years and another Dem administration to accomplish.
"Hooey" is way too polite. A true description of these people, their "process" and the outcome is unprintable.
2
With a 1.46 trillion cut in corporate taxes by reducing the rates from 35% to 20% and a limit of increasing the national debt by no more than 1.51 trillion, they are locked in. Anything else that is a cut, will have to be compensated by increases another place. After the cut in corporate taxes to the benefit of the foreign and domestic stock owners - the rest is a zero sum game. Whatever they hand out to one group will come out of the pockets of another. Some of that game is hidden by provisions that give something which will then be taken away 5 years later. They are expecting that gullible journalists will report the effects in year 1 and not mention what happens down the road. They have this immediate one time tax on corporate tax cash abroad which give them wiggle room to hand out early tax cuts to everybody but not enough to let them be long lasting (however, the tax cuts for their corporate sponsors are permanent).
3
Continued erosion of the middle class will not increase growth. It is essentially impossible when people don't have any money.
Here's something that all those middle class working Americans who voted for Trump might want to think about: how likely is it that a tax cut plan tossed together by the Republicans in Congress that is projected to add $1.5 trillion to our nation's debt over the next 10 years on top of another projected $9 trillion in budget deficits, and (presumably) signed into law by Trump himself, supposed to make America great again.
How exactly is saddling our nation with another $10.5 trillion or more of additional debt going to put our economy into high gear on a sustainable basis and create millions of high paying jobs for blue collar Americans?
One thing for sure, the wealthy in America are going to get a really big tax cut. At least Trump's supporters can take some comfort in knowing that none of this will have been Trump's fault. The fault will clearly lie with the Republican Congress and the lousy plan they put together and gave to Trump to approve.
The Great Tax Con.
2
It logically follows the big DNC con.
2
Here where we go again “ trickle down economy “ .
The GOP hasn’t learned anything from the past republican economic “fiasco “.
1
I like to begin with a "back of the napkin" analysis before getting into the minutiae of policies.
Rough numbers: Approximately 120 million taxpayers will assume $1.5 trillion in new debt so that taxes on capital (rich people, mostly) can be reduced. Tax policy currently favors capital is over labor. Lower tax rates, no payroll tax, etc.
$1.5 trillion ÷ 120 million tax payers = $12,500. For a married couple, this would be $25,000.
Republicans require that my wife and I assume $25,000 of debt to finance a tax cut for the wealthiest 1 -2% of Americans. There is really nothing further to discuss.
I thought it responsible to pay down debt during good economic times. Perhaps I should emulate the Republicans and increase debt rather than paying it off when I make additional money. " SAD !"
4
Exactly. Silver lining: when the middle class pays ALL the taxes, maybe then we'll have an epiphany that war is wrong.
The Predator in Chief knows that he can shoot the middle class in the head on wall street and no one important will care. He is the only one that counts if the rich want tax cuts and Ryan? He's as much a policy wonk as Drumph is, but like the Maniac "President", only the Great Stupid (us) believes him.
But Sarah Huckabee explained it all so clearly the other day: "If 10 grifters walk into a bar,.."
1
In the end, Obama-care, taxes and NAFTA will remain as they were and Ryan and McConnell will be replaced.
Call it providence!
No one in the media seems to be talking about the proposed repeal of the estate tax in any detail.
Who gains?
Trump's net worth: $3 billion
Betsy DeVos: $600 million-plus
Jared Kushner: $240 million
Steven Mnuchin: $150 million
Gary Cohn: $250 million
Wilber Ross: $325 million
Rex Tillerson: $240 million
This is the elephant in the room.
4
Yet more evidence that the intelligence of the typical American voter cannot be underestimated.
Krugman has become so partisan and so dismissive of whatever Republicans do that he has lost credibility.
1
Even though I agree overall with Mr. Krugman, I'm disappointed about today's opinion piece. I was hoping for some key (given limited space) SPECIFIC shortcomings of the tax proposal. This was mainly an ideological rant, with no specifics (or pointers to evidence).
We have reached the point where we can comfortably say of anyone who follows this party that they fall under one of four categories--1. gullible 2.misinformed 3. masochistic, 4. awful.
2
Just ask yourself, what would be the easiest thing if you had $20,000,0000 in the bank.
If I was worth $20,000,000 I would not start a business. I would not hire anyone. I would invest some of that money in real estate, I could buy homes for cash and make them into rentals. And with the rest of my wealth I could simply live off the interest especially once interest rates go up. It’s simply the easiest way to grow wealth. And notice how “work” is not part of this equation. No work, no growth.
2
Reducing the corporate tax rate and the rate for small businesses is somehow going to be a boon for workers and their wages. Seriously? The founding principle of the free enterprise system is the law of supply and demand. How does putting more money into the pockets of corporations and small business owners create demand and greater economic activity? Will there all of a sudden be a shortage of workers for well paying jobs? Will there be a magical increase in consumer demand for products and services? Increasing earnings for those least likely to spend it as a plan to spur economic growth is about as useful as giving ordinary people raises with the condition that they aren't allowed to spend it.
1
My taxes go up under GOP Tax plan... just like they intended. Punish Blue State citizens.
1
Too much credit calling these men, and especially Trump, con men. Con men are slick and sophisticated able to get you to willing give them your money without you ever suspecting a thing. Trump and Company are not con men.
They are frauds! And simple ones at that.
Brilliantly stated as usual. In today's United States, Paul Krugman's writing ideally would be front page every single day, as well as required reading for every primary and high school across the country
2
From the Economist in 2015:
“MY BIG fear,” says Paul Ryan, an influential Republican congressman from Wisconsin, is that America is losing sight of the notion that “the condition of your birth does not determine the outcome of your life.”
And off we go on the road to a permanent aristocracy with no estate tax in six years.
2
I suppose it would almost make sense if we had the luxury of excess spending that we could cut, and then redirect those forgone expenses toward some sort of tax reduction. But the tail is so clearly wagging the dog here: the desperate need to give money to those who already have it, and then an equally desperate search for some poor sap to take the money from.
So we're the saps. The GOP seems to think their job is to afflict the afflicted, and to comfort the comfortable.
"Most Americans realize that Donald Trump is a very bad president; they need to realize that his party’s congressional leadership is pretty awful, too."
No.
Most Americans realize that Donald Trump is a very bad President;
they need to realize that both parties are fundamentally corrupt an paid for by donors and corporations.
BOTH parties.
Barack Obama oversaw the largest wealth transfer to the rich in the history of the world and he made the Bush tax cuts permanent (82% of it).
Congress is working AGAINST the people, not FOR the people these days.
One doesn't expect anything else from Republicans. Their 'philosophy' is really simple: they represent the rich and big business. Period.
Sadly, the Democrats had an opportunity in 2009, when they controlled Congress, to do something about it, but failed miserably.
They also could have had Bernie be President, but Hillary and the DNC rigged it and thanks to Donna Brazile (who wants to promote her book, of course) we all know it now. And after rigging it, Hillary still lost to Donald J Trump in the general despite having the media and the establishment of both parties in her corner and outspending the Con Don 2:1.
Yes, she lost to a moronic, genitalia-grabbing loudmouthed reality TV host with an itchy Twitter finger.
So, yeah, blame the Republicans and Trump, but the Democrats are definitely helping them get their agenda passed through their corruption, complicity and sheer incompetence.
2
Amen. At this point the democrats look like the bigger cons, they kept on their con game for a whole year. They weren’t even going to tell us and the big wigs in the party are still dodging the truth. Makes me want to throw up on the DNC and their partners in crime, the liberal media. The thing called decency left our country when Debbie decided to sell the party to the clinton machine run by a podesta.
2
The exploding deficit will be perfect justification for slashes to Social Security and Medicare in a few years. Then the uber-wealthy right wing will be really happy.
2
"And by large margins, voters want taxes on corporations and the wealthy to go up, not down."
But we voters don't matter anymore, because the Republican party answers only to its wealthy donors, corporations, and the tired trope promulgated by Ayn Rand. They no longer "represent" the people they are supposed to serve; they view them with contempt because most of them aren't wealthy (remember Mitt Romney's 47%?). According to Ayn Rand, it's their fault that they're not, which justifies giving huge tax breaks to the "contributors" (i.e., the wealthy). Paul Ryan is an evil, evil man, and this bill deserves to die a slow, tortured death that ends his career.
3
"Paul Ryan, ... an obvious phony who nonetheless convinced the ... news media and the political establishment — that he was a brilliant fiscal expert."
That's right, but he is also not very smart not to know that everyone is not so dumb to see he's heartless. But as Donald Trump, he has something that attracts too many to value him as worthy of their admiration. I couldn't figure out what that something was.
In any case, if it were up to this Ayn Randian Ryan he would end most of the safety net measures, from Social Security to Obamacare. He's still a young man. His presence in the Congress as that of Eric Cantor (who fortunately was beaten in a Primary) is bad for the public. I'm glad Dr. Krugman is bringing this up often.
1
bottom line to me: The GOP has given up their right to be called a responsible, conservative political party. Until, that is, they can use deficits again as a wedge issue.
Perhaps the House Republicans were just putting a sticker price on their cream puff used car (HR 1). Mostly, it will be negotiated away. IF YOU DON"T ASK, YOU'LL NEVER GET!!!
Some simple graphics might help show the world what this is about. Cut through the words to make a clear picture. Consider providing some to go along with Elizabeth Warren's response...Wells Fargo a biggest recipient of benefit, an example of what really gets rewarded by this administration. For shame.
1
It's white south taking revenge of our healthy and forward looking Blue society.
It's a civil war in disguise. And unfortunately our Blue GOP members are instrument in supporting it.
So here we have a budget proposal developed behind closed doors with zero Democratic input, by the party fronted by a notorious con man who will not disclose his own tax filings, and who bragged during the campaign that his skill at avoiding taxes makes him "smart." Are we surprised that it is all designed to benefit Donald and his ilk?
1
"more or less by definition"
More nonsense by Krugman, less facts. Most middle class yax payers will see cuts in their taxes. Some in New York, and California may not. Cry me a river.
I finally got it Professor Krugman! Obama’s theme was Hope and so is this new tax “reform” legislation. We let corporations keep lots more money and “hope” that they raise wages and hire more people.
So its official, our entire economic strategy for the next 3 years is not based on some wonky economic course of action, but rather the entire blueprint is based on “hope”.
Wow, what comes around goes around.....thanks Obama!
1
while on the road my wife and i were watching late night TV..... on of those stations that run endless reruns of walker texas ranger with lots of ads for drugs and lawyers suing drug companies in between. what should appear on the screen? and ad for Trumpy Bear! a "teddy" bear with ferrel blonde hair and a bizarre look on it's face! we though we had accidentally switched to saturday night live! the commercial showed an ex- marine riding his harley with trump bear! it showed an old lady lovingly combing trump bear's hair! my point is that passing a bad tax bill off on these people is easy! just give them their Trump Bear! He's on THEIR SIDE!
If Repubs think the $1.5 trillion hole this budget will blast into the future debt is going to pass muster with Rand Paul, they are not only drinking the kool aid but inhaling it. Flake, Corker, Paul to my math add up to 3 who will likely be against. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, where are you? And can't forget John McCain, the former POW who lost his hero status because he was captured so now owes nothing to no one. Ryan will find it is hard to win a shell game with only one cup to in which to hide the pea.
Let's cut to the chase: Billionaires are now Oligarchs.
Perhaps if the MSM begins employing that simple replacement, voters will catch a bit more of the "odor" of what is happening to our country.
Look, the oligarchs love Ryan's tax plan, right?
Just sayin'.
"Fewer" than 60 votes, please God! :-)
To quote today's NY Times
Mortgage Change in Tax Bill May Shake Up Housing Market
"The Republican plan to rein in the interest deduction is a blow to builders and owners of more expensive homes, "
That punishes the rich, and is not " a policies that only benefit a tiny elite."
The tax bill is more complex, than Mr. Krugman, owner of three homes (at Princeton NJ, Riverside Drive NY, and a beach house in St. Croix) depicts in his article.
Indeed it punishes him, and other millionaires owning multiple residences.
In the middle of a budget fight decades ago, the great economist Robert Lekachman called those constructing the Republican budget "a gang of thugs."
Without the right language it's impossible to tell the truth. Dr. Krugman, "con man" is too polite. You know the truth. Please speak it more strongly.
1
Kansas Kansas Kansas. Trickle down has never worked.
2
Ryan as an obvious political construction of a fraud.
2
All Republican representatives have to do the bidding of their oligarch donors or they will simply get primaried the next time they are up for reelection: There is always some right-wing lunatic willing to take their place, and the vast cash resources of the oligarchs will guarantee a win.
1
I appreciate your description of Ryan and other republican pretend leaders.
If you have a way to warn the voters before these greedy bozos take office
I for one would appreciate a heads up.His
Beliefs that are never mentioned like the Rand economics , anything approaching facts about HOW to destroy health care without killing people ,not that he cares if we die.The impossible old promise to put a chicken in every pot,without stealing mine and putting it in his.
You know ,words of wisdom,never trust a politician.!
Put "a chicken in every pot"remember that one?without taking mine and putting it In His pot?
1
The rest of us just sit here and listen to the Republicans as if what they are saying is worthy of listening and responding to. Just like we listen to Trump. He says all this nonsense and the rest of us argue with it as if there is an actual argument to engage in.
2
I thought deficits were good, Paul? Oh, only when Democrats run up the tab. I forgot.
1
Clearly, the U.S. government is a tool owned by corporate "citizens" and the wealthy 1%. We, the people, do not actually have a democracy. We've got thugs in charge stealing labor and dollars from the poor and middle-class to enrich themselves. They apparently will not stop until they have re-established slavery in the United States of America.
I guess that's what they mean by: "Make America Great Again"—a return to when they had such a great time claiming wealth ownership of all the goods of others' labor. That is what this nation is built on.
Krugman and writers here get close to the ideas behind this play now staged for whose benefit: the easily fooled cashier w/no education who is going to lose her job to automation? The man who is selling his farm--the favorite example for theGOp--to Monsanto or Carylyle or some huge operation for money: will that increase the inheritance to the kids or not? How many times do we have to read and yet disbelieve that the tax plan is for the truly, really wealthy folks at the top, a top unimaginable to so many others. Are we really this stupid? Of course the market thrives while the hive dies.
California has 53 congressional representatives. Along with representatives from New York, and New Jersey among other states profoundly affected by this tax revamp, they could significantly alter the outcome of the bill. While a few GOP NY reps like Zelden are speaking up, I haven't heard a peep or a squeak from any of the 14 GOP California representatives. This is utterly disappointing and should send a signal to their constituents! Calling on McCarthy, Asa, Nunes, Rohrbacher etc! And this is a shoutout to Mr. Nunes : use your creativity and meddlesome ways to protect your Tulare constituency instead of distracting the Russian probe.
2
When (if) the gullible base finds out how much this “plan” is going to hurt them, it will be time to dust off the guiillotine
3
What total idiot in Congress thought that they could sell to the american people a tax plan that gives a family of 4, earning $59,000 a year, a measly $1200 tax break, while promising those in the highest income brackets get MILLIONS.
1
Tax cuts are fiscal stimulus, usually deemed appropriate when the country is in a recession. Currently, if Wall Street is to be believed, the economy is humming right along, the consumer is flush and we are at full employment. It doesn't get much better than this, yet Republicans realize that even though the timing is not right, this is their one and only chance to get tax cuts for the rich while they temporarily control the government. They are even willing to sacrifice at the altar of greed their now laughable devotion to deficit reduction.
Now that their cards are on the table, we can what their real intentions were all along. Repeated mentions of jobs and tax cuts for the middle class dominate their pronouncements in direct proportion to what they are really hiding in plain sight. These are awful people doing awful things and, to top it all off, they think we are stupid enough to be fooled by their ham-fisted theatrics and phony sincerity.
3
The bill should be named " the pro birth control bill" because those people who don't use birth control tend to have more children, and imagine their surprise when they see their taxes rise due to the elimination of personal exemptions.
1
Just think about how much better off the country would be if all those in the picture had never been elected. I wonder if kevin brady realizes how stupid he looks fawning over ryan.
1
Tax Attorney Full Employment Act of 2017
And pointlessness. Seven years of that too.
I listened to the rollout yesterday, caught between laughing and retching. Over and over, Ayn Ryan and Kevin Brady were taliking about what a yuge impact the tax savings of $1182 per year would have on “average families.” Do the math, it amounts to $22.73/week. Don’t spend it all in one place...
Of course Gary Cohn, freshly installed in the gummint from Goldman $ach$, where his direct boss said they were doing “god’s work,” said, without any seeming irony, that this amount could buy a new car or finance remodeling a kitchen.
I haven’t seen anyone so clueless since Poppy Bush was transfixed by the sight of a price scanner out on the hustings.
2
"Contempt for voters" is the key here. Republican tax cut plans have never been about the middle class or "voters". It is about promises extrated from their wealthy donors who have shut off the money spigot until "tax reform" gets done.
Paul Ryan who likes to wear his Catholicism on his sleeve yet totally rejects Christ's teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, is no more Catholic in practice or in the conduct of his life, or the discharge of his office, than I am an astronaut!
CONTACT YOUR CONGRESS PEOPLE! Give them an earful. If you don't know their email address, Google it. It's easy.
1
ConServatives...serving their masters, not the vast majority of the public.
1
If you think the democrats are serving the public you are sorely mistaken. The democrats are serving Wall Street Silicon Valley Hollywood arrogant elites etc etc. not ordinary people, used to be once upon a time. Gladly returning my democrats registration to the town hall.
1
Dear Fellow Americans,
If any of the people pictured in this photo, or any other elected official who supports this tax scam, er plan, claim to represent you and your interests, and you believe them--give me a call at 1-800-ConsRUs. I've got a bridge for sale in a great location. And, if you're one of the first 100 callers I'll throw in some ocean front property in Arizona with a low down payment with e-z terms.
Our PX90-powered Squeaker of the House, no PhD in tax or economics he, has annually appeared on camera waving a variegated budget plan that robs the least to feather funders' nests. Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security be damned. Providing affordable healthcare and housing to the people? Funding education and infrastructure? None for us, please. So sad.
"Convincing the rubes".
Maybe it should read: "Convincing the rubes and hoodwinking the public!"
Truest news story ever written. It's not about Republicans or Democrats. Here are a few facts since the year 2000. We've had a Republican President and a Democrat President both serving 8 years each. Each party has had their control of the Congress and the Senate and or both since the year 2000. Current President of 10 months Republican.
US Government tax receipt:
2000 2.03 trillion
2015 3.25 trillion
60% increase in tax rreceipts
US Debt
2000 5.7 trillion
2015 18.1 trillion
217% increase in debt
US Nominal GDP:
2000 10.285 trillion
2015 18.121 trillion
76% increase in GDP
The tax receipts and GDP growth certainly doesn't match up with the debt profile and vice versa. The Washington folks have been convincing the rubes-both Democrat and Republican for a long while. Where are the economists? Where is the media? Its been a con for a long long time and the convincing of the rubes continues by all the con artists!
I think the next budget of the US should include economic courses and calculators for all the people in Washington and the media. Hold everyone's feet to the fire both Republican and Democrat.
The G.O.P. don't even feel the need to 'pull an all-nighter' to try and add even a modicum of details to attempt to support their blatantly fake claims about the goodness of their tax plan for America!
Haiku
Snake oil and con men--
"New Deal" to "Art of the Steal;"
How far we've fallen.
Trickle Down
And Trickle Dee!
Republicons are in the Money!
Death to the death tax
Long live the billionaires
The middle class caught unawares.
Trump chumps grump
There is no justice
But in the Red States all is luscious
Years of darkness coming on
Koch brothers smiling broad
They've got their men guarding their hoard
Oh what hand
Oh what eye
Forged thy fearful American pie?
1
I'm waiting (Hoping, praying) that the "electorate" will realize the Republican Reptilian party has become a very bad party, absolutely irresponsive to the interests of anyone but their Donor Class.
The State level is now captive to the same Tax Cut and ALEC snake oil, see Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, etc.
We have people literally begging in the streets, a legacy of a generation of Reptilian (Lack of) social policies. And they want to tear more holes in our Safety Net to find revenue for Tax Cuts.
I am surprised that people realize only now that P.Ryan is a phony and an intellectual fraud -whatever the policies he discussed over his years in Congress: economy, finances, societal issues at large ( health, religion, family) etc.. A void of ideas, an empty rhetoric and an elusive moral spine.
And spineless too: every time an issue is too hot to tackle head-on, he disappears, letting colleagues wage the war, afraid of wetting his paws. Leaving the unfortunate impression of a man with very little conviction except relentlessly working at building his national image.
That Paul Ryan is a vacuous fraud ought to have been obvious at least since the 2009 inauguration night conspiracy. Ryan colluded with his GOP colleagues to obstruct EVERYTHING President Obama wanted to do even before he could do anything.
The people in his district keep sending him back to Congress. The GOP members of the House of Representatives made him speaker, and because if this, people in the media take him seriously.
We the People are responsible. Give Democrats control of Congress in 2018.
Send Trump home in 2020.
We get the government we deserve.
The GOP must be known for what it is; the 1% Club's caddies. I've always been amazed at how poor Americans can believe these corporate shills and their destructive policies will help their lives. Wake up, it's a lie. It's the latest installment in the "Acres of Diamonds."
The anger and resentment among the base comes from the fact that the economy has forever changed, is changing, and will keep changing. Blue collar and union jobs are dwindling, and that will continue. The GOP meanwhile, flies the private jets, drinks the champagne and rewards those that are already rich. It is likely this latest Barnum & Bailey approach to the tax code will be horribly destructive to the US. They continue to treat all of us, including the base, as the suckers that are born every minute.
