How much should we raise taxes on the rich?
A week after his stomach-tossing win in the presidential election, Donald Trump ditched his press pool to grab dinner at New York’s 21 Club, where “gentlemen must wear jackets” and filet mignon goes for $59 a pop. The voice of the “forgotten man” received a standing ovation from the well-coiffed, well-fed diners.
“We’ll get your taxes down, don’t worry,” Trump assured one guest. “Thank you,” the guest replied.
More recently, in an effort to either confuse everyone or win Democratic votes, the president argued that he isn’t eager to add to the obesity of America’s fattest cats.
But when he talks taxes today in Indiana, those 21 Club diners don’t need to worry.
That promise to cut taxes for those who can afford a cut of meat that costs nearly as much as two weeks of food stamps for a poor kid might have been the most essential pledge of Trump’s presidency. The stock market has been booming since the morning after his victory. Some of that rise is tied to his vow to alleviate the tax burden on the rich and their corporations, which, as the president has pointed out, are already enjoying record profits.
In the history of money, the richest have rarely been richer. And they’ve soaked up nearly all of our income growth since conservative-styled “supply side” aka “trickle down” economics took hold in the early 1980s.
Recent Census numbers show some modest improvement in reducing poverty and increasing median income over the past few years. That suggests raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, as we did in 2013, and using some of that money to expand health insurance to more than 20 million, can make economic growth a bit more fair. Go figure.
In a sane world, say for instance Scandinavia, we’d be debating how much more we should tax those who can afford it most to insure those who can afford health care the least. Doing the exact opposite would likely make our crisis of monstrous economic inequality even worse. And that seems to be the Trump plan, if there is a Trump plan.
He campaigned last year on tax cuts estimated to cost $3.5 trillion to nearly $8 trillion over 10 years, disproportionately benefiting 21 Club diners like him. And he has an ally in House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is ignoring a deficit nearing $700 billion in search of the singular goal of his life — fluffing the fortunes of the rich.
Trump, like his former chief strategist Steve Bannon, seems to understand the political peril of being seen as the champion of the rich and their corporations. If he were to take up Bannon’s heretical idea of creating a new tax bracket for the very rich, it wouldn’t just be popular; it would be good for America’s economy.
But Trump generously overpromising before signing off on Ryan’s policies is what we saw with the GOP’s repeated attempts at Obamacare repeal. And Wall Street certainly seems to be expecting déjà vu all over again.
There have been few consistencies in Trump’s life, but his belief that rich guys shouldn’t be held to account when it comes to paying or even releasing their taxes is one you can bank on.