A ripoff, not a tax plan

Touting his brand new tax plan just before its release, President Trump said “the biggest winners will be middle-class workers.” This is exactly as credible as the Trump University promise that you can “make some real money and live the kind of life that you thought was only for ‘rich’ people.”

A new analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a project of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, reveals just how disgustingly skewed the plan’s benefits are.

In a nation where those in the top 1% have, for a generation, been pocketing the lion’s share of gains, Trump would deliver the most cash, even on a percentage basis, to the richest among us.

Those on the top fifth of the income ladder would get a 3% boost in income as a result of all the plan’s components — worth an average $10,600.

The even more elite, in the top 1%, would win an estimated 8.7% income boost — an average savings of $207,000 per year, a windfall which is two-and-a-half times America’s total median household income.

Among the wealthiest of the wealthy, the top 0.1%, the figure is even higher: a 9.7% boost, worth more than $1 million a year.

Meantime, each of the bottom four-fifths on the income ladder get less than one percentagepoint boost in their incomes, amounting to average gains between $50 and $450 a year.

And, oh, nearly a third of those with incomes between $50,000 and $150,000 would see their taxes increase.

The man who as a candidate promised to unrig the economy would ram nails even deeper in the coffin of what is, for too many Americans, a dying American Dream.