The GOP has taken hypocrisy to the highest level its ever attained. Assume a growth rate that holds up this Jenga of a proposal and reward the corporations and the super-rich. (Surprising that the cabinet is so full of billionaires, eh?) The middle class is supposed to be happy with "$1,200" more dollars; the GOP equivalent to 30 silver coins. They're selling the middle class out, AGAIN!!!
The GOP is not going to waste this historic moment in time. They really couldn't have cared less about whether Obamacare was repealed. But this -- the chance to further enrich themselves and their friends at the expense of the poor and minorities -- is the ultimate political orgasm. They'll get the votes, you mark my words.
1
republican economics is fake economics
1
Are you really surprised? This is what oligarchy looks like.
Paul, I just love how you expose Paul Ryan for the fraud that he is. I re-read your "Flimflam Man" blog post occasionally because it's so good.
The rubes are tuned into Fox News. G-d help us.
1
I, along with Ryan, am from Wisconsin. He’s folowing the same playbook as Gov Scott Walker (and Gov Brownback of Kansas) which is to cut taxes now so you’re forced to cut budget later. So how’s that working for Wisconsin? Has it boosted the economy and grown the job market? No. In fact, we continue to lag in all economic indicators to Minnesota which increased taxes to build out their infrastructure. Meanwhile, we borrow millions to pay for our basic road repairs and delay other needed construction projects. But does this data impress Ryan, Walker and Brownback? No. On the contrary, they double down on stupid. Facts be damned when you’re economic religious war is challenged.
1
Welcome to Paul Krugman the born-again deficit hawk! He tells the GOP tax bill will blow a trillion dollar hole in the deficit.
Where was this guy hiding during the eight long years of Obama's presidency?
2
Its all about ideology, a corrupting ideology the seeks, above all else, to justify greed with a shell game presentation that continues to successfully bet on the gullibility of an unsuspecting public. Those dumb enough to buy it deserve what they get. Shrug. Nothing new here...nothing at all.
The GOP has been faking for such a long time they don't know any other course of action.
They promised their gullible base an end to the "nightmare of Obamacare" but failed to deliver. Their healthcare proposal was a thinly-disguised attempt to end healthcare for millions of citizens and curtail benefits for the rest of us poor slobs.
So now, after years of tax-cut promises to wealthy donors, the GOP delivers its end of the bargain: a bill so blatantly tilted towards the rich and painfully detrimental to the rest of us that it has no prospect of gaining the required 60 votes in the Senate.
Perhaps GOP pols think their wealthy donors are so stupid that they will accept these legislative efforts to be good-faith attempts to repay years and years of donations. After all, they have milked hefty amounts of cash from this donor group for years, always relying on hollow promises of future favors to keep the cash flow coming.
My prediction: GOP pols will soon hear the dreaded "You're fired" from their wealthy patrons, but they will have no backup strength to put forward as a fresh crop of candidates. Dems will be the shoo-in candidates in 2018.
It's amazing how earnest Paul Ryan looks as he spews forth garbage.
1
Well it doesn't help that this very newspaper on this very same day published an article titled "Earth flat? Opinions differ".
Oh excuse me, it was about how economists are "divided" on the benefits of these tax cuts for the economy.
You're right on the money about how the biggest marks of all are the news media and punditry. The Republicans have bamboozled them for decades and the urge to be fair and balanced has led to taking every insane, extreme, lie by Republicans as "one side" of the argument, which must be presented that way. Any defense against this kind of cowardly journalism was long ago demolished by the simple fact that it led to Donald Trump getting elected President. Extremism, bigotry, and shameless lying was given far too much accommodation, taken much too seriously and treated far too politely. And it's still happening.
1
Just as there is always a down side to every improvement, it turns out that there is a bright side to even the worst disaster. Global warming will wipe out the villainy of Paul Ryan and his Republican House of Rogues, not to mention the Princes Koch and the rest of our American aristocracy.
2
Republicans Opposed everything PBO tried to do for 7yrs. We recovered from the near financial crisis only to have progress thwarted by an Incompetent, Greedy President and Republican Congress who work to increase the 1% and Corps considerable wealth! Next up trillions of dollars of increased debt will lead to cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid! It's a money grab at the expense of elderly, sick disabled children and adults!Even the Opioid Addicted will suffer more so Rich get unneeded tax cuts! We must stop this money grab and abuse of power. Democrats get over our disappointment and anger and grievance from 2016 and Unite for 2018 So we can start to control the Ruination of Our Country!
Donald Trump earned his fortune the same way that Queen Elizabeth Ii qualified for hers by inheritance. Trump played a businessman on TV since most of his businesses failed or went bakkrupt. Sean Combs and Shawn Carter are real New York City busnessman.
Paul Ryan has been on the government benefits and employment welfare dole ever since his father died when he was a teen. Ryan has never been bravely honorable and patriotic enough to volunteer to wear an American military uniform. Ryan has never been humble, humane and empathetic enough to perform any community civil rights human service. Ryan is no Thomas O'Neil.
Trump and Ryan are both very dim-wiited and cowardly and insecure. Two dullards incapable of concocting any clever con game. No Dick Nixon nor Newt Gingrich here. Thank God.
1
Donald Trump is doing for the United States exactly what he did for Atlantic City.
Ryan is a smug little charlatan, as many of us in WI have known for years...I do hope his day or reckoning will come in my lifetime; because of our state's gerrymandering under the worm Scott Walker, it may not. But one can hope, which is about all some of us have left.
The New American Kleptocracy - electroplated with a shiny layer of pretend populism.
"To rouse the watchman of the public weal."
Whenever I read you, Mr. Krugman--this line of Alexander Pope reverberates in my head.
'Cause really--week in, week out--year in, year out--that's pretty much what you do. Whenever you take pen in hand. . . . .
. . .Sorry! Silly me! Whenever you sit down at your keyboard.
You have basically been telling us the same stuff for some considerable while. Like a piece of music. The melody on top varies continually. . .
.. but the underlying bass never changes. A ground bass they used to call it. An ostinato (if you want to get fancy).
And I am writing. . . .
. . .TO IMPLORE YOU TO KEEP ON DOING JUST THAT.
'Cause our country is in a bad way right now. And we need--my stars! how we need. . . .
. . .a watchman of the public weal.
Like you, Mr. Krugman.
Thanks.
Once again, Dr. Krugman is spot-on. And Paul Ryan, the perennial fake "numbers guy," continues to push the idea that cutting business taxes will result in the investment of new jobs. Hog wash. And the false claim that America's businesses are the most taxed in the world is also a sham, and that is the polite description of it.
Let's be clear, the corporate tax "rate" of 35 percent has always been just a starting figure, as we know. Their tax accountants and legions of tax lawyers always manage to drop their employer's tax rate to an "effective" tax rate of 20 percent or lower. If the plan is to reduce the corporate tax 'rate' to 20 percent, will that kill all those loopholes they use? Will their tax accountants and lawyers wind up unemployed with nothing to do?
Since January 2009, corporations have preferred to hold as much cash as they can for the sake of shareholder payments. Investments in technology and jobs? Not so much you should notice.
Since the Reagan-for-the-rich years, it has been obvious just how ruinous trickle-down economic theory really is. It reminds me of an press interview with Bess Truman. With Harry's penchant for colorful language welll known, a reporter asked her why he keeps using the word, "manure." She responded, "If you only knew how hard it was to get him to say 'manure!"
And that is what we have in the Republican tax bill. Call it 'manure' for the sake of politeness but we know what it is.
As long as US Tax Policy focuses on Income, we will never be able to prosper and grow in the 21st Century.
If we ever looked up and objectively studied our economy, several things are painfully obvious:
1. Incomes are shrinking.....uh.....ya cant squeeze blood from a stone.
2. Most of us will never see 1million dollars to pass on to our next generations......why are we conditioned to think the Estate Tax would effect 90% of America? The only people who inherit tax free.....are Aristocrats!!(ie....bankers). Bring back Estate Tax....with a vengeance....its the "american thing to do".....If ya want a million bucks......EARN IT.
3. Also tax where the money is growing......Look at all the money sloshing around in WashDC......PACs, SuperPACs, NGOs, Lobbyists....ahem....Paul Manafort and Tony Podesta. And its ALL mostly UN-taxed. Well, pretty much designed that way, since the main beneficiaries are the incumbant Congressmen and Senators that write the Tax Code.(I hope their grandchildren will be able to forgive them for their greed and short-sightedness).
3. Finally, the other economic generator, growing exponentially, virtually un-taxed.......the Internet. Google,Facebook, Amazon, Linkd In, PayPal, etc......run by the 21st Century Robber Barons, who benefited from the Federal give-away of bandwidth.........much like the RR Barons benefitted from land give aways during the RR Boom. Tax the Internet wisely....and many modern problems are brought under control quickly....
Dr. Krugman, will you please speak to David Brooks about the conman Ryan------yet again, last week on the PBS Newshour, he called him a "good guy".
David Brooks is not to be trusted. Nor is judy woodruff. They had a pact with the DNC to promote Hillary and only Hillary, alongwith the rest of the liberal media. There’s plenty of proof just revisit the tapes from the primary season. And read the archives here by Paul Krugman you will see how he played us like a fiddle.
1
Voters need to realize their individual Congressional representatives and Senators are horrible too. Too often we see Congress collectively post terrible poll numbers, but individuals are re-elected out of habit. That's because voters say it's all those guys, my guy's okay. Right now, it's the Republican party which is infected with brain-eating virus and needs to be quarantined. For the country's good.
Krugman becomes more histrionic as this popular tax bill looks more and more likely to become law. For welfare statists like Krugman taxes are never too high and the government is never spending enough. "The rich" are never paying their "fair share", you see. Of course, "the rich" are defined by the statists as just about everyone that brings home a paycheck. Keep up the class warfare, and we will handle the economy, our portfolios are living it.
This "Cut, Cut, Cut" tax bill is obviously a "Scam, Scam, Scam."
Trump is bankrupting America to pay his taxes and debts. Since he refuses to reveal his own, we have no idea what he is worth and to whom he owes money. He is draining the coffers of the government and the people - golf games already at 80 million; trips abroad for his family paid for by the government; 25 million earned at his Washington hotel which is frequented by politicians, employees, and foreign dignitaries; profits at his Florida estate; using fundraiser dinner donations to pay his legal fees and those of his staff; using inauguration $$$ that wasn't spent on the inauguration for legal fees; definitely not donating $$$ to hurricane relief - there is no proof of a cancelled check yet; he truly does not care about the job, just the perks of the job. He won't call a white man who mows down dozens of people a terrorist but an immigrant one; he can't sell a health plan or tax plan to save his life; he is a con, a scam artist; a fraud. Ivanka is in Asia promoting pay equity yet her own factories are full of employees making next to nothing. She is representing the government yet is a volunteer. Who is paying for her trip?
We are on our way to a Russian manner of serfdom that existed in the Romanov Dynasty. An oligarchy will tell us how to live as all the capital will be controlled by them. Those who agree will live well, those who do not will suffer and die prematurely. The dissidents will be perpetual foils.
Many in the middle class will be happy with this new structure because they will be charged with and compensated for holding up this new absolute plutocracy. Law enforcement likes this type of structure because they get compensated based on discord. It is just like party apparatchiks that held the USSR together for 70 years.
The rural and Southern white working class will not know what hit them as they bow to their feudal lords.
Trump reportedly got angry when he belatedly realized that the House health care plan was "mean". Do you suppose he'll react the same way when he realizes their tax plan is equally mean?
Not likely: unlike with health care, the tax plan will benefit him and his heirs HUGELY, and really, does anything else matter to Dear Leader? This one chance at a truly Big Con could justify all the "unfair abuse" he's had to put up with: as with so many of his past "deals", he could walk away with a fortune and leave the rest of us suckers holding the bag.
well where is soros, steyer and the other dem billionaires? there should be 10,000 billboards all over but est in red states that say the following;
TAC CUTS FOR BILLIONAIRES - AND YOU'RE PAYING FOR IT
-brought to you by flim flam man Trump and paid for by YOU! SUCKER.
Mad? Got any spine??
- call your congressman NOW!!!
Trump and the inmates of the asylum have hijacked the Congressional process. Time to derail "Ryan's Express"
Have we forgotten the “Carried Interest Loophole”?
Carried interest, or carry, in finance, is a share of the profits of an investment paid to the investment manager in excess of the amount that the manager contributes to the partnership, specifically in alternative investments (private equity and hedge funds).
The managers pay a federal personal income tax on these gains at a rate of 23.8 percent (20 percent tax on net capital gains plus 3.8 percent investment tax). The general partner receives its carried interest principally in exchange for its commitment to providing investment management services to the fund.
The House tax bill released Thursday preserves the carried interest tax break -- paid to private-equity managers, venture capitalists, hedge fund managers and certain real estate investors -- despite President Donald Trump and GOP leaders’ promise to do away with loopholes for the wealthy.
White House Adviser Gary Cohn has said Trump is committed to ending the carried interest tax break, even though it also wasn’t specified in the Republican tax framework that was issued last month. Trump highlighted the carried-interest tax break during his populist presidential campaign, labeling some hedge fund managers as “paper pushers” who are “getting away with murder.”
Definitions, first two paragraphs above are from Wikipedia. News, next two paragraphs are from Bloomberg News.
This tax bill is a massive giveaway to the corporations and the very wealthy. The repel of Estate tax will benefit only the top 0.2%. The corporations do not pay the top rate anyway. With this lowered rate, will they bring back the money they have stacked in overseas tax havens and invest in U.S. for job creation?
What puzzles me is how the Republicans sell this conman plan to their voting base?
The Republicans are shameless and serving only their donor class not the people who elected them.
Why the Democrats cannot expose this to the Republican voting base? Mind you, most of them do not read New York Times.
Unless Democrats are able to come up with plans and messages that is clear to understand, exposes this fraud and appeals to all 99% of the voting base irrespective of the party affiliation this con game will continue.
The Republican leaders are so careless when cobbling their legislation they remind me of someone who has seen people in scientifically designed and engineered flying suits jump off cliffs and soar through the air at great speeds and eventually release the parachute and land safely ....so..... they decide to make a bunch of these suits really cheaply without proper design and eliminate the parachute for cost purposes and want us all to jump off the cliff and fly while they watch from their big screen TV's at a Trump golf club. These guys are the con mans con men.
2
Paul Ryan has never grown up....he remains the arrogant lil squirt that thinks he's the smartest most aggresive politician in the room. Sadly, his reach exceeds his grasp....and he doesnt understand how pathetic he looks as he is easily manipulated by others in WashDC.
Ryan's role is the same as the little Chicken Hawk that is manipulated by Foghorn Leghorn into doing the dirty work to harass the Cat or Daffy Duck or who-ever.......
One can almost, and I say almost, forgive Trump for this mess - after all he is ignorant, clueless and not that smart. Ryan is the truly heinous one, along with McConnell, both of whom have been in government a long time - they should know better. The con is on!
1
Tax law is complicated. The people currently attempting to reform tax law are dolts. This will not end well. They have repeated these lies for decades: we are the highest taxed nation in the world, everyone agrees corporate tax rates are too high, corporations will return tax savings in the form of wages for workers, cutting taxes will increase revenues. Republicans think votes are stupid and voters have not proven them to be wrong.
1
I'm no economist but it seems likely that this tax plan will be a burden to the middle class and possibly lead to inflation in the long run. Reducing the deficit should be the goal of responsible government. I couldn't agree more that Paul Ryan is a fraud and a phony. How he gets re-elected is beyond me. People need to be more critical thinkers and not believe everything they are fed as fact by a politician just because it sounds good.
An increase in deficit spending needs to be covered by debt issue and bond purchases. The totaI US debt is $20T. Is there enough demand in the world bond market for another $1.5T? Recall that China holds $1.2T and Japan $1.1T, are these countries ready to buy up more US debt? At what interest rate?
I would love to read Paul K pontificate on the future market of US Debt.
And after the wealthy have all of the money, who will buy things ?
Exactly whom will be hired to make things few can afford to buy ?
Have these Repugnicans ever played Monopoly ?
We are about to be conned again.
The RePIMPlicans are at it again. What a shock! More prostituting of future generations and the Middle Class in order to give big business what it doesn't need. I'll give them credit for this much - better sham this time than before. It still comes down to the same thing, however: how to hide the doodoo in the voodoo. Unfortunately, the aroma just won't quit. A never ending constant - the players may change but the stench stays the same.
I'll say it again...KansasKansasKansasKansas
...This is what the Republicans will give America.
1
Kansas cut taxes and didn't cut spending. You need to cut both for long term economic prosperity. Democrats complain about Kansas because they think it proves hay supply side economics is a failure. In reality it's just another example of how reckless spending ruins wealth. Democrats never point out the economic disasters that are the high tax states of NY, NJ, and California. Low tax states are doing much better check out Florida, Georgia, Washington, South Carolina and Wisconsin.
I’ve said this before, so I guess I’m a broken record, but the ultimate goal of this AynRandite’s tax plan is to gut if not destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicare. If you have deliberately designed a scheme to lead to blow-out deficits, you have to figure out the “pay-fors”. And guess where they are...
1
I watched in first, amusement and then horror yesterday as Paul Ryan attempted to sell this turd to the American people. He went on about the $1100 dollars that middle class families were going to realize from this tax plan. In an attempt to establish his street cred he went on about what can be purchased with $1100 dollars. He and his cohorts probably have expensed lunches and dinners that had bigger checks than the paltry savings that he is attempting to sell to the middle class. He is more of a used car salesman than speaker of the house. I apologize to used car salesman.
1
The increased deficit will be their ( excuse to attack social security, medicare and other programs to help working class. Mr. Krugman is correct: Ryan is a BIG PHONY and a hypocrite ( I always thought so). As a Catholic, he doesn't practice the teachings of Jesus Christ...he would be thrown out of the Temple.
1
Here here!
Welcome to the New American Dream - creeping third worldization.
1% moneyed males ruling over the 99% rest - women, plebs, slaves.
America is joining the world.
Paul Krugman, too bad you are not elected to some office where you can do what you know to be the best for our country. It is demoralizing to see such complete incompetence and corruption in our current government. It is heartening to hear your voice to let us know that America is not completely full of craziness.
Welcome back to the 1981 prediction from David Stockman to his new boss, Ronald Reagan: Trickle-down economics will give the middle class nothing more than "pizza toppings." He also predicted that such a theory would bring another recession by the end of the 1980s. BINGO! Stockman was right on both counts.
So here we go with another round of Republican trickle-down acolytes telling the American People that sucking up to the corporate class and the wealthy 1 percent will surely bring massive job increases and that the new revenue from those business investments will more than make up for the potential multi-trillion dollar deficit. This plan has been a boon to those same targeted audiences while passing the burden on to the middle class in the past. Frankly, it has not only failed three times before, it has created recessions in its wake every time!
Since the Reagan-for-the-rich years, the Republicans have been shaping their party into a crime syndicate on behalf of their gazillionaire donors.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of Republicans in the Congress (both chambers) consider themselves Christians — deeply devoted, at that. Yet, they prefer to genuflect to Ayn Rand instead of Jesus. Like the Calvinists of 300 years ago, Ayn Rand and the conservatives have told the sick, the elderly, and the poor that they are to blame for being sick, elderly and/or poor. By contrast, Jesus taught the values of empathy and compassion for the sick, elderly, and the poor.
Tax reform? NOT!
1
The GOP has been without any real ideas since about the time the party told George W. Bush to take his immigration reform, fold it five ways, and shove it where the moon don't shine. They had cut taxes, wrecking a balanced budget, and had nothing more in mind. Oh, they allowed a Medicare drug plan to go through. But they didn't fully fund it and damaged the entire Medicare system. A win-win.
All they really have cared about since is being good to big donors. And power.
Now they have the power, they have a President gutting government, and what they really want is to cut the taxes of the wealthy.
Of course they have no plan to pay for it. Of course they're having to improvise.
They have no plans for anything, let alone pay for the slogans that passed for policy. Infrastructure? The opioid "emergency"? The wall?
The GOP sold its soul to bring into the fold some of the worst Americans. A sizable share of the base wants no government at all.
It worked really well in opposition. It sucks swamp water for governance.
A win for the GOP will be a loss for the nation. But a loss on the tax plan will mean more chaos within the party and the nation.
They can't lead. Many won't follow. And the nation is adrift.
A chaotic horror show playing out at the highest levels of government is a spot-on description. Ryan and the GOP are the third-string cast of some alternate universe Sweeney Todd; their one fixed thought; tax cuts for the one percent, and damn the consequences for anyone else. Alas, Sweeney does not end well. A stage littered with corpses, Mrs. Lovett's thriving small business a shambles, young people fleeing for foreign lands, and the constabulary arriving at the scene of the crime. Feh!
We lived through Ryan’s meteoric rise as economic genius years ago, lauded as “conservative with credentials”, only to find sober civil servants at the CBO graded his paper an incomplete (never completed, so academically it’s an “F” grade). His reckless work was only worthy for the dust bin. Horrifying, the more reckless and fake you are the higher you climb in politics today. Politics and government in the US has never sunk to such a shallow low. Like millions I’ve had to disconnect and hide. Can’t function otherwise.
Frankly, today’s media is a shadow of the kind of press it takes to expose a political con job. Seriously, look at the headline this morning “A Tax Cut That Lifts the Economy? Opinions Are Split.” Bravo NYT, a headline that hints half of credible independent thinkers already think the GOP’s map for our future is well reasoned & brilliant. You can now tell new subscribers your good to “conservative views”, and the K. Rove & Co. political tail can wag the dog yet another day.
As one of the last papers standing I expect the times to allow more realism to filter through below the headlines & lede. Unfortunately shallow cable TV will parade endless talking heads babbling cheeky sound bites that parrot what pleases Washington at the public's expense. All produced inside a TV studio for entertainment value. If only the public knew how virtually no money is spent actually investigating and reporting from the pubic’s interest.
