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Very little of the tax rate cuts effect middle and lower class people. They get almost no gain from it, as well as for the other changes. Some of the deduction's removed(ie for mortgages) however do affect middle class people, who do not have the lower tax rate to benefit from in return.
Which is a fact in and of itself matters little to what I said. If the net gain for the "Rich" isn't that large of one, if even that, then the middle and lowe lass having an even smaller or negligible gain still doesn't represent a significant difference between the two as many are seemingly trying to make this out to be.
Without knowing all the details which are not in place yet, you are technically correct, but all the evidence so far indicates that upper class people will receive tax reductions, while the middle class will ultimately pay more and lower class and the elderly will get fewer benefits from the government.
I don't know where you get this "all the evidence so far" statement, since others like cpwill have been pointing to suggestions quite the contrary to what you're saying. The evidence is not indicating only a single implication in this. Some are pointing to the upper class recieving a hefty reduction in taxes while others are pointing to the upper class primarily having anywhere from a small net gain to a moderate net loss due to exemptions being removed. I'm also not sure where you're seeing only evidence that the Middle Class will be paying more since many of the deductions that will be lost won't apply to them and the removal of the AMT could potentially offset it when you're talking about the average of them all.
Now I won't disagree with you about the lower class and elderly getting fewer benefits from the government, though its dishonest to cache it that way obviously implying that somehow those benefits will be denied only to the lower class and elderly. However, that's irrelevant to the conversation of whether or not the "rich" are being significantly helped in this with regards to taxes comparitive to their counter parts.
While the reduction in benefits does need to happen, assuming that it is done to benefit the higher incomes, it is both a mistake, and a huge PR gain for democrats.
And again, this is nothing but absolute partisan spin on your end with suggsting that the reduction is benefits is "done to benefit the higher incomes". There is a glaring fallacy within your argument to suggest that because the tax rate of the "Rich" is going down and some government benefits are being stripped away are both in the plan that it must automatically mean that government benefits being stripped away are specifically to pay for the tax rate reduction. You see two things and immedietely equate them together with not fact but pure conjecture. I won't deny that it can be spun that way be political pundets and politicians for the hope of PR gain...that absolutely can be done, as you are valiently demonstrating in this thread...however what it can be spun as and what it is are often two different things.
Again, looking at the information that Ryan himself presents, it does appear from his own words that this will benefit the wealthy. While I think down the road further tax cuts will be a good thing, and those should favor the wealthy(they do pay a larger share of taxes now on average), I do not think it is a good idea to mess with taxes or the tax system until the deficit problem is handled, and not by shifting the burden.
The largest contributors to this countries financial revenue stream is the "wealthy". Its not surprisingly that something aimed at reducing the deficit, in part by also attempting to speed up the economy, is going to have a larger positive impact on someone whose significantly paying into the system compared to someone that is barely or not paying into it at all. This is part of the ridiculous argument I hate regarding taxes. People complain you "cut taxes on the rich", making the rich benefit instead of the poor, while ignoring that the poor don't even pay an income tax so what did you want from them? Are we to never cut taxes on anyone at any time because there's a large segment of the population that we're incapable of cutting the taxes on without simply GIVING them government money for working because the "rich" will always benefit from that more than the poor?
Yes, the plan as a whole could easily be argued that the "wealthy" are gaining more benefit from it. However, that comment by itself is rather worthless. Okay, they're getting more? Outside of PR spin of class warefare? So. If I said "The Poor are benefiting more from this" would that be a bad thing? What if I said the middle class? Or are you suggesting its not a negative.
But even then, just suggesting the Wealthy are getting the most benefit is rather useless. If I give three people money and two get $99 dollars and one gets $100, the third person got "more" money from me...but in reality they all got a significant chunk of money and the disparity between them was extremely small. The "Wealthy" were going to take, by far, the most significant hit by greatly removing the loopholes in the tax code, essentially creating a sizable tax increase on them, something Republicans have argued all along and right on through the Bush Tax cut fiasco hurts the economy. Note, not the apparent Democrat argument of "it hurts the economy if you do it to some people but helps it if you do the other", but in general hurts the economy. So in conjunction with that they also reduced the tax rates that the "rich" would have to pay. An action that, based on all the evidence I'VE seen, has an unclear effect that may increase or decrease their total tax payments.
