Joe Biden wants a tax code that supports the everyday, salt-of-the-earth Americans who earn $400,000 a year. EricLevitz writes
Nothing’s too good for the upper-upper-upper-middle class. Photo: John Locher/AP/Shutterstock Joe Biden wants a tax code that supports the everyday, salt-of-the-earth Americans who earn $400,000 a year.
Biden’s position here is neither new nor strictly true. Although the candidate has never formally pledged to preserve the Trump tax cuts for America’s top 5 percent, his long-public proposal for increasing Social Security benefits raises payroll taxes only on workers who earn more than $400,000. And none of Biden’s other tax plans raise the marginal rates of workers whose incomes fall below that threshold.
And it is also true that there is quite a bit of income and wealth at the very tippy top of the U.S. economy to tax. While America’s high-earning professionals have done quite well in recent decades, their gains pale in comparison to those of the billionaire class. So Biden’s pledge is ostensibly a play for that fraction of the remaining 3 percent who earn less than $400,000 a year and are open to voting for a Democrat in 2020 — but only if they are explicitly promised that taxes on their labor income won’t go up . Yes, every vote counts. But it is hard to believe that this is an electorally significant constituency.
Thus, there’s little basis for believing that Biden’s vow to protect people who earn $399,000 a year from higher taxes is electorally expedient.Yes, Democrats should overcome their deficit-phobia and cease insisting that all new spending must be offset dollar-for-dollar . But there is simply no way for the party to durably finance the kind of welfare state that Joe Biden claims to support on deficit spending and soaking the uber-rich alone.
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