Con men are only successful when there are suckers out there to be conned. Flipping the channels, I see that really creepy guy, who even looks like depictions of the devil, a guy who should be doing voiceovers for either horror films or used car sales ads, selling a tiny pack of "holy water", which I have no doubt came from his kitchen sink.
But I guarantee, this man, who has creep and shyster and con man written all over his face and in his voice, has made millions selling a squirt of water and labeling it as "holy water".
I kind of get con men. I don't understand how so many people can be so darn dumb and gullible as to buy what they're selling. The GOP and Trump have been selling fraud for decades, and still, Americans gave them the Presidency and full power of the federal government, along with the majority of the governorships (I did vote for my Republican governor, Charlie Baker, but he's sane and would get about as far as did Gov. Weld in national politics because he's not crazy enough).
We are a people just begging to be taken for a ride, and I see that as being the real problem.
1
MICHAEL BLOOMBERG Warned us during his address to the 2016 Democratic Convention, that Trump is a con--and that he knows a con when he sees one, himself being a truly successful NYC businessman. Now Trump's ugly mug is most definitely the face of a con man--an aging demented con man at that. But there's powerful cognitive dissonance between Paul Ryan's youthful, naive, sincere face and the truth of fact of his complete and total lack of both understanding the basic arithmetic involved in the honest reckoning of the US economy, and his appalling record with failures in both achieving a single one of his major goals related to legislating and governing. Notably, his 8 year repeated fiasco to recall Obamacare, now stretching out over the horizon of the resplendent, shining pile of garbage on the hill comprised of GOP phony, budget busting tax plan that gives away $2 trillion to the very wealthy while saddling the 99% with lost deductions for state and local taxes and home mortgage payments. Two of the largest tax write-offs available to those below the 1%. You'd think that Ryan would be averse to being a con, given that his father was a lay around whose career was spent on the family couch, who drank himself to death at about 39. But alas, the apple falls not far from the tree. Paul Ryan is drunk on political power and is a lazy layabout in learning effective ideas about how to legislate and how to govern.
1
Brilliant!
Paul Ryan’s PX90 fiscal reboot, a muscular approach to beef up the books? -or- Ryan’s Chili con carni, that three card monte plate du jour?
Everyone knows, or should know, that deficits are A GIFT to the investor class, worldwide....
They invest in the national debt, and the interest paid on that debt is just a stealth tax cut to the investors, paid by taxpayers....
Hypothetically there are solutions to our problems, but this system full of liars and panderers won't get us there.... Sad! Very, very sad, indeed....
1
This is an example of what happens when voters act in a “jerky” fashion.
Democracy is not suitable for jerks.
I am painfully aware of how awful the Republican leadership is, I can assure you. They are liars and con-men nearly on par with Trump. Their choice to keep propping up his diabolical and inane presidency pulls them dead-even with him in the race to the bottom of poor character. I hope the American people never forgive them for this travesty, and that the blind supporters of Trumpian madness come to their senses sooner rather than later, for everyone's sake, but especially for the sake of the younger generations.
1
"Ryan worked summers as a salesman for Oscar Mayer and once got to drive the Wienermobile."
I found the little treasure above on Wikipedia when I wandered through to see exactly what Ryan had in the way of education. I was surprised to see that he had actually acquired a bachelor’s degree, as he doesn’t seem to be good at finishing things.
The man is perfectly qualified to drive Trump’s wei……… I mean golf cart. Maybe even his limo. And very little more.
How, how can Republicans justify taking from the poor/middle class and giving more to the rich? They can't, so they lie and the lies are bought by the stupid people who support them.
Why, why do these miserable people get voted in again and again when all they do is hurt the middle/lower income class? How long will it be until the Trump/Ryan supporters wake up and stop hurting the rest of us?
1
I can't wait until they all go to jail!
Democrats too need to go to jail they are no saints nor the media who misled us through entire election season.
1
No idea how to actually govern?
He got what he wanted didn't he?
I'll believe that he doesn't know what he's doing next November when the Dems win the House. He may be a con-man, but, so far at least, the con is working.
Liars
Cowards
Con Men
But never any scintilla of leadership from this Congress or White House.
1
The Irish Undertaker & the Real Estate Boss have fun playing tax cuts. . . .
Lyin Ryan living up to his name.
It has often been reported that during his college days Ryan used to express his yearning to hurt the disadvantaged, probably because of self loathing at his own upbringing being reliant on social security benefits to live.
People go into politics for a variety of reasons. People like President Obama or Secretary Clinton to make the world a better place.
Some like trump for revenge and to fill their pockets.
And some like Ryan, mcconell and Sessions because they are evil bigoted sadists who find joy it hurting other people
Another slight of hand to fool the foolish..........
The Republicans propose a 10 percent tax on profits held overseas by American corporations to promote returning wealth. But if the national corporate rate is reduced to 20 percent, the difference will convince the corporations to keep their profits overseas at the new but still lower rate.
1
It would be cheaper (better deal for US) to simply pay trump and family a trillion dollars to permanently disappear (and take pence too) and then we can get on with being a great country again.
The combination of lies, smiles, effective presence, etc. enabled and will continue to enable con men and con women to stick to the power.
Voting patterns in recent years are telling us that Republicans, Mr. T and his satellites are favored greatly by a large portion of the American public, aren't they???
Let's grow up together to admit the combination of the current American public and the American democratic system is a subscription of sadness, at least for 10 years.
Remember the tale of the scorpion who asks a frog to carry him across a river, but the frog cautiously asks, "you won't sting me, will you? Because if you do, we will both drown."
The scorpion agrees, but halfway across, he stings the frog. "Why did you do that, knowing you would drown with me," the frog asks, as they both sink beneath the surface. "Because it's my nature," the scorpion replies.
A fable about the Republican Party and tax cut bills.
It's funny because Republicans are evil and Americans are Masochists. It could be argued blind faith enables evil.
The perfect Bosch/Breughel painting.
1
Republicans want to pay off their paymasters. They don't care about the vast majority of their supporters and they never have.
1
“Most Americans realize that Donald Trump is a very bad president; they need to realize that his party’s congressional leadership is pretty awful, too.”
We know, Dr. Krugman. And we plan to vote.
1
the Washington Post already gave Krugman's comments 4 p's for being false. The tax cut is indeed a tax cut. His entire analysis is biased and flawed. Notice how he is on about the "wealthy" when in fact they will pay more if they live in a state with state income taxes. The estate tax was NEVER paid by anybody with a brain who simply set up trusts with their wealth. Krugman ignores the doubling of the personal deduction which more than offsets the 3% federal tax rate change. Krugman simply is lying.
1
Paul, why should we believe anything you say, about taxes, about politics? You thrusted Hillary Clinton upon us. Yesterday I heard Liz Warren admit to Judy Woodruff on PBS that indeed the democratic primary was rigged in favor of Hillary. The bigger news is the collusion of the media, especially the NYT with Hillary's campaign (read money trail). It was because of the media collusion that Joe Biden was shut down, Bernie Sanders was shut down, and basically the hopes of millions and millions of millennials was shut down. Perhaps you don't have children (only cats), you don't know what it means for a young person's idol to be smashed down by a Nobel Laureate, for petty political reasons.
Well, we are a patient lot, we will soon get to the bottom of Podesta and the Clintons and the DNC and your, the media's deliberate role in stomping all over Bernie and Joe Biden. We do hope NYT editorial board is ready to explain itself why they thrust a losing candidate on us, so forcefully, so vehemently.
1
We can just borrow what we owe from Russia.
Trump did it and now he's the President.
If it worked for him, why wouldn't it work for America ?!?
"Man-ny Boy Ryan" made his money the old fashion way...he married into it with his self-publicized pretty face and muscular body, and in turn, it was inherited through the death of his wife's mother.
His "Road Map to America's Future" is actually the "Road Map to the Ryan Family's Future", which, like the Twit's, involves less taxation for WEALTHY REPUBLICAN WELFARE QUEENS and their businesses and more for the rest of us.
Brilliant! False, but brilliant!
Let me enrich myself and pretend we do it all for you...
4
Speaking of cons, Mr Krugman....any comments on the major con of the last two years (that we actually have proof of)...the DNC rigging of the nomination for HRC. Who you feverishly supported vs Bernie who for sure had the most enthusiasm.
1
Looks like the GOP put all the moving parts and various individual/family configurations to a math wiz analyst to optimize the choices so that everyone got as close to a 1% tax cut as possible, except everyone over $500k, who progressively get bigger and bigger handouts. Tax cuts for everyone !!!!
Sarah Sanders Huckabee has at last been crowned Homecoming Queen. No troublesome fact and no clever question is going to take that away from her.
It's the biggest mass Republican Campaign commercial I've seen in a long time. What we have here is a photogenic actor named Ryan who looks exactly like a grown up familiar childhood actor called "Eddie Munster" of the comedy show called "The Munsters". You all remember that, right? The Republicans have had their funny face poster boy as their camera friendly face to convince everyone to buy this joke of a tax bill. The really hysterical part of this is the timing. The big event came just three days following the blockbuster news of Russian campaign conspiracy as a song and dance to take over the news that harmed the Republicans and put them in a better light by waving big bills in front of the cameras for all to see. But it doesn't end there; not only did the Republicans command the cameras in their favor to dig out of a political abyss, but now they are also buying voters for next Tuesday's election. Talk about getting lots of bang for your buck! Timing is everything and people are creatures of time. It is a con for sure.
Why are we cutting taxes in time of war?? It is a dishonorable country that does that. Our elders fought in WWII, then came home and paid for it. What is wrong with our leadership?
GOP trotting out same stuff that Reagan and Bush 43 pulled off. Grownup Dems will have to come in and clean up their mess and then we’ll do it again. Love it when GOP claims fiscal responsibility while the Dems are in but say deficits don’t matter when they are in. The long term result is our dollars don’t buy as much as they used to and we end up electing idiots who promise to bring back their idealized version of the 1950’s.
"Budget wonks are frantically going through the legislative language, trying to figure out what it would mean and what it would do, but they...."
They? Aren't you a Nobel winning economist? Aren't you supposed to be analyzing this plan in detail, so you can tell NY Times readers exactly what it does.
I appreciate that you point out that by spending more than a decade calling Paul Ryan "serious and smart" while he refused to give details on what he really wanted to do gives more evidence that global corporate mass media puts out "fake news," when it will increase corporate profits.
But to combat this corporate tax cut propaganda, we need detailed economic analysis. That is your job, not snarky political analysis. There are plenty of people that can do that. We need the expertise of a Nobel economist to tell us exactly what this bill would do before it goes to a vote.
Daddy's off on a business trip today, and right before he left he told his frightened children: "Do something, anything to give me a win or I will make your nasty lives even nastier."
Of course, it will be left to some future Democrat to clean up after these children. And a thankless task it will be, as always.
The Republican party has morphed from elected representatives into a lobbying group for the 1% and corporations. These craven, traitorous men (yes, they're mostly men) have abandoned and turned on their constituents and their country.
1
The result of an electorate full of gullible idiots. I have not heard Ryan mention the deficit lately. They do not over estimate the intelligence of their voters...
Every analysis says corporations are awash in cash, reeling it in by the dumpster load, but they haven't been re-investing it in job-creating innovation here at home. So how is giving them MORE money, at the ordinary Joe and Jane's expense going to get them to do what they should already be doing? It won't.
Plus, since unemployment is at an historic low, who is going to fill those jobs?
Further, while the nominal corporate tax rate is 35%, the actual rate paid by most corporations is around 18%, using tax loopholes, that are NOT being closed. So...if you lower the nominal rate from 35% to 20%, does that mean the corporations will now have an effective tax rate of ...3%???
Republican math: 2+2=22, except it doesn't, 2+2 still only = 4.
Paul Ryan may be a sham, but he's not stupid. He's smart enough to have never wanted to be Speaker and apparently regularly blasts John Boehner on the phone for sticking him with this lousy job, long the worst job in Washington, only now surpassed by being Trump's COS. So why is he doing this? I just have to guess:
1) He REALLY believes that tax and regulation on business strangles it and the UI is a sham.
2) He does knows all this but is completely in the pocket and thrall of the corporations and right-wing billionaires, that he's happy to sell their bill of goods as he's prostituted himself to them.
3) Ok, he actually is NOT that bright. Or ethical.
The leaders of both parties are incompetent and one is more corrupt than the other.
2
Paul Ryan pulled the wool over David Brooks eyes for years on PBS on Friday nights.
Brooks has stopped mentioning him as that very bright guy and related accolades about his great promise as a presidential candidate.
Perhaps he no longer mentions that intellectual lightweight for anything promising at all. One who has repeatedly proved himself in recent years to actually be a charlatan heavyweight, after giving up the tarnished crown Brooks had given him as an intellectual heavyweight.
I respect David Brooks work--so it goes to show you that some smart people were fooled badly by Charlatan Ryan, if they were not economists:)
1
ah you think David Brooks is a guy whose eyes can be wooled over? Nah. He and the media colluded with the democratic party and pulled wool over all our eyes. Including Judy Woodruff who played innocent when Liz Warren told her to her face that the democratic party had rigged the election. David knew all along as well and did his best to marginalize bernie.
1
I could never understand how, for years, even the media called Ryan an "intellectual", conflating fake economic know-how with deep thinking. Clearly the only thoughts in this terrible tax "reform" bill are how to create a kleptocracy, just like, you guessed it, Russia!!! After all Putin, once an obscure KGB agent, seems to now be the richest man in the world. We still have a free press but a population enslaved to Fox "fake news" by choice and who do not seem to care if are losing our self-determination, i.e.. our democracy, to Russia.
It might get worse. Mueller achieves startling success, so that Trump and Pence are gone. That leaves this snake-oil con man as President of The United States of America. Good grief.
When did poor people in this country get so gullible that they would think greedy rich people would look out for their best interests?
1
No one ever seems to talk abut the schism between electing these unconscionable supporters of the oligarchy and the abhorrence of their policies. Let's face it, the average guy voting for a Republican today isn't voting for tax cuts or repealing the ACA. He is voting for some nebulous social issue he can't let go like guns or forcing women to be incubators for the Christian Right or locking all non-white people up in some scurrilous prison run for profit by fat rich white men.
Get that message out and you might have something.
In 1935, lmost all Republicans voted against Social Security. I guess the media never took history, (too busy posting garbage on Twitter) to understand the "long con" and how this will affect social institutions. Starve the Beast. This "Tax Reform" bill is a stealth attack against the social safety net. Nothing is sacred to Paul Ryan, his band of Phonies. Republicans are not even for "big business", only Certain Business. Construction businesses that might fix our infrastructure are ignored. Give an occasional nice contract to a pal, a little electric company from nowhere in Puerto Rico, just for the media. Jobs creation? Nah! Big banks, bloated with money, hire no one, except the kids of friends from the Ivy League. Google? Koch Brothers? They will not hire your kid out of college because of the Republican Tax Gift and your kid will not be able to deduct the interest on his 100K loan either. Its not about the deficit. This wonderful Gift of Tax Despair will be a smack in the face for the middle class. Many will no longer be able to afford their homes because that 1000 "tax" break comes with a 5K tax HIKE, too. Ryan will create a new type of poverty among hard, working class American's. It's all slick packaging, media control and gerrymandering. Ah! The Media, so Controlled! Many Trump supporters do not even realize what is coming. Call it "Hurricane Paul Ryan", Category 5.
Krugman seethes with resentment that he is not one of the incompetents setting tax policy. He’s just as incompetent as them he knows.
And he tried so hard and stooped so low schilling for Hillary.
Chose the wrong horse.
2
A couple of days ago I saw Trump talking to a bunch of reporters about the tax bill, and I almost laughed when he said "Our taxes are -- among the highest in the world." Which is still a lie, but he seems to finally realize that people are becoming aware that the "we pay the highest taxes in the world" line isn't true. Considering that nearly every other country provides healthcare coverage to all its citizens, how could it be? We need more taxes going into the safety net and infrastructure and education and scientific research, not more tax breaks for the rich.
3
Poorer countries have greater income disparity. Thus, increasing the income disparity will make the nation poorer. That is the Republican future in a nutshell. We are fast becoming a nation of a few extremely wealthy corporations and individuals and the rest of us - poor people.
4
So the Dow is at 2300, unemployment is at 4.1% -- the lowest it's been since the Clinton administration -- inflation is still under 2%, and there is loads of investment capital sitting around un-deployed. How is it that this tax cut bill is supposed to improve things?
15
Frustrated - You comment below is right on point.
"So the Dow is at 2300, unemployment is at 4.1% -- the lowest it's been since the Clinton administration -- inflation is still under 2%, and there is loads of investment capital sitting around un-deployed. How is it that this tax cut bill is supposed to improve things?"
The last 8 years has seen wealth move to the top earners, while middle class wages remain stagnant. This already disproves the GOP theory that if you give more money to the rich it will trickle down to the middle class in the form of more and better paying jobs. Never has happened and never will.
There is a measure of denial on both sides of the partisan aisle; each party would like to enact measures taxpayers resent -- whether gifts from the commonwealth to the top few percent, or redistributive measures that, however equitable and even worthwhile they may be for social cohesion and long-term productivity, run up against cultural obstacles of racial prejudice and the belief that the existing distribution of wealth reflects some sort of impartial process overseen by the Hand, or even natural law. Nothing could be further from the truth, and Paul Ryan and the Grifters have nothing to offer the general welfare--still less a strategy for coping with climate change and related disruptions--but while the public is largely indifferent to ideology, and focused on the modern version of tribal identity politics, what prospect is there that they will grasp the incredible vacuum of the GOP's intellectual attic? There is no plan for health care because a more efficient arrangement would involve government intervention on behalf of the general welfare; there is no plan for actual tax reform because reform would involve ending various focused subsidies, from 'carried' capital gains for hedge fund managers to preferential tax treatment for the wealthy and corporations. No actual 'reform' can pass the barrier of the GOP's prohibitions; authentic reforms will require the sense of reality to displace the simplistic and misleading rhetoric that goes back to Gingrich and Luntz.
5
Since when do R. listen to voters? A hard divisive social agenda is used to hook resentful bigots and the promise of future wealth to assuage these peoples declining economic prospects. The Greed is Good crowd has endless cynicism. A guy like Ryan could care less about his inconsistency ne hypocrisy.
10
They are proving to be a monomaniacal collection of single-issue voters who share only a vision that a panoply of miracles will ensue if the particular policy they demand is enacted.
I am a fan of Krugman’s op-ed pieces, but one item always baffles me. Taxing the profits of corporations. From a purely economic perspective it seems strange that profits are taxed BEFORE they are distributed to shareholders and then AGAIN when the remaining profit (profit less taxes) is distributed to shareholders in the form of dividends.
As an example, let’s say a company makes $1BB in profit. Let’s say this is taxed at 30% (the real tax % is irrelevant to make the point). There is now $700MM left. Let’s also say the $700MM is distributed to shareholder who pay an average of 30% in taxes. That $700MM is further reduced by said 30%, leaving $490MM in the pockets of investors. This translates to an effective 51% tax rate, which I feel is crazy.
Why not do away with taxing corporations and tax all dividends at 35% or so? Seems much more logical to me, rather than taxing profits over which taxes have already been paid. Or, in the alternative, tax corporate profits, but don’t tax dividends.
4
Many corporations, particularly start-ups, reinvest all their profits, and the shareholders seek capital appreciation rather than income. This could defer all taxation of profits until shareholders take capital gains by selling the stock, if such profits are not taxed when earned.
One of the ways of achieving double taxation, illegal, but permitted to be legal since its government sanctioned, as is the case with too much of what we allow our government to get away with, our now fully corporate owned government, with an agenda specifically focused on disenfranchising and subjugating the poor and the middle-class, for the benefit of the 1%ters.
I have been thinking about this, and here is one explanation. In the U.S. corporations are separate entities with many rights, comparable to individuals’. These corporations benefit society, but they also create costs by using infrastructure (roads, electrical grids, etc.), using the legal system, and through things like creating waste and pollution. So corporations pay taxes in support of adjudicating their rights (and defending citizens’, when necessary) as well as covering their costs to the commonweal. That’s the same reason individuals pay taxes.
I think that’s the nub, anyway. It would be great to hear what Dr. Krugman says.
Amen! nothing worse than trump very unqualified president except his partys congressional leadership is pretty bad too.
1
A “great nation”? I think we have done everything the last two years to prove that we are an exceptional nation, exceptional stupid and self destructive.
8
A little pity please for poor Paul Ryan - doomed to the Sisyphean task of hoisting and foisting his brilliant plans on US.
3
Reality and truth, to trump, is simply what you can get away with.
9
The degenerate wants to bankrupt the United States.
Multiple bankruptcies is the only experience that Trump has had and the only expertize he has acquired. Trump is a threat worse than ISIS, similar to the domestic terrorists that he is so fond of and sympathizes. This charade needs to stop on November 6 2018.
15
Paul,
Thank you. Please keep it up.
5
“Most Americans realize that Donald Trump is a very bad president; they need to realize that his party’s congressional leadership is pretty awful, too.”
These Republicans really know how to cut the rug with the rest of us, don’t they?
If Trump actually manages to make a sane choice for something, anything, such as his pick for the new Fed Chair, it stimulates a celebration worthy of dancing in the streets.
I’ll just cut to the chase with my usual pivot at this point. Since you’re a NYT reader, the probability is very high that you vote. Help people register to vote, and encourage them to vote – rationally so – and assist them in mailing in their ballots or in getting them to the polls, and tirelessly work for voting rights in aiding the disenfranchised and those who need accommodations of any type.
The midterms are just a year away. They are probably our best chance to start patching up the boat. Let’s hope the NYT will write more opinion pieces about the importance of the 2018 elections – who’s running, state-by-state, what they stand for, endorsements – all that good stuff.