Meanwhile, the reduction in spending from the cuts to various programs and the changes to others...including those that can come about due to a simplified tax code...benefits EVERYONE just like the running up of debt hurts everyone.
Now. I'm not going to sit here and sugar coat it. Yes. You're correct in regards to the fact that in general this is more bad for the elderly and the poor and more good for the Wealthy. I do not however agree that one is at the expense of the other, which is to assume...as your spun it above...that the changes to Medicare/Medicaid were done specifically to reduce the tax rate on the wealthy and not done because they're gigantic entitlement programs that eat up a larger portion of our budget every single year and needs to be trimmed.
And while I absolutely agree that the PR spinners for the Democrats will rely upon emotional arguments and that evil word that many on the left like to throw out about rich people...greeed....to make their point, and will be decently successful. The notion that its benefiting the wealthy more and hurting the elderly and lower class more doesn't bother me because rather than dealing with this emotionally and buying into the spin as you obviously have I'm actually taking a look at this while taking a step back.
The goal here is to reduce spending, reduce the size of government, and spur revenue through increasing the economy.
Medicare/Medicaid, next to Defense Spending and Social Security, is our biggest expense. Its going to have to be reformed and cut somehow. Now regardless of how you do it, if its going to be in any way more than just shuffling papers around on a desk, its going to negatively impact someone be it the current crop of seniors or the current crop of soon-to-be retiree's. So while I can absolutely understand and accept arguments that this is the wrong way to do it, the Helen Lovejoy like screaming of "WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE SENIORS" isn't going to sway me. Sorry...if there's going to be effective reform of it, they or the next crop is going to take some kind of hit.
Similarly, everything in government needs to be cut. Now I've said part of what I dislike about the Ryan plan is it doesn't cut defense enough, but even defense is cut under it. When cutting a budget, ANY budget, you look towards things that are luxuries first...items that are good to have but aren't a necessity. In a home budget, its things like entertainment and leisure purposes. In a business, its stuff that's not easily justifable under your duties. In government, its programs that are helpful and nice to have but aren't a core government function. Cuts to some social programs, or attempts to shift them to the states, are going to affect the poor more than middle income and the wealthy. At the same time, these programs are generally the ones least essential to core government functions.
Simplifying our tax code, removing many of the exemptions for businesses and individuals, and streamlining the process will help our budget. We will need to dedicate far less resources into these things, allowing for a shrinking of the government work force and the expenses associated with it. It also keeps people from manipulating the system through the variety of loopholes that are present in our swiss cheese tax code.
That said, raising taxes on people may generate more income tax revenue, but damages the economy as it takes more money out of it thus causing a host of issues in and of itself. This notion that it will hurt to raise taxes at all on the middle or lower classes, even so much as a 1% tax, but that it will actually be benefial to do it to the "rich" in substantial amounts makes no sense. I would disagree, but would at least respect the Democrats, if they were actually pushing for a tax hike on everyone. But this obvioux and crystal clear attempts at buying votes and class warefare by villifying the evil horrible nasty greedy "wealthy" for daring to say "don't yoiu dare take anymore of my money" but sitting there going "we won't dare to take anymore of YOUR money" to the larger group of the population is disgusting, transparent, and frankly inconsistent. The Ryan plan would've significantly increased the amount of taxes the Rich were paying due to the elimination of the various deductions that largely applied to their returns, which would in turn take money out of their hands and out of the economy thus damaging it in the Republicans view. The notion of it being done to "benefit" the rich is nothing but hollow spin. The attempt is for the other cost cutting measures that would damage the rich not to also damage the economy by taking a large segment of money out of the actors of said economies hands.
Any decrease in taxes of any kind is likely to affect the Rich more and affect the poor almost in no way.....because the Rich pay significantly more taxes and the poor pay next to none, so there's not many other options when cutting it then what I just stated. Similarly, most cuts of government budget is going to affect the poor and middle class more because they make up the majority of the population and thus make up the majority of those individuals benefiting from that government spending. Those two statements can be used for an emotional ploy to try and tug on peoples need to look out for themselves and make sure they get theirs while keeping those who they see as more successful being "knocked down a peg". But they aren't in and of themselves a negative or bad thing, but a simple reality of what happens when you attempt those two actions.