Republicans Despise the Working Class, Continued by Paul Krugman

Topic: Republicans Despise the Working Class, Continued

Writter:  Paul Krugman

Publish Date: 20 December 2017

Published on : The New york times

Republicans Despise the Working Class, Continued

Paul Krugman

The GOP tax plan is remarkably unpopular. According to the latest NBC poll, only 24% of the public thinks it’s a good idea; 63% believe that it’s mainly for the rich and corporations [editor: it is], while only 7% think it’s aimed at the middle class. Republicans think it will become more popular over time; that’s not what happened with previous tax cuts, and as Drew Altman of Kaiser Family Foundation notes, everyone – even Republicans – hates the idea of cutting major social programs to pay for tax cuts, which is exactly what the GOP plans to do.

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How did they manage to produce this political lemon? Josh Barro argues that Republicans have forgotten how to talk about tax cuts. But I think it runs deeper: Republicans have developed a deep disdain for people who just work for a living, and this disdain shines through everything they do. This is true both on substance – the tax bill heavily favors owners over workers – and in the way they talk about it.

I wrote about this disdain for working stiffs last week; since then we’ve seen even more evidence of that disdain and disconnect from ordinary American lives.

Consider, in particular, the tweet John Cornyn put out about how the tax bill will help what he apparently imagines is an ordinary family:

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Yes, just your ordinary family that owns two businesses accounting for 40% of its income.

In reality, the vast majority of middle-class households have no business income, and for most of those who do have such income, it’s less than a quarter of their total income, let alone 40%. Meanwhile, the top 1% accounts for more than half of business income, and the top 5% for around 70% of the total. Since the value of the pass-through tax break depends on how high a marginal rate you pay on ordinary income, the benefits are even more skewed to the top.

The point is that the modern GOP basically despises ordinary working families, and this is increasingly obvious to the public. Better salesmanship won’t solve this problem.