And now … hold on there. Wait a minute. It sounds like those GOPers are firing up some more Sinatra on the old gramophone. Can you hear the music? “Start spreading … the news … I want to be a part of it …”
It looks like we better head out and get back to work – that is, if we want to be a part of it again.
Isn’t that what you want?
5
Let's look at the thought process here:
Massive debt and deficits
Increased military spending
That asinine Wall
Huge outlays for natural disasters
Health care a fiasco
I know! Let's further engorge the rich pigs who have been the recipients the past 35 years of the biggest wealth transfer in history! Yeah!
9
Raise the deficit (bad when dems are in power, good when repugs are in power) then claim that services (excepting the defense budget, of course) need to be cut. Harm the country so a handful of billionaires (including the Grifter-in-Chief) and corporations can get tax breaks. And anyone who believes that the corporate tax cuts will lead to more jobs & better wages, well, I have a bridge to sell you.
10
The whole Republican party, smells like a fish, that has laid in the sun for days!
4
The democrats smell like corpse, forget fish. Lying democrats.
1
The 1% (or the 0.1%, or the 0.0001%) asking for tax cuts is the same ploy that teenage boys would use to get a girl to sleep with them. "Honey, I love you, don't you want to prove you love me?" "Will you call me in the morning?" "I will I will" - with the well-known results: bragging to his "peers" the next day and disrespecting the girl for "being easy".
3
Can some way be found to bring back P.T. Barnum and have him comment on this massive circus housed in that most impressive tent called the Capitol?
It would be priceless and I'm sure he would cry 'Uncle!' immediately - not even the master showman could ever top this.
2
Paul Ryan comes from a long line of great American archetypes. His antecedents include patent medicine salesmen and fleece-the-flock preachers.
6
There are many well-known con-men, who often preach Ayn Rand’s philosophy confidently stating that they “consider selfishness a virtue.”
These same con-men often repeat: “America is a republic, not a democracy.”
Many other con-men, with a snarky smile on their face, repeat over and over “believe me,” it will be “absolutely great.”
Everything they touch turns to slime. Greed is good. No honor, no respect, no dignity.
6
These pathetic republic-CONS are so despicable and deSpicably DUMB the it's ridiculous. They are pseudo-eveyrthing and care about only one thing, holding on to their criminal lifestyles courtesy of a few wealthy and deranged donors. IT'S DISGUSTING.
4
Tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. At the same time the government needs to pay for wars in the Middle East and now in Africa.
Coming soon are apologies to seniors; so sorry there's no money for your social security, your medicare, your medicaid, your nursing home care.
The compassionate GOP will no doubt give the destitute elderly a free tent and a map to the nearest homeless camp, showing the world how to make America great again!
6
An excellent article.
Could Paul Ryan actually be a radical Libertarian, or is he merely a greedy Koch lackey?
He does seem to have a whacked-out fixation with trickle-down economics - genuine, but coming out of precisely what convictions?
The bottom line is: why would anyone in their right mind want to give tax cuts to the rich, for the sake of giving tax cuts to the rich?
Someone with a life long O.C.D. fetish?
Paul Ryan is quite the evil-minded enigma to me.
3
They sold agenda to the people, then bowed low to the big money that got them elected and did those monied donor's bidding not the voters, they've been doing this election after election. Not saying the demon-crats haven't either, but there is movement in the fringes and it is electing people that aren't paid for by the big monied classes. To many times the government classes are filled with shills for the industries that those paper pushers are supposed to regulate, and do the bidding of the old bosses. Pay to play in big government, it is it's own corrupt system so dense with vile humans you can't find an area not touched as easy as you once could. End of empire slowly creeping upon us.
1
“Inequality of wealth is the greatest cause of factions [frictions/instability] in a society.”
--James Madison (Federalist 10, 1787)
“Government should enact laws to "reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence toward a state of comfort."
--James Madison (National Gazette, 1791)
http://www.giga-usa.com/quotes/authors/james_madison_a001.htm
2
It's time to retire Grand Old Party as a nickname for the Republican Party. Here's my suggestion: Greedy Rapacious Oligarchic Parasites on the Economy. That makes a better acronym. Trump will love it.
4
The Republicans did a great job of forming a base that is amenable to lies like this. How did they do it? How do people vote against their best interest? They do it by hating the other side. And they hate the other side by turning on their radio.
It is a fact well known to any long distance driver that talk radio is more engaging than the demo-focused and endlessly repetitive mainstream stations. Commute an hour to work every day and you will end up listening to a talk radio station. And that station will inform you in no uncertain terms that Hillary Clinton is a murderer.
That same radio will tell you that Democrats represent Satan's rule on earth, that black people are lazy, shiftless and murderous. These radio programs will also supply you with anecdotes that underscore inevitably that liberals want to teach your children to be gay, rip your guns from your hand, and steal your money.
Donald Trump is a product of the 24/7 propaganda machine underwritten by the Republican Party, legalized by the Republican Party, and the main driver of their existence. Try it. Commute for an hour a day and see how long it takes you to vote Republican.
Democrats are naive, thinking that the right ideas, the good ideas, and caring for their constituents make a political party in the years following the dissolution of the Fairness Doctrine.
What makes a political party in America today is money and hate.
13
Donald Trump: "I'm the only one that matters", If this is the case resign because the decisions you make effect "US" the citizens of America!
4
Tell me once more Donald, who is going to pay for that big beautiful wall? Where will the money come from? Trees?
4
I am holding my breath, hoping and praying that Republicans in Congress can resist pressure that will be brought to bear on them to vote for this abomination of a bill! Let's see who has the intestinal fortitude to "just say no."
3
If the estate tax is repealed, where is the list of the amount of money the repeal will let Donald Trump's estate keep of his $3 billion? Steven Mnuchin's (net worth $400 million)? Gary Cohn's (net worth $250 million)? Jared Kushner's (net worth $250 million)? Betsy DeVos's (net worth $600 million+) Rex Tillerson's (net worth $240 million)? Wilbur Ross's (net worth $325+)?
When we speak of the deplorables, let's get the names and numbers right this time.
4
Why aren't these people in jail????? What is it, or who is it, that allows them to continue to destroy the bulk of the population of the United States, by taking everything away from them, and giving it to the rich????? This is repulsive, surreal, despicable, and unbearable. And these crooks are OUR GOVERNMENT? I cannot wrap my head around what this country has become.
4
Elin both democrats and republicans are beholden to big money who are their first clients. the rest of are afterthoughts if they have crumbs left they will throw it at us. Do not trust the democrats or the DNC. The republicans we always knew could not be trusted. But evidence is clear now that the democratic part is rotten to the core and has no ethics no morals their only loyalty is to big money whoever donates them, finances their elections.
1
Some loyalists yet hope that Krugman will at some point move beyond these easy, for him almost autonomic (and ever ineffective) kvetchings - like shooting fish in a barrel for the entertainment of the congregation here - to offer specific Nobel-prize-winnng-economist blueprints of his own fair and practical taxation policies that might be adapted by any future administration.
Which still begs the question of why so many Americans yet order and seem to relish this old GOP [salami] sandwich?
1
I rarely agree with this columnist, but I do this time. Well said, well written. One quibble -- How ever is not two words (last paragraph.)
2
Corporations contributed 33% of all federal taxes collected in the 50's and now contribute 10%. Corporate taxes were 5.9% of GDP in the 50's and now are 1.9%. Corporate profits are at all time highs. The deficit is $600 billion and the debt is $20 trillion. And its corporations that get the lion's share of the tax cut. Only to pass it along to shareholders in dividends and increased share prices from share buybacks. Not to mention huge bonuses for their executives.
This is sheer lunacy. If growth is the objective, then give the benefits of a tax cut to the people who will spend it. And close the loopholes on the corporate side so expensive tax lawyers, big dollar lobbying and campaign contributions don't result in some businesses paying no taxes.
What's happened to our country? How much longer can we go on like this? Who is going to rise from the ashes of Trump and Hillary to rescue us from ourselves?
10
Board members with stakes in the company have a conflict of interest when voting to buy back shares with company profits: it concentrates their own holdings and power.
Holy Cow! They want to repeal the estate tax but leave the step-up in basis! The usual argument for the estate tax is that it is unfair because it taxes people twice on the same wealth. Often this was never true because often, especially with the biggest estates, much of the estate was made up of unrealized capital gains--stock or property that was worth a lot, but, since it hadn't been sold, no tax had been paid on the gains yet. When the owner passed, those gains were essentially forgiven, but estate tax would be due (at least on the part over $10 million). Now, if say Jeff Bezos dies in 6 years with his $100 billion in Amazon stock on which no tax has ever been paid, those gains will go to his heirs tax free. A $100 billion earned in the US economy using US tax dollars to educate its work force, defend it and provide infrastructure--and no tax will be paid on that ever!
11
They obviously seek to lay the financial foundations for restoration of feudalism.
1
Sadly, the contempt for voters that you mention is justified. Trump is the ideal candidate for this group, for whom the thrill of three card monte is just too great to pass up another opportunity to be had.
2
A tax reform farce favoring the wealthy and hurting the rest of us. But it's actually much worse than portrayed. Consider...
1. Will states dependent upon SALT have to resort to highly regressive sales taxes to recoup revenue? If so then the harm is far greater than what is projected from a limited analysis of Trump/Ryan tax changes.
2. Given that we are in the midst of a pension crisis impacting 50% + of Americans will the impact on savings not exacerbate the problem?
3. What influence will the lower corporate rates have on what corporations actually pay? Forget corporate tax rates, what is important are the net of deductions rates actually paid. The evidence is that US corporations rank today about in the middle of OECD comparators (forget Ireland which is a tiny tax haven).
4. In what alternative reality can reducing Estate Taxes or not aggressively going after pass through income be justified?
5. What are the (exaggerated?) growth rates and related assumptions invoked to keep the projected deficit to 'only' $1.5 trillion in 10 years--the Byrd rule? And will the exercise withstand rigorous analysis by agency reviews?
6. Facing burgeoning deficits will the GoP resort to Plan B, reducing the size of Government including health insurance, social security and essential services?
But the really really big question is how Americans were conned into voting for these Republican phoies and when will there be a reckoning?!
3
It's telling that when the Democrats came to power in '08 the big signature legislation was to pass healthcare reform for all. Now that the Republicans are in power, the big legislative push is tax cuts for the 1%.
6
Back when the revered and sainted Ray Gun slashed taxes the promise of higher wages and more jobs was splashed across every media possible. It didn't happen and it won't happen now. The already wealthy will take their new found millions and laugh all the way to their banks in Cyprus or the Cayman Islands .
3
America , you elected , sort of , a mentally ill conman as your president and he is being propped up by the GOP in order to get an $800 billion tax cut for the 1% at the expense of the 90%.
Yes , there is a Never-Vote-Democrat crowd that makes up 40% of the electorate but it is difficult to imagine how these people can continue to cling to their "beliefs" as they lose their healthcare and government dollars that they need to survive. It must be true that "Some people can be fooled All of the time".
3
Above all, they believe that, by adhering to what they believe, come Hell or high water, they'll be better off forever for it, after they're dead.
What we need is a flat tax in simple language: 40% for the rich, 20% Corporations, 15% for the rest of us. Keep the mortgage interest deduction and the state tax deduction and that is it.
Erase the hidden pages of codicils and loopholes written by the lobbyist connected. K Street will descend on all the Members of the House but in fact, the companies will save all their in-house costs for accountants and lobbyists.
Every tax-payer in our country, from the giant corps to the lower echelon workers will save money, and the taxes we need to start working on lowering our national debt will be there.
http://thegovernmentinexile.live
2
Black is white. Black is white. Black is white. Black is white. Etc.
2
Paul Ryan knew all about the Russians hacking our election -- watch Frontline!
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/putins-revenge/
Fool? Crook? Whatever. He sold out his country for a buck.
2
Giving away billions to the rich, then cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for the needy. Sorry, I can't say it any other way: Ryan is a jerk.
9
The tax proposal is actually an IQ test that the GOP is administering to America to determine whether voters are as stupid as Republican leaders believe. If Trump and Ryan can convince voters that they are getting a "tax cut" when their taxes are actually been raised, then the answer will be clear. Next, they will have us believe that a dog really does have five legs, if you merely call the tail a leg.
2
Congress to America: "Drop dead."
2
When oh when will Little Eddie go back to Janesville? I’m sure that the GOP have built into their budget the perpetual wars and ongoing natural disasters that must be paid for. Yeah right. SAD!
Not enough Americans realize that Donald Trump is a very bad president. Or if they do, they don't care, because they enjoy the never-ending entertainment, and the grotesque outlet for their grievances, that he never fails to provide. tweet tweet tweet. weep weep weep.
1
I wonder if David Brooks reads this column - for some reason he loves and admires Ryan. Reminds me of the old Communist "fellow travelers" who could not give up on Stalin.
Well, the GOP finally does this thing that is their #1 religious belief: give gigantic buckets of money to the rich and maybe they'll trickle down on us. Rich individuals buy themselves some fancy stuff and stick the rest in Cayman Island banks. And the big corporations have been sitting on mountains of money for years and not investing it in America. So why would they change now? They won't. And I can't even bear to do the math on how much $1.5 trillion in debt will cost my kids in their lifetime. As they asked McCarthy in the 1950's, "have you no shame?" Clearly, for the GOP the answer is a resounding no. It has become a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.
3
Oh, yes, and don't ever forget -- Paul Ryan is such a phony that he even lied about his marathon time. "2:50 something," he told a reporter bashfully when he actually did a 4-hour plus marathon. This little old lady has beat him in at least 3/7 of my marathons. Good grief -- why does the American public fall for this pretty con man?
3
Are we talking about the same Paul Ryan, failed VP candidate who almost single handedly sank a potentially winning run by Mitt Rommney with his nonsensical tax plan. Obama ground that into hamburger, Joe Biden finished him off in the debate on other issues, Mitt Rommney who might have made a fine president went down in FLAMES. That is the same Paul Ryan author of this farce, right?
5
convinced media wonks?
I'm sorry, where the h-ll have you been? I can see him playing smoke and mirrors with your avg high school drop out and midwest farmer types but media wonks? So the truth is out now, wonks are idiots.
I've thought the guy was a moronic analyst from day-one and I'm just a lowly college grad who was schooled by my blue collar high school graduate parents on the subject of finances and budgeting.
3
Stream Elizabeth Warren's comments from PBS's The News Hour.
3
I seriously don't understand why the rich need more money.
292
A billion dollar more is, at 500$/day, a guarantee you can live until you are at the very least 5,500 years old (you have given the interests to charity of course).
It's a way to become almost eternal I suppose.
3
On a much smaller basis, perhaps you would like to have just a little more money available to you? I would. (No, I am not a rich person by any means, but I am trying to make a point about human nature.)
1
Oh it's really simple: that's how they keep score. With massive tax breaks going their way, they can get that extra case of really rare wine, that extra-huge yacht to park somewhere in the Med, that 7 carat rock to stick on their fourth wife's finger or that painting that their agent told them would really make their collection. They just have a desperate need to impress their friends, that's all.
2
We have been told that there would never be another GFC. We were told that the GFC was well and truly dead, buried and cremated. It seems to me that this tax bill will bring life back the GFC corpse. Fairly soon we will see it undead, unburied, uncremated and roaming the earth once again. The Zombie GFC is coming!
2
Our present government and especially the members of the majority party are prime examples of what is know as "the Peter Principle"...that is, people tend to rise in their respective hierarchies until they reach their level of incompetence. Politicians, today, have a low bar to start with. In the case of Trump and the Republican leadership they have exceeded that level by several orders of magnitude. One shudders to think that, for them, the sky is not the limit.
1
Thank you, Mr. Krugman, for calling this farce for what it is - a giant tax cut for the wealthy at the expense of the 99%. Your comment about the GOP congressional leadership - "Most Americans realize that Donald Trump is a very bad president; they need to realize that his party’s congressional leadership is pretty awful, too" - is something most of us have realized for years - they are bankrupt of ideas, the ability to govern in any meaningful way, and yes, they have "extraordinary contempt for voters" as shown through this insulting tax cut, voter suppression, gerrymandering, and absolute spinelessness about the law breaking going daily at the White House.
3
Paul, thank you for helping us expose the Great Oligarch Pretenders. The leadership in the GOP is pathetic and the rank and file bought into their own propaganda. They were so brainwashed that they really did think Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell Republican masterminds. Their much admired party discipline allowed for no other opinions. Groupthink can definitely be a double-edged sword!
On a closely related issue, Dana Milbank's column in the Washington Post yesterday, cleared up any doubt, for me, that we are dealing with a state of affairs bigger than politics. We are dealing with repeated attempts to sabotage our government and way of life.
Now is the time for all citizens to stand up and be counted. Republicans, Democrats, Senators and Representatives at all levels, how do you stand? There can be no more cowardly hiding or indulging self-interest. Do you stand with our country or with the saboteurs? Do you have the courage to support and defend our democracy or are you an enemy of the United States?
Even though I "knew" about many of these GOP appointments, seeing them in print crystallized what was happening for me. Dana Milbank deserves an award for this column.
http://wapo.st/2zrcbzW?tid=ss_mail&utm_term=.a...
5
Have we completely forgotten that this is essentially the same legislative body that existed for the last six years of the Obama presidency? You know, the guys that refused to do their jobs, like pass budgets and raise the debt limit. Oh, and don't forget about confirming presidential appointees. The only "accomplishment" this administration and legislature can point to since trump was inaugurated is the appointment of Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. An "accomplishment" that actually took place during Obama's last year in office when McTurtle refused to do his job, essentially telling the POTUS to stuff it.
Why would anyone expect anything different now? Why do we have these conversations instead of a brief review of the performance of this useless batch of legislators? You know, like a job performance review that most real Americans have to face on an annual basis.
A serious analysis needs to be conducted on why these people keep getting elected to office and whether their tenure supports American democracy. The American public should be absolutely focused on what is wrong with our electoral processes and demanding action to fix it instead of being distracted by these sideshows. But that won't happen, because Americans just want to be entertained, and this batch of losers is apparently entertaining. It's about to get terrifying. I hope your entertained...
8
Fear of God combines with nihilism to make death look like a better place to enablers of folks like McConnell and Pence.
The economy as it stands today is not in need of a tax cut stimulus. This incompetent Congress should eave it be. So what's really up? The Ryan tax cut proposal is a really make work proposition for idle ideologically driven Republicans. It is the ultimate GOP device to drive our government into a manageable size so they can "drown it in a bathtub."
What will follow this debacle of debt growth mal redistribution of national wealth will be the inevitable gutting of SS and Medicare as unaffordable government luxuries. Get ready and get used to it.
5
It is terrible policy, but this is also pretty vacant analysis. Krugman's muddle reflects and lays bare the hypocrisy of current Democratic leadership.
One nit: the budget deficit is by definition annual and the fictional $1.5 trillion is over a decade. The tax cut would add $1.5 trillion to the national debt, not the deficit. I expect Krugman to take better care.
For example, by rights Krugman should favor limiting or eliminating the mortgage interest deduction. It's regressive. It leads to terrible land-use policy, with knock-on effects on carbon emissions and environmental degradation. And it drives investment into unproductive capital.
The rub is that readers of this newspaper -- and donors to the Democratic Party -- by and large benefit from the mortgage interest deduction. Krugman is mute on the question. Coincidence?
Elsewhere another article cites teachers buying starter homes, having their dream snatched away by limiting the deduction to mortgages of $500,000 or less. Perhaps Krugman could verify it for us, but I suspect the $250,000 joint income needed for that mortgage, and the $100,000 down payment, is well beyond the means of the median earner or any two-teacher couple. For that limit to apply, you're well into the top quintile. You're a Times reader, perhaps, but not middle class if statistics retain meaning.
A tax cut for the middle class is easy to afford. Raise the top rate, uncap FICA payroll taxes, etc. Democrats? I'm still waiting.
The thought that corporations will pass tax cuts down to employees as higher wages is foolish. Corporations are expected to earn profits and share profits with shareholders - not employees. Labor is a cost of production/ operations. It is the responsibility of corporate management to pay only necessary expenses. Why would they pay labor more money just because they got tax cut. Labor cost go up based on needs of the corporation. No responsible corporate management team is going to pay additional labor costs. Any tax cuts that corporations receive will go to the benefit of shareholders. The republicans are trying to sell their plan to a public that does not understand basic business principles.
7
Corporations also seek to gain market share, typically by reducing prices, not by paying workers more.
And this is the man who is second behind only Pence in the line of succession to become president should they ever out Trump. Kind of makes one wonder how we'll ever recover, doesn't it?
8
Ryan looks like he was mentored by a pederastic priest to me.
1
Initially, when I would hear Ryan described as an empty suit, I would disagree, not because I had a favorable opinion of Paul Ryan, but because I assumed that it took some kind of where-with-all to get where he is. The healthcare debacle ended that illusion, and this tax plan leaves no doubt. All those years to prepare for his dream of an Ayn Rand world and no preparation, no idea how to proceed other than to bumble through the motions. Trump at least has the extenuating circumstance of being clearly mentally ill. Ryan and McConnell are simply hollow men in well cut suits. Let's have a toast for continued feckless incompetence.
7
Ryan is so vapid and void of introspection that he doesn't even recognize himself in the political hack character in Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", Wesley Mouche.
http://www.conservapedia.com/Wesley_Mouch
Who will hire Ryan when he is no longer a Congresscritter? Elon Musk? Jeff Bezos?
I love the part about being able to file your taxes on a post card. Most people file their taxes on line, it's called E-file and just how lazy are these people who support Trump? I guarantee you Trump and the gang will not be filing their taxes on a post card, they take lots and lots of deductions because they are in a different tax system than the peasants who support them. And what about poor Tiffany Trump, why should she have to pay taxes on billions of dollars she never worked for while the peasants have the money taken out of their pay check before it gets to their hands?
5
Watching the press conference where the Republicans unveiled their plan revealed everything we need to know. They took turns speaking so condescendingly as they tried in simplistic terms to convince the average middle class person that they were going to be so lucky to get this new tax plan. It sounded too much like "white man's burden" retrofitted to "wealthy people's burden". See here is an extra $1200 to go out and buy some stuff. Just think how lucky you and your family will be this holiday season. And you can even file on this neat postcard. See how great this will be for you. Never mind that the $1200 is a drop in the bucket for what a typical family needs just to get their noses above water, let alone flush with extra cash for free spending. In reality we all have to carry the burden of having these uninformed, shallow, stone-hearted charlatans deciding our financial lives.
8
Paul Ryan started his career by denouncing Social Security & Medicare as an anchor around the neck of our economy. Immediately, he became the darling of the Conservatives, who live with the dream that every entitlement is tantamount to Communism, & should be done away with.Having failed to destroy Social Security that recipients paid for & treasure, he has laid off his ambition to take away every benefit to the Middle Class & Poor, & designed a tax bill that he claims will benefit the Middle Class. The Noble Prize winner for economics , Paul Krugman has debunked this con. The only one that truly benefits from this latest fiasco from the Trump Administration, is the Fat Cats of American society.This Tax Cut to Corporations will not save blue collar jobs , nor will it prevent off shore tax shelters, or out sourcing overseas.reducing the taxes to 20% is still 20% more then the Corporations want to pay.You can’t remove the greed aspect, that drives Capitalism.
3
They DO seem like a bunch of used car salesmen, who KNOW the product is faulty, but that's kind of an insult to used car salesmen, in general. At least those guys don't want to take over the country. This tax bill will die in the Senate, if those folks know what's good for them. I CANNOT wait for the next election.
4
If the public sees through this... how does it become a "necessary win" for the republicans?
1
Corporations and rich Americans get the real money while the rest of us get a gratuity, for which we should be grateful, according to the Republicans.
2
This tax cut/tax reform enterprise is filled with hypocrisy and down-means-up concepts. Paul Krugman has hilited a few, most notably: (1) "after having had years to prepare, the G.O.P. waited until the last minute to throw something together, without any hearings or serious analysis." (2) budget deficits and national debt--for the moment--mean very little (be forewarned, this is another example of "starve the beast"--Republicans will be back soon to say we must cut the non-defense budget further.) (3) tax cuts for the wealthy mean prosperity for all, as if this strategy isn't already being tried and found wanting (ok, Krugman doesn't say that here, but it's consistent with his thinking.)
I add also that this ugly party leading us into the abyss of morass has long abdicated the natural role of any respectable party as defender of taxes to pay for spending. Instead of joining the Dems (also lacking in guts in this area, but more defensible in reaction to their opponents) in telling citizens we need to tax you to pay for the services you need, the God-Offal-Party keeps telling them they need a tax cut, no matter what facts say.
Former President H.W. Bush spelled it out 28 years ago when he called it "Voodoo Economics"
6
Whatever the packaging, this process is simply a power play - ram it through. The belief at bottom is that gerrymandering, talk radio, and media blitz defaming opponents in the election will do what it’s always done - get them re-elected. The indifference to public welfare is matched by indifference to the public good. What we have here is simply rule by and rule for billionaires. And not all billionaires, but the creepiest deranged ones.
5
Why is it that only Mr. Krugman and a tiny few others are willing to write about Paul Ryan's empty suit? Somehow, he's managed an even better con job than Trump. Maybe it's because he projects an earnest interest in things, but he's like the dumb kid in class who knows nothing but never learns he knows nothing. Just shows that if you act like an expert, even the experts are willing to go along with the charade far too much of the time. Kudos for Mr. Krugman for refusing to play along.
2
Where’s the supposed grassroots “TeaParty” now that the debt will grow even more? Its as if it wasn’t a populist movement but a well funded one...?
2
Paul Davis Ryan, Jr., "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness." Your mother's calling you home, Paul Ryan, to wash out your mouth with soap.
Paul Krugman, I must take issue with your declaration, "It really is amazing to watch this chaotic horror show play out at the highest levels of a great nation’s government." Which "great nation" is that, again? Begging that question, what is its "government" again?
1
If you can afford a second home, you don't need a tax cut.
3
It's possible that Dr Krugman truly doesn't understand that untenable notions such as, "tax cuts spur economic growth" and the charlatans in politics and academia who support these notions with a straight face, are treated as credible by the media, not out of careless disregard for the truth, but because it is part of a very successful strategy of shifting the tax burden to the working class and decreasing social program spending.
And the media, from right to left, owned by the wealthy elite,has a stake in keeping the debate alive - even the Times has a front page report on tax cuts and economic growth in which the author dutifully presents the notion as a controversial topic, featuring the opinion of learned economists who support the idea that tax cuts spur economic growth.
That intellectuals have often supported theories based on their ideology rather than rational analysis goes unmentioned in the Times discussion, as do recent examples of ideological bias, such as legal scholar John Woo's assertion that waterboarding is NOT torture (poor example - the Times strangely continues to feature Woo's opinions on other topics).
The "controversy" sustains the political Kabuki that has proven so fruitful for the moneyed class: the Republicans drive up huge deficits when they are in power - and then the Democrats, as Obama did, come along and agree to (non-military) spending cuts. Obama even bragged about his deficit reduction during his second term.
1
This bill should be renamed "Kiss Your Social Security and Medicare Good Bye." Grover Norquist and his republican cohorts wants nothing more than to "drown government in a bathtub" which is exactly what Trumps Tax Bill will do. In several years this country will be in such a deep, financial sinkhole that the only possible way out will be to eliminate or drastically reduce Medicare and Social Security payments. For the past 35 years, both my husband and I have paid into Medicare and Social Security which each and every paycheck we earn, so Republicans, as usual, are conning the public when they call these programs "Entitlements." Every hardworking citizen, Democrat and Republican alike, should oppose this bill. It is a sham; a sure fire way of losing the retirement benefits we have worked for, and exactly what Grover Norquist, Paul Ryan and the rest of the Republican Party are counting on.
1
So why do Republicans keep winning in 90% of the counties in the United States? What is it that they are doing right?
1
Effective gerrymandering
Follow the money!
Same old, same old...warmed over Voodoo economics---ironically, the current strength of the Obama economy may fool the public into voting for the exact same economic policies that caused the economic meltdown President Obama restored.
1
The billionaires are in charge now folks and they are really good at what they do.
We didn't get trump without having awful leadership in the Republican Party.
1
Conservatives (i.e. thieves, crooks and con men) will not let go of trickle down economics. But why would they? They are well aware that trickle down economics does not actually trickle down. Yet they continue to try selling this to the public as if a billionaire receiving another million dollars of our money will give it back to us in higher wages. As if they would return the money they stole from us.
The real goal of the Republican tax plan--aside from funneling more of our money to the wealthy--is to create such am insurmountable deficit that Social Security, Medicare, education funding, etc. have to be eliminated to keep the nation from imploding. Given how anti-American this all is, Conservatives should be charged with treason!
Call your representatives TODAY and let them know they will see you in their offices and at town halls--AND AT THE VOTING BOOTHS--if they do not block any Republican tax effort. If you are one of those who think we'll just be okay regardless of this latest effort at curbing our freedom, think hard about how real it will be when you cannot afford the new refrigerator or clothes you need for your children because Republicans stole more money from you to give to Ryan, Trump and McConnell.
1
Paul Krugman is very kind to Paul Ryan and the Republicans. What incompetents to accept him since 2001 as the Republican balanced budget specialist, because historically he has created deficits with abandon. There it not one budget he created since 2001 with a deficit of less than several $trillion.
In 2011 Ryan claimed a $1.6trillion deficit reduction in the deficit. But a closer look (like 15 minutes with EXCEL) into the 'daring' budget [http://bit.ly/omSmBP] he worked on for 2 years, showed the real reduction to be $160Million, leaving the deficit at $4.3trillion. He conveniently blamed this error on his staff. He has severe case of dyscalculia, without admitting it, and, therefore, there is no chance of healing.
His skills go back much further to 2001, when he created Clinton-surplus hysteria lest the government pay off the entire national debt and start buying up private industry. [http://bit.ly/gaixRX] He was agitating for a bigger Bush tax cut then to prevent this terrible debt free state, instead of waiting for this to happen, like Eisenhower did. Well, we have to acknowledge he was successful: as Republican budget man, he turned a $7.6trillion projected Clinton- economy surplus (his own 2001 numbers) into a $12trillion debt at the end of FY 2008. Blame Obama, he must have done it with a 2004 Democratic Convention speech before he even was a US Senator.
Only in the Republican Party is smooth talking one-eyed man king of the financial blind.
1
failed state, banana republic, tin pot dictatorship, symbiotic relationship with Kim Jong un, I never thought in my lifetime that our once great neighbor to the south would descend into the abyss, no respect for the rule of law, no independent electoral commissions aka gerrymandering , a slave era electoral college that negates a popular vote, voter suppression, and a congress beholden to the NRA , the Koch brothers and the 1%.
A substantial percentage of U.S. citizens have already proved their susceptibility to scams and (genuinely) fake news in the process of letting a proven scam artist get elected President. To assume their - our - critical faculties have suddenly improved enough to understand the malign nature of this tax "reform" is hopelessly hopeful thinking.
The Russians have successfully scammed millions with their new and improved brand of propaganda gushing through our social media. I would not be the least surprised if that's going on right now, convincing the credulous that this tax foolery is just "great, great" for them. Fool me twice, three, four, ten times.
We are losing this new kind of war.
Obviously, the Republican Party has been bought off by a few billionaires. Not so obviously, so has the Democratic Party.
Business cycle:
Old definition.... the recurrent fluctuation between boom and depression in the economic activity of a capitalist country.
New definition....Republicans break it, Democrats fix it.
And yet +60 million voting adults, which includes a majority of white women voters, STILL believe that these Republicans are looking out for them.
Once the tax bill is passed where will Congress get te money for an infrastructure bill?
1
Inside every large complex problem, the adage goes, there is a simple answer dying to get out....and it is WRONG!
Mr. Ryan has for years tried to convince us that the tax code is too complex, and too long. “I want most Americans to be able to complete their taxes on a 3x5 card,” he asserts,
We live in a complex world. Business is global and complicated, but Mr. Ryan we know that your party’s seemingly simple nostrums and “solutions “ avoid more complex and important truths-
Corporations do face high tax brackets but what they really pay on average is already much lower and your bill slashes even that.
The stock market is booming and corporations are awash in cash, but we still suffer from wage stagnation and a mounting gig economy with less and less job protection and consumer protection. Productivity advances don’t transfer to jobs.
When faced with having to replace a flawed health plan, you set out to destroy it, not fix it and replace it with something so awful it had no support from ANY major health group and only 17% of voters
And all the chicanery you employed then is on full display now-
Drafted in secret with even your own members excluded
No substantive hearings
No attempt at compromise or bipartisanship
Unrealistic rush to passage
And the perpetual claim that tax cuts will rain magic pixie dust on us all- TRUST US,
We’ve seen and heard this from you for a decade Mr. Ryan. And we can see behind the curtain
1
Krugman makes a very good point. While America focuses on Trump's in competencies and crimes, Ryan is free to promote his tax scam in the background. The lies about saving jobs and the middle class give him the necessary smoke screen.
Democrats need to make it simple. State that the Republican plan is a scam, fraud, con, etc.
Rep. Sanchez of CA blew it. NPR just broadcast her interview about the GOP tax plan. She talked around the issue. Most people listening will remember nothing she said. She should have begun simply by stating that the GOP plan is what it is – a fraud.
Trump lied when he promised he would reveal his tax returns but never revealed them. Why should we believe this tax plan put out by him and his team? House leaders spoke with the Trump admin. while formulating their current bill.
Democrats should repeatedly reply to the GOP plan by stating –
If the Trump administration wants us to trust them on taxes, they should begin by revealing Trump’s tax returns, as past presidents have.
Democrats should remind voters of Joe Biden’s famous statement –
“Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I will tell you what you value.”
This judgment is spoken from a point of view of reason and studied insight.
The electorate has demonstrated neither. You can't blame leadership for doing what they say and millions then agree with them. The blame is squarely on the gullibility of the people who voted for such. It's no surprise the Republicans promote private education over public. I give them credit for keeping the scare up. Makes the dems look like Milquetoast dreamers.
One day somebody should introduce the GOP to the concept of reality, although I know it's kind of complex....
The Republican Fantasyland that Ryan-McConnell-Drumpf live in is only open for corporations, the extremely wealthy, and the financial wizards who created the Great Recession. It will do nothing for the average taxpayer and everything for the most comfortable among us.
In Ryan's imaginary Ayn Rand world, he imagines himself to be John Galt. In reality he's a feckless bureaucratic politician, not unlike Wesley Mouch or Tinky Holloway.
It would be nice if we actually lived in the GOP Fantasyland where we can grow our way out of budget deficits and national debt. Unfortunately, it has never worked in the past. Why does anyone expect a different result now?
Will Americans finally say, "ENOUGH!" in November 2018 and 2020? Will they consign the intellectually and morally bankrupt ideas/policies of the GOP to the dust bins of history where they belong? Will the Drumpf "Base" wake up to the sham being perpetrated upon them by a reality show Chief Executive?
I won't hold my breath.
I liked Larry Summers’ analysis of Ryan’s bill.
“He’d flunk my introductory Econ 101 course. The GOP can’t even get simple arithmetic right.”
24
"The bill would give huge tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy .... "
Krugman would say that, wouldn't he?
Don't believe the naysayer. Look for yourself.
1. Businesses won't be able to deduct performance-based executive compensation over $1 million.
2. Businesses would no longer be able to deduct entertainment expenses.
3. Companies' interest deductions would be capped.
4. Many tax credits, deductions and exclusions will be torched -- but the standard deduction would be doubled.
5. Freebies for the wealthy like mortgage interest deduction will be limited. So too the tax exemption on capital gain from selling an expensive home. I mean how can the GOP plan be all bad when the National Association of Home Builders screams bloody murder?
6. I won't get to deduct my rich MN state tax.
There is much, much more. Look before you bleat.
Do I think the bill goes far enough? No, but it is a start on draining the swamp. It will be simpler and cleaner. It sweeps away business and personal deductions in return for reducing the corporate income tax rate to the level of our competitors and replaces itemized deductions with a doubling of the standard deduction.
Win or lose this year, this bold tax bill will define the agenda of tax reform for the next decade.
3
Ian, you raise good points. That said, there is the small matter of increasing the deficit by ~$2T+ ... unless you believe in the fairy dust of trickle down economics. There's also the small matter of giving corporations a tax break while they're swimming in cash. Did we mention the elimination of the estate tax so that the ten family farms affected by it won't be hurt by generational transfers of wealth?
One wonders how some folks are going to get by with the deductions on excessive Kool-Aid consumption eliminated.
Guess you missed the part about repealing the estate tax. As well as the part about privileging the investor class over people who actually work for a living. Oh, and this tax cut is set to inflate the deficit by around 1.5 trillion dollars. Of course, we all know that deficits only matter when a Democrat is in the White House. Hiking the deficit benefits the wealthy, who earn interest by loaning the US Treasury all that money. But thank you for playing.
The new tax plan has a number of incentives for families. Do members of Congress not know that approximately half of Americans don't fall into that bucket? Once again, single/ widowed / divorced are forgotten. Write your member of Congress!
29
Elsewhere on today's front page we read:
"The Republican architects of the bill headlined their sales pitch by saying the plan would deliver a tax break of $1,182 a year to a typical family of four earning $59,000 a year."
Golly, gee! This equates to watching the mean rich kid scatter a packet of M+M's on the carpet while waltzing out the birthday party door with the pinata under his arm.
Here's the deal. Making about $60,000 a year is what a couple can expect if each has a full time job making $15 an hour. That is called work. It is hard work. It is precarious, and it is not likely to look like it is going to get a whole lot better soon. Two kids, not cheap. Aging grandparent(s)?, not cheap. The stunning ignorance-remember, stop using those big words like mendacity-of this unnamed Republican benefactor is to grin while offering this family somewhere around $90 a month raise. That'll help with next weeks' groceries, or a real splurge at Olive Garden. Retirement savings, kids college fund, grans' hearing aide? nope. If this is some sort of prosperity gospel choir, I'd be looking for a different church.
37
I have had that exact M and M thought myself. So true. I don't have a lot of sympathy for the expense of kids though, if people have more than they can afford. With a few exceptions, it's a choice, and I am not talking about abortion.
Couldnt agree more with Krugman’s article except that it’s not just the leadership - it’s the whole party. Governing with wise policies is not on their radar screen. Tax cuts for their wealthy patrons are the only thing they care about.
25
not so - they are also obsessed with getting reelected and that means hoodwinking voters without much money or influence tnrough appeals to born again religion (led by abortion) and alt right neo Nazi nutcases and paranoiac gun enthusiasts.
yes,the wealthy masters of the GOP throw up a big tent all right... and everything that isn't nailed down rolls into it - sometimes with a wee push from our friends in Moscow.
I thought running deficits during periods of low unemployment was a recipe for inflation. Or does this not apply with low historically employment.
1
If you only look at what is called the U1 rate, it does seem low, and it is used because in "normal times" it reflects a fairly stable employment level, where most people are able to work as they wish.
The rates are:
U1:[42] Percentage of labor force unemployed 15 weeks or longer.
U2: Percentage of labor force who lost jobs or completed temporary work.
U3: Official unemployment rate per the ILO definition occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively looked for work within the past four weeks.[43]
U4: U3 + "discouraged workers", or those who have stopped looking for work because current economic conditions make them believe that no work is available for them.
U5: U4 + other "marginally attached workers", or "loosely attached workers", or those who "would like" and are able to work, but have not looked for work recently.
U6: U5 + Part-time workers who want to work full-time, but cannot due to economic reasons (underemployment).
But right now, U3 and particularly the U4 and up rates, which are currently at a higher divergence from U1 than in normal times, are much higher than in normal times, showing that there is still a lot of workers, that would like to work, but have stopped trying because they feel the effort to seek work will be wasted.
But there is another effect, the fact that employers can still resist raising wages as there are few unions to negotiate for workers.
See the Wikipedia article, "Unemployment" for a more complete discussion.
Perhaps they will fund their deficits by issuing zero interest rate bonds to the Federal Reserve Bank to hold until they mature. This could be the free money they've been looking for.
Wonder if Pope Francis would approve of this so-called Catholic's plan to take money away from the poor and middle-class to further enrich the uber-wealthy?
No.
Ryan fails to live his life true to the faith and teachings of his religion.
27
But Ryan tells us what he thinks God thinks, just as the Pope does.
like all Republicans, Ryan's religion is money and wielding power over those weaker than himself.
So why aren't Chuck Schemer and Fancy Pelosi making these same points? Because they have bought into--or should I say, they have been bought into--the corporate tax "relief" dogma, which states that our corporations just don't make enough money to compete, because of high American corporate taxes. Why did Schemer and Fancy buy into this dogma? THANK YOU, CORPORATE MEGADONORS!
7
Please keep yelling at your own side. After all, it worked so well a year ago next week.
1
When did they buy into it and how? Let’s see some evidence please. For all I know, you’re just trolling for Trump.
Far be it from the US to deal with practical impediments to business here, such as the fractured legal and judicial systems, the time-consuming and cumbersome health care system, or the persistent use of oddball measurement units the rest of the world has abandoned in favor of one set of units based on physical laws.
whoa, wait... what's that 1.5 Trillion added "deficit" mean? Debt and deficit get consfusalated all the time now. Do you mean in ten years the DEBT will be blown up by 15 Trillion Is the deficit going up by 1.5 Trillion, or is that the cost of the cuts added to the existing prediction of 700 billion per year forever...
The problem does not lie in our stars but in the fact that if the national pie (chart) is sliced unevenly those with the big cuts fix the next deal in a summation cycle that ends with absurdity, if one argues we reward effort and merit.
Money being power, since all ills seem to come from gross inequality (from lack of life saving medical to, yes, sexual predation) of wealth& income why don't we attack the source of the imbalance. & not by trying to raise minimums. But by imposing a maximum wage.
I would suggest no one takes more than half the hardest job gets. Half the Prez's wage. Hence we institute a system in which all income is income period, and the top rate for those taking more than $200,000 - in salary, stock, dividend, rent, etc- pay 100% of every $ over the line.
It is not perfect, and power will still reside toward the top, but lower SES will have a serious power bump. (& besides, it is a more humane solution than that 18th century French apparatus...or a bullet in the basement...)
2
Thank you for finally calling out Paul Ryan and his consistently terrible fiscal policies. I've known he is a fraud for as long as he's been on my radar and what has always puzzled me is that he is often portrayed as an economic policy wonk, even in this paper. When he 'reluctantly'' agreed to become speaker of the house he was greeted as the second coming, charging up to congress on his silver steed. When oh when will voters stop looking to Republicans as the sole representatives of fiscal responsibility and wisdom. In my long life this has rarely been the case. What the Ryans and the Reagans of this country accomplish usually turns out to be awful in the long run. Hello Kansas.
19
Finally?
The House tax plan is a bribe. The GOP is offering the average tax payer a little of their own money provided the tax payer concedes to a massive transfer of wealth from the working and middle classes to the wealthy. If the GOP succeeds, they will add trillions to the public debt all in the hopes that their sunny projections of future growth will magically appear and trickle down to the masses. We're been here before and it doesn't work. Its a bribe to participate in a fraud.
19
Even if the plan does work, why would anyone get all that excited about receiving a "trickle" for their hard work? The argument is always about whether trickle down works, and no one ever discusses the elephant in the room, which is the fact that a trickle is basically nothing anyway.
Corporations are people, aren’t they? Tax them at the same rate as the rest of us!
23
I am really glad to see someone picking up on this point. With Corporate profits taxes doing so well, why the heck does the plan reduce their tax rate ????? Yes, indeed, tax them like the "personage" they were granted when making donations. So now we're seeing the benefits they are reaping for all those millions they donated to GOP politicians! It must stop.
If you give to one income group, you have to take from another.
There is no longer any legitimate framework for Republican proposals. It's just blatant taking as much from the American community as they can get away with.
15
Thank you, as usual, Dr. K for telling it like it is. As you rightly ask, why are tax cuts a priority? The answer is simply because the Republicans are in control. There is no practical or economic benefit for the vast majority of Americans and right there is all the evidence you need to claim we are no longer a democracy, even without Trumpism.
10
I believe that a common element among businesses is to increase profits. They do this by keeping costs low and increasing market share. Taxes are one of their costs. If their taxes are eliminated entirely, why would anyone suppose that they'd take that money and spend it on anything that totes into the cost column? They wouldn't be expected to do this if, say, a supplier gave them their next year's supply of raw materials. Why expect it if taxes are eliminated or reduced?
No. The reasoning makes no sense whatsoever. Yet the R's continue to spin the tale. I hope this time enough of America wakes up and tells them to knock it off.
8
You hit the mark on the nose, Jeff P. We need a wake-up call so loud even the sleeping credulous would jump out of their beds of self deception. That this tax reform "makes no sense whatsoever" assumes those in the tank for Republican scams would know sensible from senseless. I'm low on optimism that this is so.
We desperately need better public education to reduce the number of willing marks who believe the cons. Of course we'd have to spend that $trillion on education, not on giveaways to the super rich. Nah. say the Repubs.
Say the magic words: Medicare and Social Security. The GOP will use the exploding deficits as an excuse to destroy both.
Third party nihilists, non-voters, Bernie babies, "independents," and Trump collaborators: YOU BUILT THIS.
13
Cutting the ability to deduct mortgage interest payments is not, in itself, a bad idea. It will never be lowered to 500K, however, because that would blow holes in the real estate market which is held up by the deduction, low interest rates and the belief that house prices almost always go up.
If the deduction were greatly reduced, the re-sale value of housing would go down dramatically. Banks and other mortgage lenders would suffer, too, because they wouldn't know how to value houses going forward (as in post 2008) and the loans they would make would be much smaller, less profitable. What's not to like in this?
500K is a modest price for a house in many parts of the nation and double the price for a 3 BR house in parts of the south, southwest and mid-west. One size does not fit all. Around where we live, new houses advertise prices in the "low" 700 or 800s. Elsewhere, those kinds of prices are paid by very few.
The mortgage deduction is a gift to those who earn enough to get a mortgage, but it has been around so long that it is now an integral part of the economy. Cutting it? Won't happen.
Reducing it to one million might work, as would reducing it for second houses, but then the Republicans couldn't make their phony math work. Their plan, as noted, is a sham. The problem they have is by holding the majority in Congress and with the belly flop they produced on health care, they are now at center stage. They can't hide. Any more.
4
Kevin Drum points out that the GOP tax bill hits blue states most heavily. His evidence? The Republican tax plan caps the mortgage interest deduction at $500,000.
Another progressive who thinks it's scandalous to take away tax deductions from the rich. Let's shed some tears for all those members of the 1% who will be unable to deduct mortgage interest on loans over $500,000.
2
Ian Maitland misrepresents what the GOP tax plan does in blue states. This tax plan eliminates itemizing any...ANY...itemization of state and local taxes. That hit's Blue states harder. And mortgage interest is capped at 10,000.
1
Beyind suggesting that you might want to price homes and apartments in all the major cities at some point, you might want to take a look at the way the Republicans are planning to yank little things like deductions on education loans.
1
You again. You clearly have no idea of the median cost of home in most places (and by most places, I mean where most people live and work). We contribute the MOST money to the federal government, and now they want more. Good luck with that.
1
Why should I believe some "deficit hawk" who managed to somehow vote for trillions in deficit spending during the Bush years is interested in fiscal responsibility?
8
I can’t figure out why some obviously bogus ideas are accepted like the word of God.
Why are lower taxes a sacrosanct gold standard? It’s like thinking everyone should be thinner. People who are overweight should probably shed some pounds, but at a certain point there’s anorexia. Our government is on the verge of anorexia, if you exclude our military spending. In the meantime, the top 1% benefit hugely from what our country has to offer. But instead of asking them to pay taxes that are in line with what our country gives them, we ask the 99% to give up more.
Another issue bugs me personally, but I’ve never heard anyone else take issue with it. Why are fewer tax brackets simpler? If you make $46,000, your tax bracket almost doubles vs. making $45,000. The complexity isn’t about checking a chart and finding your bracket. The difficulty is in trying to scour the tax code looking to bring your income down by $1000 to get into a lower bracket. That’s one of those issues you don't notice until… oops.
8
Leslie writes, "Why are fewer tax brackets simpler? If you make $46,000, your tax bracket almost doubles vs. making $45,000. The complexity isn’t about checking a chart and finding your bracket. The difficulty is in trying to scour the tax code looking to bring your income down by $1000 to get into a lower bracket. That’s one of those issues you don't notice until… oops."
Um, math is tricky...as are the tax tables. If your income pushes you into a higher tax bracket, you don't pay higher tax on your whole income, just the portion in the higher bracket. Just sayin'
1
Fewer tax brackets do not make income taxes simpler. But they can very nicely bump taxpayers in the middle class up to a higher bracket where they have to pay more. It's a feature, not a bug, in the Republican tax scam.
If the Democrats can't use this disastrous tax bill to slam, over and over, the Republicans in a sound bite that sums up how they're being duped, then they don't deserve to win another election: Politically, this is a beautiful gift for Democrats. But I suspect they'll do what they do so well and use some cerebral, overly detailed explanation that people instantly tune out.
5
We do not need to believe that they are con men.
If, evidence of the known world not withstanding, they sincerely BELIEVE that general prosperity depends on the unfettered wealth & power of the already-wealthy-and-powerful, it all makes sense. Lots of people I know are in that fantasy AynRand camp. Unshakably so.
Very difficult to look the numbers in the face and acknowledge that most of our fates are randomly determined by the lottery birth. One need only be naively innumerate, not evil, to lean Republican.
1
I do my own taxes and just ran through the number on my 2017 return. I save 3700. on taxes and I am good old smack in the middle, middle class.
2
Where can I find the details of the plan? I'd like to see what the effect is on my taxes.
The latest job report states 261,000 new jobs and a lower unemployment rate down to 4.1 percent. We don't need a tax cut.
12
While Prof. Krugman is pitch perfect in his analysis of this Republican Wreck of the Hesperus posing as tax reform, he fails to take note of the Democratic response. Chuck Schumer, fish-monger to Wall Street, came out sounding like Molly Malone singing a vague ditty about sunshine and dead fish.
The Party of the New Deal, fresh off the worst Presidential campaign catastrophe since Burr shot Hamilton, saw its interim DNC chairwoman admit that the Party had been totally co-opted by the Clinton camp of Corporate Greed. She sniffed that the DNC burned the deck chairs financing Hillary The Dead Mackerel, thus dooming down ballot races even while throwing back the Catch of the Day, who raised $230 million from ordinary citizens and has a plan that, even if Paul won't admit it, would actually reform taxes and help the entire country while reducing the deficit, and get this, making American corporations more competitive.
I'm growing wary of Prof. Krugman yelling "Thar She Blows," from the crow's nest with a patch over one eye and his palm over the other.
2
Keep yelling this loudly at your own side. After all, it worked great a year ago next week.
That's because his op-ed is about the tax plan, and not about the Dem response. It's not a thesis; it's Krugman's response.
Let’s give the Republicans a little credit. They’ve figured out a way to apply gerrymandering to the tax code.
11
The silver lining in the Russian hack of the US election is that, for a mere $100,000 on targeted FaceBook ads, strategic voting blocks can be flipped.
What this may mean is that Citizens United may be obsolete -- maybe one doesn't need billions of campaign dollars to win elections.
Without being dependent on the donations of the wealthy, maybe elected officials could enact laws favoring the Common Person.
However, this does not necessarily prevent direct bribery of Congresspeople by the wealthy class to pass laws that favor only the wealthy.
But we can at least start -- use our social media tools to mount a grass-roots uprising and throw the GOP bums out!
Donald Trump ran for president in order to enhance his family's fortunes, lower his own taxes and insulate himself from liability for some very shady business practices. "Repeal and replace" was a farce -- a slogan rather than a matter of any particular interest to Trump. "Build a wall" was a clever bone thrown to lower middle and working class Americans who have been gleefully abandoned by the Democratic Party. He knew next to nothing about foreign policy, but he understood that many Americans simply don't care about foreign policy or think all issues can be solved with military might.
Donald Trump is doing exactly what he came into office to do. He's already winning. The GOP supported him because they had no choice, just as the Democrats would have had no choice but to support any Democratic nominee, regardless of breadth of vision, governing experience, or lack of ethical moorings. Our two-party system is utterly broken and everyone knows it, including (especially) the Russians.
The more we come apart as a nation, the more we have to listen to politicians yammering about coming together as a nation. We're at a crucial juncture in the life of the polity, and neither Republicans nor Democrats are able to offer anything but programs designed to pander to targeted constituencies. In the bigger picture, it's hard to see much difference between them.
Gerry writes, "...neither Republicans nor Democrats are able to offer anything but programs designed to pander to targeted constituencies. In the bigger picture, it's hard to see much difference between them."
Yeah...the republicans pander to the 1% and the Democrats pander to the 99%. If you can't see the difference, maybe you should open your eyes. Of course, the Democrats could do better, much better. But considering what the republicans wanted to do to health insurance and are doing to the environment, suggesting there is not much difference between the two major parties is, at a minimum, crazy.
1
I hope the sunset of Robert Mercer's career at Renaissance Technologies signals a heightened awareness in the US moneyed classes of the dangers of feeding the dragon of nihilism. The man is a troubled soul.
1
The republicans have to pass this tax bill. As reported in The Guardian June 26, 2017, the "Texas piggy bank" will be closed to them if they don't. This announcement was made at a conservative conference. The Kochs and other wealthy doners want a return on their investment. This is their tax plan not the citizens.
6
Manufacturing took jobs abroad because of cheap labor and they will stay there regardless of any tax policy because costs of labor and building drives profits, taxes are a small part especially since they don't pay them anyway. All the whining about taxes is a diversion. At the very least they should have built their factories in Mexico and solved the immigration problem. Reveal all the components of massive corporate profits and then tell me how favorable taxes will bring jobs back to this country. Stop buying the diversion, they don't care about jobs or workers in America anymore. The benevolent corporation is mostly dead. Greed drives the whole thing.
3
Too many taxpayers ate satisfied with tax-cut crumbs. This thing will have life until somebody shows what happens if individuals enjoy 2/3 of the cuts, not corporations.
1
There is no example in any state at any time anywhere of this charade of an economic policy working.
Tell me what economic turnaround I missed, and where, GOP supporters.
4
Why are there no hearings in Congress on this "largest tax cut" bill in U.S. history?
Why can't the American people listen to a healthy debate that should precede such a mammoth piece of legislation that will have such an enormous impact on this nation's entire economy??
No hearings, no town meetings? No discussion? No analysis to evaluate how this affects the already skyrocketing budget deficits.
No. The GOP just wants a quick win for their filthy rich campaign donors so they can ramp up their fundraising efforts once again.
7
Everyone is talking about "families." Are these married people with children? How about single people - like myself? How about non-married couples, with or without children? Living in NYC I have a feeling I'll be paying more.
3
The GOP's economic policies are always so backward that it's frightening. During the Great Recession, they constantly screeched about the budget deficit, the national debt and inflation, advocating policies that would have deepened the recession (see the Great Depression for reference!) Now that the economy is expanding steadily and the job market is strong, they propose wider budget deficits and tax cuts. The GOP's basic policy is to do whatever is the opposite of what the Democrats would do, then hype it up with lies and deceit.
To Paul Ryan, who professes to be a Catholic, I ask: how much better off do the wealthy have to be before you are satisfied? Go back and read the Gospels, Paul, especially the Beatitudes.
3
But Paul,
You write, "Most Americans realize that Donald Trump is a very bad president; they need to realize that his party’s congressional leadership is pretty awful, too."
You are ignoring the Trump base. Republicans are more worried about Trump's base than "most Americans". Trump's base will vote in the republican primary..."most Americans" will not. And Trump's base believes that Trump is one of them and they support him regardless of how bad he acts. And Trump's base will support the republican leadership when they go along with Trump.
Furthermore, the many republican adhere to the party principles of 3 "R's": Rancor, Resentment, Revenge. This tax plan benefits the red states and hurts the blue states. What's not to "love" about that? And states rights as a conservative talking point only matters when it benefits red states. The only time republicans ever talk about fairness is when it will benefit their donors...the wealthy, or their states.
2
Come on. It's not a bad plan at all. Getting the corporate tax rate down to 20% is really important for international competitiveness. That alone shows that the Republicans aren't the isolationist populists that they are made out to be. And reducing -- if not eliminating -- the mortgage deduction is long (long, long) overdue. That deduction is nothing but a huge government handout that encourages immense indebtedness and in the end really benefits only the 1 percent (not to mention that eliminating the mortgage deduction alone would do a lot in itself to eliminate the deficit). .... In any case, this is one of those situations where you have to ask yourself, "Am I going to oppose everything just for the sake of opposition? Or, am I going to be the type of American I wish the #MAGA were?" I vote for seeing good in all Americans. Ryan may be generally an anti-poverty pimp; but this tax plan is no con.
1
Paul Ryan is not just a "con man," but a mean-spirited legislator on a mission, as we saw with the fortunately failed Obamacare repeal (Bless you, John McCain), to demolish Medicaid and Social Security. He has moved, as you've often pointed out, beyond "voodoo economics" to "vampire economics." He is the Count Dracula willing to drain the life-blood out of the lower- and middle-class. And, he's joined forces with our Frankenstein president who will be, as always, the "winner"--very "bigly"--of this monstrosity of a tax cut bill that will free him from paying any taxes by eliminating the AMT and allowing his empire to continue in the little hands of Don Jr., Eric and Ivanka, and perhaps in true Trump fashion bankrupt the nation.
2
I don't think Paul Ryan's vision of the future is based on Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged', it's starting to feel more like George Orwell's 'Animal Farm'.
5
The Republican tax plan strikes me as being akin to moving all of the comfortable deck chairs on a ship from steerage to the high-priced luxury deck, and calling it a renovation.
2
Remember...these are the same people who had the keys to the vehicle called our Economy and drove that car off of the fiscal cliff. Then they screamed "deficit" in the face of heroic efforts to save our Economy dragging their feet, legislatively, the entire time efforts were being made to right the Ship.
Now: more Voodoo Economics
5
A potential $1,500,000,000,000 deficit increase.
The media should start writing these out. Maybe looking at all those zeros will knock some sense into people.
5
Such a one-way-street our-way-or-the-highway crafting of these huge bills should result in nothing but giving a single yes or no vote on the other end. Bring it to the floor - Up or Down.
Any congressman can safely vote "no" by taking a page out of Rand Paul's play book: find one thing you simply can't abide, and just say no.
1
For sake of accuracy, tax bills come out of the House Ways and Means Committee. The bill is not being drafted by Ryan or Trump. Rather, the author is Kevin Bradley, head of the Ways and Means Committee.
"Deficits don't matter."
This famous slip of Cheney years ago revealed a bit about the GOP's soul. Krugman and others have penned mightily to further expose the GOP hypocrisy. And now Ryan has gone Full Monty.
Actually, big deficits DO matter to the GOP. They deliver powerful political cover for slashing spending---thereby eroding the ability of government to provide basic services for the people.
4
Gerrymandering and voter oppression is the true Republican forte.
I fear they will win again.
3
Professor Krugman: Please email me when you have one nice thing to say about any Republican or GOP policy. I know that you think all Republicans are evil and operate with malicious intent, but occasionally you may find out that some Republicans love their families, their country and even make charitable contributions when they don't have to. Now you say that Paul Ryan is a conman who has fooled all of the "rubes" with his fiscal machinations. Even Ryan gets no credit for being a smart, sincere politician.
The GOP tax plan is not perfect and will probably be modified before it is enacted into law. It doubles the standard deduction, increases the child tax credit and eliminates some tax brackets. All of this will help the middle class. Of course, the wealthy will benefit as well. How can you devise a "fair" tax scheme without giving some credit to the people paying most of the taxes? The plan keeps the highest tax payers at the current 39.6% and eliminates some of their deductions so I don't see how the wealthy benefit that much.
As for the corporations and estate tax, don't we want corporations to do well in America? And bring some of that overseas wealth back to the country? You must know that corporations simply pass taxes on to their consumers in higher prices. I do agree with you that the estate tax should be retained with a $10 million deductible. And mortgage interest should be capped at $500k so that the rich don't get subsidized for mammoth mortgages.
1
Why don't you tell us one nice thing Republicans have done for anyone other than the wealthy and the corporations in the last 30 years?
1
JAM writes, "The GOP tax plan is not perfect and will probably be modified before it is enacted into law. It doubles the standard deduction..."
Yes...it does almost double the standard deduction...but it eliminates the personal exemption which is 2/3 as big as the standard deduction, so the increase is much more modest than a true doubling. That's the kind of nonsense that con men use...while one hand gives, the other takes away. And remember, the government is still running deficits despite the low unemployment numbers and healthy economy. Now is the time to pay down the debt, not run up more of it. So, yes...rewrite the tax code to eliminate all the breaks for the wealthy and big corporations...but instead, this plan gives them 80% of the new breaks!!! And given that Medicare and Social Security are becoming insolvent...what's the point of handing out more money to the rich?
1
This is not mysterious. They do it because they can.
3
Krugman!!! Yes, time and again the wealthy have received tax cuts over the last forty years without lifting all boats, in fact leaving many boats stranded. Yet, just like people who gamble often know full well the odds are in the houuse's favor still hope to get rich, Trump supporters will still vote their prejudices.
5
The Republican Party has not a single redeeming quality. It's time for a new party to replace it.
3
If republicans need a "win" so badly, perhaps they could rename some post offices. That would make them look good and perhaps your local post office will be refurbished in gold trim.
3
Thank you Professor for reminding people that we shouldn't even be discussing tax cuts at all! Another way to look at taxes is as investment in society. There are so many needs, the last thing we should be doing is disinvesting in our great nation. Perhaps there are ways to invest better (I can think of a few), but reducing the amount we help the least among us and giving more to the ones who need it least will not help this great nation one bit.
2
Let me get this straight. In 2009 when unemployment exceeded 10% Republicans opposed spending $800b on The Recovery Act (much of which went to infrastructure investments.) Yet today, when unemployment is hitting 4.1%, they have an urgency for a tax expenditure of $1500b that will go to private individuals either directly or via dividends and stock appreciation . Shocking!
Everyone also needs to understand the absurdity of the Republicans' "stepped up" rule on inheritance. Take a wealthy individual who invested $1 million in Berkshire Hathaway stock in 1977. Today that stock would be worth about $1.5 billion. Now instead of selling off the position during the last 40 years to enjoy life, that wealthy person could borrow money against the stock position and enjoy a very good life indeed. Say he/she borrowed and spent $200 million during the last 40 years. When he/she dies, the heirs will inherit $1.5 billion tax free. They will have to give $200 million plus interest to the banks. HOWEVER, the $1,499,000 in stock appreciation over the last 40 years will be entirely tax free!
...And they say this is a tax bill for the Middle Class.
8
If the new tax plan is passed, giving massive tax cuts to the super-rich,
who will pay?
Perhaps no one will think that it's fair.
Perhaps no one will choose to pay.
4
The 20 percent corporate tax would seem like such a bad idea if the law assured us that all corporations would pay 20 percent. But they won't, of course.
Personally, unless a tax cut is tied to a reduction in military spending I have no interest in it. We can "pay for" the tax cut by reducing the rate at which we invade nations.
14
Republican claims:
1. Tax cuts for the rich give an enormous boost to economic growth.
2. The economy is now growing like gangbusters.
3. Now is a great time to cut taxes for the rich.
If 1 and 2 are true, 3 cannot be true, because the economy would overheat, leading to runaway inflation. So if 3 is true, either 1 or 2 must be false. Any way you slice it, they are lying. More that one of these claims can be false, but they can't all be true.
12
No one seems to discuss anything about the possible "revenue" coming to the rescue of filling up the budget gap of $1.5 trillion. On the one hand, the standard deduction has merely gone up by $1600 from $10400 (=6350+4050) to $12000 - on the other hand all deductions (except $10000 for property tax on a property below $500,000) are eliminated. By elimination of these deductions, the revenue will be buoyant to be able to partly pay $1.5 trillion budget deficit. This might be the most clever way, ever done, to pay for the hefty tax cuts for the rich.
Moreover, tinkering with the retirement benefits (under 401(k)), albeit voluntarily, by imposition of one-time 10% tax will cover most of the budget deficits. Then, where was the necessity of elimination of all the important deductions for 70% filers? This is another clever ploy...
3
With the disparity in wealth between the rich and everyone else at historic highs, can anyone explain why there are forces in the land that wish to enact laws that would make the rich even richer?
8
Once again it's another republican administration cutting taxes for the rich while blowing up the deficit and peddling the hokum that increased economic growth and tax revenues will more than offset the tax cut. Didn't happen under the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations and won't happen now either. The result will be an increasing deficit. The problem with this tactic now however is that unlike in the past social security and medicare spending will start to significantly outstrip their payroll tax revenues that in the past helped fund other parts of the budget. As a result the republicans are executing their historic squeeze play to choke out the programs where either significantly higher payroll taxes or reduced benefits will be required.
6
The tax plan really isn't good, mostly because it is based on a false premise; "tax cuts for the investing class will lead to allocating needed capital".
Money to invest isn't the problem right now - lack of demand from the (student) debt laden younger generation is...
So is lack of 21st century infrastructure built by government (especially in the rust belt)...
How does this help?
7
This is if anything too kind to the perpetrators. This Koch-controlled Congress has held the country hostage for the past seven years, so that it could get its tax cuts for the ultra-rich. By now it is clear that all the balanced budget rhetoric was just an excuse for shutting down government, with the goal of producing pain to help elect a Republican to cut those taxes. Trump’s “slowest recovery” slogan is a good clear statement of deliberate Republican policy.
Tax cuts are not just an issue, they are THE issue. Together with Citizens United they represent a huge transfer of both money and power to the few hundred people who feel it is their country to run.
9
John McCain got it right when he said major changes to our health care system need to be passed using a process of "regular order." Let's just hope Senator McCain will continue to stand up for this principle when it comes to major changes in our tax laws.
If a bill cannot attract at least 60 votes in the Senate then it does not deserve to pass; or as Trump might tweet- PRETTY SIMPLE!
5
OK, this is what I don't get: "To hand out those big tax cuts while raising the deficit by 'only' $1.5 trillion..." means that a $1.5 trillion increase in the deficit is their target. Somehow, they claim that if they stay under this number, Democrats cannot filibuster, and only 50 votes are necessary in the Senate. Is this something they built into the "budget" they passed? Paul mentions that it will require 60 votes in the Senate, but this statement is the first I have heard that the filibuster is on the table. I was beginning to think that the Senate rules make the filibuster only available to the Republicans, that Democrats cannot filibuster even budget busters like this turkey.
Note that this is a target for increase in the *deficit*, not the debt. If this happens, the debt will increase by more than $1.5 trillion each year. And even that assumes their unrealistically rosy "growth" projections.
5
Their budget resolutions allow the 1.5 trillion so if the final bill is determined to ONLY raise the deficit and corresponding piling on of long term debt, they are good to go with 50 votes through reconciliation.
Whether intentional or not, this is Starving the Beast:
1. Cut taxes on uber rich.
2. Explode deficits.
3. Blame spending programs that help the poor and middle class, which have an overall small effect on the budget.
We are still feeling the budget effects of the Bush tax cuts. These effects can be long lasting and hard to undo.
Plus, no job creation will come from these tax cuts. We are close to full employment. The pool of qualified workers is shrinking/gone, leaving only people in-between jobs or those who do not have the skills.
Tax cuts will not magically increase the pool of qualified workers nor magically make people learn the skills sets demanded in the labor market.
It is also interesting watching Republicans brag about the stock market and record corporate after-tax profits, only to turn around and cry that American corporations cannot compete internationally due to burdensome tax rates.
11
Democrats and Republicans interested in fairness and equity should refuse to vote on any tax bill until Trump releases his tax returns. No audit goes on for this long, and, in any event, his 2016 tax return cannot possibly be under audit yet. Passage of the tax “reform” bill unveiled yesterday is clearly a giveaway to the entire Trump family.
10
Might as well demand he release the pee tapes. To thing that the Moron doesn't lie on his tax returns is laughable.
One of the few things this congress could have actually made progress on was infrastructure building. There was great fanfare of a trillion $ investment early in the yearend then nothing. This tax proposal nails that coffin shut. 1.5 trillion $ in added deficit will not fund new badly needed infrastructure.
The US is competitive on corporate tax rates globally, what it sadly lacks is the modern, robust infrastructure to support businesses in their production and the people who are employed by these businesses. By any measure: roads, bridges, rail transport, transit, health care access and even digital connectivity, the US is increasingly an also-ran.
Sadly, these proposed tax cuts wouldn't even benefit the very wealthy in the long term but who in politics thinks in the long term?
6
The obvious question lurking in the minds of anyone with at least half of a brain is - "how does this government: the Congressional, Executive, and Judicial branches reflect what could be called the current state of the American project?".
I think that "most" (most, but not all) people would agree that the conclusion of the Civil War and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were a high point. The abolition of chattel slavery was the largest liquidation, through revolutionary means, of privileged property in history to that point in time.
A historic wrong was righted and the aggrieved; those who were enslaved, played a central role in that glorious process as leaders (Frederick Douglass) and soldiers (the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry among others).
Gettysburg was a turning point where farmhands from Michigan and New England factory operatives willingly gave their lives for the cause. With the end of Reconstruction in 1877 the long, shameful, violent counter-ebb of Jim Crow began.
The struggles of the 50's and 60's marked a new upward movement. Yet, where do we stand today?
How do present generations measure themselves against past accomplishments? Can people render an honest assessment? Will there emerge a courageous leadership capable of provoking that type of thought?
The fact that it is currently all but absent is a painful reality. That's reflected in the electoral confusion. Let us hope and work for its appearance. Our future depends on it.
1
"Equal protection of the law" is still a broken promise in the US.
1
Dr. K makes a good point when he says, "And by large margins, voters want taxes on corporations and the wealthy to go up, not down." The truth is that a large portion of those voters will still believe what they hear from vested interests (Koch brothers, Trump family, Adelson, Thiel etc ) who will bankroll the GOP candidates in 2018 and beyond.
When the wreckage of this administration and GOP policies becomes apparent to those who have bought into climate change denial, unsupportable tax cuts, elimination of consumer protections etc. it will be too late. When the blame is cast by future historians much of it will fall on Citizens United and citizens falsely incited.
5
If Trump agrees to and supports a tax plan that eliminates the estate tax, doesn’t that trigger the emolument prohibition in the Constitution? But why would anyone enforce that when past, clear violations by Trump have been dismissed by Congress with ambiguous arguments that are impossible to understand.
Since Trump won’t release his tax returns, someone should publicize table that shows how much Trump’s family will gain if his worth is one billion, two billion, and upwards.
The persistent reasons give for elimination of the estate tax (small farms, etc.) have been debunked thoroughly, but the GOP talking points have not changed in decades. Eliminating this tax will be a huge gift to a very small percentage of Americans who are already extremely wealthy
2
Republicans operate on "a theory that reveals extraordinary contempt for voters". Why shouldn't they? They have been merrily cutting taxes for rich people and exploding the national debt since 1980, and they have paid no political price for their behavior. Our real problem is that ordinary voters have no comprehensive of how the tax system works. How many people will catch on to the nice tax break most people making a million dollars would get from cutting the rate between $480,000 and $1 million? I wonder how many millions a person would have to make before the higher rate overcomes the cut? From what I've read, the average American has roughly 4th grade math skills. It shows up in our politics.
6
The definition of an honest Republican: When he is bought, he stays bought.
The Republican mega-donors want a tax cut, so they are getting a tax cut. That is why we are doing this. Not to reduce the deficit, not to simplify our overly complex tax system, not to grow the economy. The bought and paid for Republicans are doing the bidding of their donors and their donors want a tax cut.
5
Very surprised to see PK's assertion that the Senate cannot pass tax reform that increases the deficit with fewer than sixty votes.
In October, the Senate passed a "budget resolution" that specifically permits a deficit increase of $1.5 trillion over ten years. That vote set the stage for passing deficit-increasing tax reform with just 51 votes, under reconciliation rules.
Details are here. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/us/politics/senate-budget-blueprint.html
2
Paul Krugman is absolutely right about Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan is a Ayn Rand aficionado. Ayn Rand is to thinking what painting by numbers is to art.
8
Superb! Absolutely superb comment!
I guess after eight long years of obstruction the Republicans are just out of the habit of actually having to do something like govern. You would think in their zeal to enrich the already wealthy they would have had a well thought out vetted tax plan at the ready, instead of serving up Paul Ryan's ill thought out tax reform hash from years ago. They have made one thing crystal clear if it weren't already, they have no use for the Middle Class nor the poor. I am certain that they will look to make up the deficit in this plan from the social safety nets, and on the backs of the Middle Class.
3
If this tax package passes, we will see a gear change, an acceleration in the decline of the United States. This decline began with Reagan’s beguiling delusion that less taxes equals more revenue, which tripled the national debt and made the U.S. a debtor, not a creditor nation. We have not had the courage and discipline required to fix it, involving as it does a tax structure the like of which prevailed during and after WWII.
Historians will write of the irony of a hyper-nationalist, xenophophic political party dedicated to business interests tumbling their nation down from it’s global eminence to international paupery.
2
As the late Ann Landers used to say, wake up and smell the coffee! This bill promises many nasty things for average folks, but it is just the first step of the R’s long time plan to shrink the size of the federal government by shredding what passes for a safety net in this country. This enormous deficit, caused by massive redistribution of wealth from regular people to the super-rich, will once accomplished promptly be used to justify calls for sharp cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, The ACA, SNAP, you name it. It’s no mystery. Paul Ryan has openly named and claimed these goals for a very long time. Never mind the catastrophe in Kansas, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
2
Let me paraphrase a popular saying to describe the Republican way of governing "Democracy is the government of 1%, for 1%, by 1%" and Donald Trump's campaign slogan to "Make America greater for 1%". Why are we surprised? The health plan was a several hundred million dollar giveaway to top 1% masquerading as "health reform". Based on Republicans' very optimistic analysis this "tax reform" will give $1,200 tax cut to an average American family while taking away much more in benefits and borrowing many times more that amount from future generations. In contrast Donald Trump and his "friends'" would get taxcuts ranging from several hundred million dollars to billions of dollars. If president is worth what he claims to be he would also save over a billion dollars in estate taxes. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary If corporate taxcuts do create jobs why don't we give something like a $10,000/every new job created tax deduction to corporations instead of deficit busting corporate tax rate reduction.
3
I find this sentence confusing:
'In any case, it almost surely can’t become law in anything like its current form: A tax bill can’t pass the Senate with less than 60 votes if it raises the long-term budget deficit, which this bill surely does."
He means "with at least 60 votes", right?
(Also, I'm not familiar with "how ever" being two words. I'm sure it was back in 1600s or whenever, but not recently.)
How, ever, will MItch McConnell get this cockamamie Bill through the Senate with fifty votes plus Mike Pence if he can't pretend that it doesn't have a long-term effect on the Budget?
This is specifically designed so neither Democrats nor dissenters get the slightest say.
Enjoy your tax increase.
2
Republicans in general and Ryan in particular are clearly a fraud with no interest in doing what is right for the country. Trickle down Has been proven to be a bogus theory over and over yet voters continue to believe the lies and vote for Republicans. Until voters wake up and vote their own best financial interests the Republicans will continue to dismantle the government and drive income to the top 1%.
1
As bad as the GOP tax cut plan is I do not hear any talk on the other side of the aisle for a rational, fairer plan which brings the incomes of most Americans back into line with the growth of GDP and restores the American covenant of 'Work hard, play by the rules and grow with the country!' to Millennials and younger.
I guess I get it...Why advance a Democratic idea when you are not in power to implement it?...but the impression left with voters is that the Democrats have no plan for a better way.
I guess I prefer parliamentary politics in which coalitions are built on compromises of stated party platform and ideals.
2
Opponents of this tax cut will assure its demise only when they show what happens if 2/3 of the cuts go to individuals, not corporations. Too many taxpayers will accept tax-cut crumbs unless they have seen what they stand to lose, as they did with the ACA repeal threat. What's more, the GOP would never embrace such a distribution of tax cuts.
1
Yes sure it's all awful, but I would have expected a more analytical perspective from Paul Krugman showing who gives and gets what from the major changes. This is of immense interest to foreigners also looking at this reform from the perspective of its potential impacts on foreign trade and investment.
1
Near the end of today's NY Times lead editorial we find the words "No Republican who cares about fairness, economic sense and the financial health of the government." Not one of them would be justified in good conscience supporting this outrageous Robin Hood-ism in reverse tax "reform."
Not to quibble tiresomely but, indeed, no Republican known to me cares a rotten fig about fairness, economic sense and the financial health of government. If they did, they would have spent the last eight years developing some serious policy formulations.
These days, the GOP no longer even pretends to care about real governance because it is so busy winning in making America great again.
4
When will we learn?! A version of this has already been tried - in Kansas. The state was nearly bankrupt before the Republican legislature finally woke up and raised taxes.
2
This *should* be an opportunity for the Democrats to announce their alternative. Oh, wait, they don't really have one. After all the years of nonsensical Republican tax plans, the Democrats haven't prepared anything substantial except arguments about why the Republican plan is no good.
You don't run elections between Trump and Not Trump, and you can't get voters excited about Ryan versus Not Ryan. The Democrats need actual positive ideas. If you're thinking "but the existing tax laws are basically OK," then you're conceding the political argument.
1
The alternative to the Republican tax plan is to revive the very progressive income tax structure of the 1950's, and make the wealthy and the corporations pay more.
The Republicans love the 1950's so much, but they sure don't want to go back to the tax structure of the Eisenhower years, do they?
Still they won't touch the criminal carried interest loophole. As low as my expectations of Trump are I did expect he would put a stop to it as he promised over and over - if he did it would prove what he has been saying - that D's & R's are beholden to big donors and he is not. But it seems it was just one more lie. One more empty promise designed as an applause line.
3
Tax cuts? What we need is more taxes from the Wall Street gamers, Corporate cash hoarders and of course, the uber-wealthy. In fact, it would be appropriate to introduce our first VAT. This Nation needs bags of new revenue to rebuild our infrastructure, increase re-training and higher education for the working class and deliver health care for all.
2
It will take all of the revenue from a VAT to fund a universal health care system in the US. A VAT effectively taxes more or less the same percentage of everyone's spending, regardless of the amounts or sources of their income, which is why many consider it the "fairest" allocation of the tax burden for universal health care.
1
During the 80 years that I have been aware of the reasons that Republicans have used to justify cutting taxes on the highest income Americans, the most recent was that those high income folks were "job creators". The theory was that if their taxes were cut, they would use the additional disposable income to hire people.
Neither the Rebublicans nor the Democrats ever revealed any analysis of whether these high earners had job creation ability.
What if a substantial percentage of those earners are actually highly paid employees - CEO's, COO's, CFO's, Executive Vice Presidents, Vice Presidents, Law Firm Partners or even young tech employees with large salaries and stock options?
Their job creation ability is unrelated to their personal income taxes.
Like most other Republican claims used to promote tax cuts, this "job creation" cliam is totally unsupported by reality.
9
Stephan, the GOP is masterful at creating buzzwords, and then using them repeatedly. Perhaps adopting the lingua franca is part of running for GOP office? I believe the term "job creator" is meant to give these beneficiaries of tax welfare some moral gravitas. "See-- these people deserve USA largesse because they CREATE jobs, the resta you poor suckers just work for them-- YOU should pay more, you takers!" It matters little that in many cases they are also employees. It's all about the spin. And the average GOP voter is so under the sway of 30 years of propaganda that they believe these people are superior to themselves. Sick, no?
The tax plan is like a shell game. Let's put deductions here, increased exemptions there, estate taxes there, you get the picture.
At the end of the day, after moving around all those shells, I'd like to know my final tax rate.
If this tax cut helps the middle class, then let's show the middle class.
So, using all of my information from 2016 (income, interest, prop taxes, etc), can you run it through the new proposed tax code)? I'd like to see how it stacks up to what my actual tax rate was for that year. Then I could appropriately address my congressman.
1
Thank you Mr. Krugman!
This is not Paul Ryan's first flim-flam - that was his effort to privative Medicare in an obvious manner that would make the program basically worthless.
Go Paul! (in jest, referring to the Ryan guy)
6
Mr. Krugman makes reference to the deduction for "some state and local taxes" going way. That phrasing understates the seriousness of that particular proposal -- model out what happens to those using the deduction in New York relative to someone with the the same income in Florida or Texas. Ye cats! The person from the blue state pays more in taxes than they do currently, and the person from the red state pays a lot less. That's the kind of tax the Sheriff of Nottingham collected -- done less for economic reasons than to punish enemies.
To the victor go the spoils, I guess...
5
Massachusetts taxes income, but right across the border, New Hampshire taxes property. Portsmouth gets the gravy and Boston gets the beans under this tax proposal.
It is apparently impossible to provide equal protection of the law in the US.
They're proposing elimination of the estate tax ALONG WITH passing of stepped-up valuation of stocks to the heirs. That means the super wealthy will rarely even pay tax on their capital gains, either.
3
Obviously these people understand the need to live on income from capital when their brilliance has been surpassed by the own creations.
Isn't it a pretty big assumption to think that Mitch McConnell won't change the rules again? I could easily see a rule change that would allow this to pass with a simple majority.
4
Replacement of the "death" tax with the health tax is cruel. Formerly deductible health care costs will now be taxed. A few thousand families will reap a one-time benefit while the remaining 125 million American households will pay for that benefit with pain and suffering every year. What have we come to as a society?
3
"And why should tax cuts even be on the table? We have budget deficits, not surpluses, and lots of unmet needs for future spending. U.S. taxes are low, not high, compared with other wealthy countries. Predictions that tax cuts will lead to rapid economic growth have been wrong time and again. And by large margins, voters want taxes on corporations and the wealthy to go up, not down."
That says it all, Paul. Now if we could just get Republican voters to arise from their 88-year snooze, we might get our country back from the Koch brothers.
13
Reagan's voodoo economics are alive and well. That's what this entire op-ed of Mr. Krugman's can be boiled down to. It appears as if the GOP (and a good many Americans too) want to believe that cutting taxes will improve everyone's lot in life. There's one small thing they are forgetting. It takes money to run a government. Now, if every GOP senator and representative and unelected government official were to offer to forgo their salaries, all paid for by our taxes, I might take them seriously. But they are living high on the government dole even if it is an elected or appointee position. And it's government money so, using their reasoning, it's welfare. So is any tax cut or break any part of government gives to corporations to induce them to locate in a particular area.
If the GOP can give tax breaks to the 1% who don't need them they can give 99% of us tax breaks too. We aren't millionaires. We're the working people who keep America afloat. We deserve better than what they are doing which is decimating our lives to keep the 1% happy. We deserve affordable housing, decent jobs, access to a good K-12 education, good health care, and a decent old age when we can't work. Those tax breaks won't help us at all.
17
Apparently many people cannot understand the flow of money by analogy to electric current. The work done by electricity and by money depends on how many electrons or dollars there are, and how fast they move. Economic policies are divided into regulation of how many units of currency there are, which is called monetary policy, and regulation of how fast they move, which is called fiscal policy.
Taxation and spending is forced movement of money. Only Congress can perform this function, which sustains a steady underlying flow of funds to stabilize the economy.
4
I admire Dr. Krugman immensely and appreciate his genuine concern for ordinary folk. I am unable to think of any other Nobel laureate in any discipline who keeps this kind of a dialogue going with working people for years. I also confess to be absolutely hopeless in managing my own money.
Nevertheless, the thought crosses my mind that he may be making another mistake now like when he said earlier that a 3% growth rate was unlikely. Your economy has grown by that figure for two quarters now - and the last quarter was not affected by the hurricanes. Nor is there any sign of a slow down.
While I don't claim to understand the reasons for this, the signs are that your country is entering an extended period of economic growth. The 3 to 3.5% rate assumed by the Republicans may actually happen. The selection of the new head of the Federal Reserve is one more interesting indicator that the GoP may be on to something.
Yes, on to something that only benefits the wealthy investors. No help for the middle and lower classes.
1
Two swallows do not a trend make. Two quarters of growth mean absolutely nothing about overall economic growth. Economists spend a lot of time and effort trying to estimate what the underlying potential rate of real growth of the economy is, based upon estimates of future growth in labor and capital. However the big unknown is the possible growth (or decline) in productivity and unfortunately the trends are discouraging.
1
What growth for whom?
A growing GDP does not necessarily translate into higher wages and greater economic security for those who need both most.
1
One reason given by the GOP for cutting taxes for the top 1% and for corporations is that it will create jobs. Today it was announced by the Labor Dept., that unemployment fell to 4.1%, close to a benchmark economists consider to be full employment. This announcement would seem to argue against cutting any taxes at this point, as the economy seems to be chugging right along (thanks, Obama!).
20
There are some fairly well-known conservative personalities who try to help people get out of debt and get better control of their finances. Maybe Republicans should elect them. You pay all your bills, eat beans and rice, and put everything else into paying off the debt. And if there isn't enough money for that then the problem is an income shortage. So maybe the R's should stand for a bit of a tax increase, to close the gap so that the government can make interest plus payments to our debtors. They're the ones who are always claiming the government budget is like a family's budget.
10
It would be real reform and more fare if the got rid of ALL deductions and used one low tax rate. Those in the middle might break even - without the mortgage interest deduction and with a lower tax rate. The mortgage interest deduction really benefits those who can afford to purchase an over-sized home, a second home, or more. find a "standard deduction" to apply to everyone. Apply a flat tax to all income above the deduction for everyone. Better yet if that flat tax rate is close to the corporate tax rate.
3
A flat tax is the most harsh and regressive tax idea ever peddled. Pure Snake Oil for the Rubes. Try to understand the 'marginal utility of money'... it's very simple: $5,000 is $5,000, right...? WRONG - a moments reflection will clearly show that the $5K between $55,000 and $60,000 means a thousand times more to that taxpayer than the $5K between $245,000 and $250,000. For the person now making $60K, that five grand is (to coin a phrase) "yuuge" - it means a new car, or a better apartment - perhaps even the ability to purchase a home. To your $250K earner it's almost a rounding error... now I can afford the leather seats on my third car.
3
This tax proposal is another shot fired in the War Between the States. It is a substantial tax increase for people who own properties and pay income taxes to states like Massachusetts and New York. One can hope that there will be enough increase in dividends to cover it if one owns stocks, but it is by no means a a certainty.
4
This tax plan is a non-starter for me. My wife and I live in Westchester and own a home in Westchester
and a summer home in the Berkshires so I hope it get's roundly defeated. I see they left in all the benefits that Trump has enjoyed or will benefit from when he dies with the repeal of the estate tax and the AMT.
Republicans and Trump lie through their teeth when then say this won't be a plan that helps the rich, it most certainly does. I hope Americans see this for the charade it is.
Please do not overlook CA in your theory. This nation would be much the poorer without the economy of CA which dwarfs that of many nations. The rubes defend this "war" by saying all of us make bad choices by choosing to live in NY, CA, MA (to name just 3 states with salt). But these are the states with the strongest economies. Cause? Correlation?
Can we please stop referring to these as "tax cuts"? If you have a group of 100 people, and you cut taxes for one of them by a lot but raise taxes on the other 99 by some, even if you've reduced total revenue that is not fairly described as a "tax cut" bill. It's a tax bill, if you want to be strenuously neutral about it, but it's really two things: a rich man's tax cut and new taxes on the poor and/or middle class.
After decades of hearing about "tax and spend" Democrats, can we please start talking about borrow and plunder Republicans? Trillions of new debt that everyone is going to have to service because they can't even manage to raise taxes on the rest of us enough to pay for their 1% giveaway.
23
You explain this to me. Corporations and the wealthy moan and groan about the tax code. Yet since 2002, over the past 15 years, they've logged record profits and wealth, both in terms of size and share historically; unprecedented levels never seen before in history (not to mention correlating with record inequality). After tax corporate profits have quadrupled in that same span, while middle class/working incomes have remained stagnant against inflation and costs of living have exploded. So you tell me, GOP, Conservatives, etc: corporations and the wealthy have been a smashing success the past 15 years and have done extraordinarily well...all under current tax rates. Why do they need they need another tax cut? Why fix what isn't broken?
Oh, you need it to give workers a raise? With historically record wealth and record profits, you've had 15 years to do so and you haven't. You already have the capability now to give a raise, but you don't.
Oh, you need it to keep prices down? With historically record wealth and record profits, prices have still steadily risen, and in several critical areas are completely out of control.
Oh, you need it to "stay competitive with the rest of the world?" You've out-competed them and outperformed them on wealth and profit under current tax rates.
How about instead, we cut taxes for the middle class and below, and for small business only; sources that need it the most, and sources that will cycle it through the economy the most.
34
Well, coming from a state which has largely driven out most of its most promising companies and now really relies on the bedroom taxes of NY executives, it is no wonder you wouldn't understand the long term consequences of noncompetitive corporate taxes. It's a global economy and competition and competitiveness matters. The bashing of U.S. corporations, which you largely over simplify, who employ millions of our people, isn't productive or constructive. Don't do the U.S. what you have done to Connecticut. This isn't us versus them. If you want to take others earnings and redistribute it to people as political spoils and patronage, then just say so. That's Bernie's plan. Crony politics and a reversion to the 19th century spoils systems. Connecticut has been on that path for years. Only proximity to NYC keeps it afloat. Better yet, let's just have one flat tax percent for everyone earning more than $30,000 for everything they earn. Fair, right? No class divide, no special interests, no redistribution policies, predictable and incentivizing. Or, we can follow Bernie's lead and create the great socialist divide between those that work and those that live with entitlement to burden those that work.
All this tax bill does is aggravate income inequality while exploding the deficit by $2 trillion or more. It will benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor and middle class. It will increase already bloated corporate profits without raising wages or creating jobs. It does not close any of the loopholes that give big companies an effective corporate tax rate of less than 20%. But it does end tax deductions vital to the shrinking middle class, such as medical expenses, mortgage interest, student loan interest and SALT. Yet Ryan and other Republican talking heads keep lying about it without a quiver of guilt. Let's drum them out of office come next elections.
18
When Lyndon Johnson was president he said he could increase spending, reduce taxes, and balance the budget. He could two of three and the result was going to be inflation. So I bought 240 acres among the the River Hills along the Missouri River for $200 an acre and sold it 10 years later for $600
3
W's tax cuts redux. Remember how well they worked out? In spite them spurring on the Great Recession Kansas went on to emphasize the point.
10
Thinking back to the Bush tax cuts, the first was to redistribute the $5 trillion created by the Clinton administration and the second, after 9/11, was an attempt to stimulate the economy. Rather than promote a balanced economic agenda, the Bush administration unknowingly promoted consumption and risky speculation, mostly in real estate, and we all know how that turned out. I was lucky enough to benefit from the real estate bubble, but the few hundred extra bucks I got from Bush were no help.
7
In a sense the estate tax is a very good form of taxation because it does not come due during a person's lifetime, allowing a person to accumulate wealth, with tax only being taken out when the person is dead and no longer in need of the money. The estate does pay tax and that reduces what the person's heirs will inherit, but that is compensated for by the heirs receiving a stepped up basis on unrealized capital gains. Thus if, as proposed, the estate tax is to be eliminated, then the stepped up basis on death provision should be eliminated along with it.
318
@once a blue: Are you trying to be rational? That's irrelevant to this tax bill.
Ending the estate tax on very wealthy individuals seems like a good way to ensure their kids learn "personal responsibility" for their own futures in the world. Bill Gates feels that way, and his kids will inherit only the barest fraction of what he has amassed. I think it's a few million each. It's enough to set them up for the rest of their lives if they are prudent, but not so much that they couldn't lose it quickly through profligacy or irresponsibility.
1
I beg to differ. While the estate tax effects mainly a few hundred of the wealthiest families the end of stepped up basis could affect millions including the poor and the middle class. Anyone who inherits a modest family house that was bought in 1950 is going to get hosed with a huge tax bill reflecting the gain. Instead of transferring wealth to people of very moderate means it still gives a breaks on balance to the uber rich.
2
think what the elimination of deductions will do to local towns and cities where it is the source of revenue. What will happen to our local schools, police and fire, our roads, our infrastructure? the harm will be enormous to our education, our safety, jobs, jobs ,jobs
41
They aren't proposing the elimination of state and local taxes. They are proposing to eliminate deducting the amount of a person's state and local taxes from their federally taxable income. It has zero effect on state and local revenue. I'm not Republican and I'm most certainly not a Trump supporter. I'm just offering this as clarification.
3
If, by eliminating the deductibility of state and local taxes from fedral income tax returns, the net effect is to markedly reduce desposable income for millions of citizens in states like California, New York and Massachusetts, it will most assuredly reduce taxable economic activity -- thus affecting what those states have to spend on public services like schools, roads, etc.
4
But of course, once the deduction is eliminated, state and local taxes will become less affordable. Something will have to give, be it taxes or property values or both.
1
It is all so convoluted. Here I thought the economy was buzzing along. Why the need for huge remake of our tax laws when we are at or close to full employment? The main impetus of this bill seems to be Trumps desire to bestow a huge gift to his children and all his rich friends. Meanwhile the rubes in the countryside (mostly white) applaud the faux populist with dreams of sugar plums dancing in their dim brains.
44
Okay you want tax breaks for your corporation or you personally. Can’t go to the pot twice.
Second tax all income over 10 million at 95%. Seems fair. The nation giveeth and the Nation equalizes. Yes.
20
I agree. If someone can't get by on 10 million, s/he needs some counselling.
Brealing news:
President Clinton today introduced her new "Tax Cut" plan, which transfers ever-more wealth from midle-class citizens to her own family and her uber-wealthy cronies and explodes the US debt to new highs.
Republicans go ballistic and seek impeachment for malfeasance and that she release her tax returns so the country could see how her "tax scam is nothing less than a personal windfall for the Clintons at the expense of 99% of hard-working tax payers".
News at 11.
22
"What's the Matter with Kansas?" just became "What's the Matter with the United States?"
41
The big question should be, why do any of this?
Well, the Republicans have discovered that it's just so easy to suck dollars out of the economy that it would just be a shame not to grab it all. Bust the budget and then claim there's not enough left to pay Medicare and Social Security. Sorry folks, we know you've paid in for 45 years but we just don't have the money to pay you back. Then when the whole thing collapses it's hop on a plane and off to New Zealand. Those thinking ahead are already buying property and even establishing citizenship there. Why do any of this? Insatiable greed, err, I mean jobs. Yeah that's what I mean, jobs.
31
Strange claim. Tax collection is sucking dollars out of economy.
Only a fool would think that SS and Medicare is about returning the money that people put in the program. If that was the case every investor will line up to claim 400% returns that SS provides today to the average American - AT THE COST OF CURRENT TAXPAYERS.
What does it take for middle America to wake up and see that the president is a liar and a con man. If Paul Ryan got any closer to the president he would have to propose. I got physically sick watching them pull out these new small tax forms and kissing them saying middle-class is going to be so happy. We always have to remember that the Republican Party is there for the bidding of the wealthy not the middle class, and anything they say is a boldface lie. We will have a chance to get even at the polls next year. Let us put on a big pants.
33
Dr. Krugman,
Have you ever favored any tax cut?
Were you ever concerned about the deficit between 2009 and 2017?
Do you believe high corporate taxes encourage corporations to invest at home or abroad?
4
Dr Krugman, aside from being a Nobel Laureate, is a student of history. Trickle down in it's may manifestations, going back as far as the 19th century, has never delivered on it's promises. One need only look to the Kansas miracle to see a recent example of it's utter and complete failure producing devastating results.
12
Eric-
When have low corporate taxes ever encouraged corporations to invest at home or abroad? Hint: NEVER. With corporations currently awash with billions of dollars cash, why would they now suddenly invest, whether at home or abroad, after being given a huge cut in their tax rate, a tax rate they never paid anyway.
12
As a matter of fact, YES. If corporate taxes are high then it pays for a
company to reinvest its profits instead of giving out dividends. The money
reinvested is NOT taxable. Instead, the company's value goes up, and that
is also not taxable until the owners sell their stock. Reducing corporate
taxes makes it less useful to reinvest.
5
The Republicans on Capitol Hill fall into two main groups.
There are those who believe that this may be the last chance to make a big dent in something they have hated for generations: the progressive federal income tax.
And, there are those Republicans who want to please their big donors by giving them a big break in taxes at the expense of working people.
The Senators and Representatives in both groups do not really believe that there will be a trickle-down benefit to the economy sufficient to offset the huge reduction in tax revenues.
These Republican men and women need an excuse in order to sell their snake oil to the public and, possibly, to the handful of their colleagues who actually are dumb enough to believe the spiel.
17
It is amazing that Republicans continue to say that giving the rich and companies tax cut means jobs will be created. Companies and the rich already have a lot of money and are not creating a lot of jobs with the money. Why would having more money because of the tax cuts make them inclined to create jobs?
15
Oh really. Companies do not create jobs. So it must be the government. You may have been right if Bernie won the election. Then we would have had a Soviet style economy.
What I don't get is how an elimination of the estate tax is supposed to help middle class families and spur the economy. Dead rich people are a great source of revenue and estates are inherited through a transfer of ownership.
Perhaps the idea is that having no estate tax will attract billionaires from foreign countries to repatriate here so they can transfer their wealth to their children tax free.
It makes about as much sense as anything else.
14
I very much appreciate Dr. Krugman, but he has been warning about these supposed 'reforms' that the Republicans--led by the impossibly earnest Paul Ryan--were hoping to foist on the American people and economy for at least...well...seven years. Granting that the tax system's complexities, and especially its loopholes, deserve a good housecleaning, the most telling portion of Dr. Krugman's column today is the plain question, "And why should tax cuts even be on the table?" What is the underlying rationale, given the realities--including real (if gradual) growth in GDP, some (relative) sanity with managing the deficit, some (small) sign that offshoring of employment and even assets is being addressed, not to mention the shocker--many major corporations are sitting on Solomonic piles of cash reserves! [Notice I do not mention the US stock markets. But I could...though there is healthy skepticism about how much weight to accord to stocks as a marker of sustainable economic vitality.] This 'reform' has practically no comprehensive, long-term economic rationale that dovetails with where we are, and what we have learned in the thirty one years since the last (supposed) one. In other words, this whole Republican reform skit is...fake news.
9
No, Paul Ryan is not a genius and he is not educated to be one. From a well-to-do family, after his father’s death death, he collected Social Security, which he saved, because his family did not need it.
With a bachelor degree, majoring in business and political science, and no real work experience (he has been feeding at the public trough all his adult life), he has no comprehension of what the working, struggling families face today.
Most telling is his, and Brady’s, plan to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. After all all he had to do with Social Security payments was to save them for his 4-year fraternity days.
16
Buried within this mishmash of a bill is a proposal to do away with the tax credits on the purchase of electric cars. Telsa's stock dropped about 6.8% on that news and GM can't be happy given its push of the Bolt.
Looks like Exxon still has friends in high places.
24
This sums up liberal hypocrisy.
Give tax breaks to rich only if they are spending money on liberal cause.
Waiting for them to explain why a Tesla buyer should get the tax break. May be they beleive that the poor and the middle class is lined up to buy Teslas.
This con job by Ryan and friends will do at least 4 things:
1) Provide the largest gains/benefits to the wealthiest households.
2) Provide significant benefits to large corporations that are already flush with cash, while increasing incentives to shift profits overseas.
3) Add to the budget deficit that Republicans deplored loudly all the years that Obama was in the White House but now have come to accept.
4) Significantly burden low- and moderate-income families when subsequent budget cuts will be required to address the deficit increases that will most certainly be the fruit of this legislation.
Only those embracing the myth of "trickle down" economics, an idea that has never been supported by any facts, could possible believe this is will be a good deal for middle class Americans.
20
Mr. Ryan: Deal maker. Fiscal expert. Budget wonk. Deficit hawk. Serious young man. Master of the house.
Not.
It was always clear. The minute he said anything.
As for his tax reform package that is a tax cut for the rich funded with tax increases for the working and middle classes:
No hearings. No expert analysis. No bipartisan give and take. In short, none of the methods by which our government governs when it is governing well.
13
The Republican geniuses in the House have found a way to blow up the deficit and shake down middle- and working class taxpayers in order to fill the already overflowing coffers of obscenely rich people and corporations. Instead simplifying the tax code they're making it more incoherent and irrational. Do they really think that this stinking pile of fiscal garbage will impress their constituents and boost their chances of surviving the 2018 election? The bill is going to be a critical test of our democracy; if Americans can't see through this sorry swindle then God help the Republic.
5
Even more terrible than this tax plan, and at least as likely, is the inevitable nuclear conflict that Trump will get us into with North Korea. Once the deadly birds fly, the tax issues, multinationals and all else will become a moot point. All because a brat once sat on the throne of the United States...
2
When it comes to policy or ideas that would benefit hard working middle class Americans, you can be sure of at least one thing, that the pseudo policy wonk, Paul Ryan doesn't have a clue.
Paul Ryan is the smoke and mirrors wonk, all talk and no substance.
3
Yes, after watching the contrived charade of a roll out, my conclusion is that Paul Ryan is a very adept con artist. They kept repeating that their tax cut would help ordinary Americans. Apparently, he and his accomplices adhere to the theory that repeating something often enough makes it true. Yet I have not heard anyone in the news media ask the simple question, "Do you really think that if you give corporations more cash, they will use it to hire workers to sit around and do nothing, or produce products that no one will buy?" With the addition that corporations are already flooded with cash and they're not doing that.
16
The Con Man Trump U caucus, We, Cheat'em and How LLC, moved past the flat tax notion in favor of an inverted tax scheme.
Why just con people at unaccredited unlicensed universities for small change when you can take the American taxpayer and US Treasury for trillions, right?
Think of a tax system that says all taxation on inherited wealth will be entirely phased out to nothing, while federal taxes will still be assessed on all income that has already been paid out by people to the states.
This tax scam deepens the disparity in treatment between investment income and wage income, and shifts the federal revenue collection further toward regressive payroll taxes.
It provides the biggest tax break in America for Donald J Trump and his ilk by favoring passthrough LLCs and subchapter S corp income over the income a 6 figure professional earns.
Why exactly is that? What is the rationale for that? No wonder Ryan is always smiling, he can barely contain his guffaw.
Every time a wealthy person is revealed to pay a relative pittance in taxes compared to people who make far lower, they just say - "well, that is what the law allows."
In this case, we have a President who refused to release his tax returns, refused to put his assets in a blind trust, and is attempting to codify tax policy that favors him specifically above nearly every other American.
This is the devil's pact the GOP signed to work with the Kremlin to install a President corrupt enough to sign such a mess.
12
A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money.
And the purpose of blowing a hole in the government's budget with this fiasco of a bill? The same as the attempted nonsense of trying to pass a bizarre healthcare bill: The Republicans don't have a governing philosophy. They have a ruling philosophy -- Hey, we got a majority, let's pass some new rules! And Trump's relationship to government policy is as ephemeral as a film's computer-generated special effects are to physical reality. There's no real there there.
11
The flim-flam man who loves Ayn Rand is at the helm, along with his yacht captain (either the Skipper of Admiral Jed Clampett) playing the comic relief of blustering money over intelligence. What could go wrong?
The middle class will suffer, particularly those just over the edge of the three-tier taxes who suddenly will find themselves paying the same taxes as multi-millionaires or perhaps even billionaires?
In smaller type are all kinds of destruction - removing overhead from federal grants so that universities won't be able to afford research even if they get a grant, historic buildings have no tax credits anymore for their restoration, private university endowments will be taxed even though they support scholarships, and a host of other miserly attacks.
The big ones on the enemy list are the blue states with state and local income taxes but which will affect all but 7 states in the country, harming state budgets when they haven't recovered from the Great Recession as well as harming the individual citizens, who unlike Trump, actually pay their taxes.
No tax bill should be out there until Trump's own taxes are revealed, and until we know how much he and his family and his cronies will personally benefit from this corrupt bill.
10
Steve Mnuchin and Cary Cohn crafted the "tax reform" "plan" with one constituent in mind, Donald J Trump. Trump benefits from nearly every change and most people are ignored or harmed.
Businesses are swimming in idle cash. They don't need a tax cut.
Businesses don't pay the nominal rate. Until their deductions are changed their rates shouldn't be.
Any tax savings the business gets will be passed on to their shareholders. Shareholders will sue directors that ignore their fiduciary obligation to put shareholders first.
Why should my labor pay a higher rate than your money sitting in a stock portfolio? Capital gains tax is a vehicle for leveling the paying field between labor and capital.
The estate tax catches the unpaid tax on capital gains that haven't been claimed as income. My father bought IBM at 13. The stock accumulates value and then he dies. I inherit at 150. The capital gained is never taxed. Tax fairness for all, unless you own stocks.
Pass through companies have only two functions: hide ownership and avoid taxes. Let's eliminate them instead.
8
these days the only ones n salary are those who work for the gov't. It's built in to their job. I made millions for companies in the 60's and 70's and now I'm about 30% under the poverty line. Go figure!
4
I recall the article about Paul Ryan's proposal to end poverty that was front page news in the. I clicked the link to the actual proposal and read it with total amazement.
It was simply a hodgepodge of nonsense that essentially said that the poor simply need an incentive to join the workforce. So if we cut welfare and lowered rather than raised the minimal wage millions of new jobs would open up and the poor would in time work their way up from poverty to the middle class.
Of course his plan neglected to mention that most people receiving public assistance are elderly, disabled, chronically ill and unable to work or are children in poor working families. He also neglected to mention that working at minimum wage still leaves these families in poverty.
The real aim of his "anti-poverty plan" was to cut social spending so that he could cut taxes. This is exactly what's happening with this new tax plan. The deficit will go up and the hole will be filled by cutting social spending.
Ryan is the type of guy that sits in the front row of class, always raises his hand, does all his homework and still gets a C on the final exam. Yet, as Krugman points out the media insist on treating him as the "conservative with ides." He does have ideas, but awake up, most of them are bad!
10
If Republicans want to follow Ryan and Trump down this path - massive tax cuts for themselves, the war profiteers, rich wastrels who live on their inheritance, etc. while raising taxes and cutting services for the rest of us, who are we to stand in their way? The result will be fewer Republicans in Washington, and that cannot possibly be a bad thing.
3
When Putin took over the reins of the old Soviet Union, it was the war veterans and pensioners who begging on street corners, as the billionaires grabbed for all the wealth.
If the Trump grab for the treasury goes through, there will be trillions less for the care of the poor and the powerless. HUD, if it exists under Carson, Trump, and Ryan, will be gutted. Food stamps and all the rest of what keep the very poor alive will not be funded.
I look at the Congressional Republicans today, gleefully chortling over taking from the very poor to give to the very rich, and am sickened. America isn't as it was in the 1950's, when there were lots of manufacturing jobs to be had. As it is the poor in cities like SF and NY are priced out of a dignified life.
Not sure I even believe in America anymore. It is becoming a Putinesque pretend democracy.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
6
Even a narcissistic simpleton can lower taxes. I was worried that the republicans would "sell" their tax cuts well. Who doesn't like to pay less taxes? As long as you make my biweekly check bigger what do I care about the future debt on my grandchildren?
But fortunately Ryan and his mates are as ignorant as it seemed. This plan is so patently unworkable that it will not pass. And we continue our descent as a nation. Make America Anything but Great Again.
4
This blather about 'needing a win' is just that: blather.
If the Republicans fail to pass their dreadful agenda, they will go to their supporters and ask for more contributions and a larger majority. And their supporters will try to provide it.
What else are the Republican supporters going to do? Vote for a Democrat??
Media figures need to stop repeating what politicians SAY as if those words are honest expressions of true beliefs. They are no such thing. Start reporting on what politicians DO, what legislation they support would DO, and where those things are irreconcilable with what the politician SAYS, call it out.
6