Jeb!’s tax plan isn’t just a give away to his donors, it’s a give away to himself.
The Republican presidential candidate would make out like a bandit under his own plan. According to my quick-and-dirty, back-of-the-envelope calculations based on Bush’s 2013 tax return, his liability for that year would have fallen by about $800,000, or about a quarter of what he paid Uncle Sam.
This is from a piece by Catherine Rampell, who’s rapidly becoming not only my favorite WaPo columnist (not saying much) but one of my favorite columnists anywhere. Analysis of tax plans is an area where data journalism shines. I’m not saying Rampell’s calculations here were the most complicated ever, but I can’t imagine Frank Bruni or Richard Cohen doing them.
debbie
More like Romney than anyone realized.
Cervantes
She’s good, I agree.
cmorenc
IF the general election does somehow still end up Jeb! vs Hillary (or Bernie or Joe)…surely pointing out this fact should be devastatingly effective, low-hanging debate fruit for the democratic nominee to use to succinctly poke through any facade Jeb! tries to construct about how good his presidency would be for ordinary folk, and whose interests he has closest to his heart.
samiam
But Hillary sent some unclassified emails from her private email account so both sides do it.
No I am not making fun of the right. I am making fun of posters right here on Ball Juice.
JPL
Young couples buying their first house, are screwed under the Bush plan. The NYTimes called it a populist plan.
I’m not sure they know what the word means.
benw
Yeah, Bush is rich and his tax plan is a huge benefit for the rich. Every R candidate’s tax plan is good for them personally, because they’re rich. My guess is that it’s not worth pointing it out as a campaign issue because most Americans feel like “I’d keep my ca$h, too, if I were him!” Lord knows, my tax plan would raise taxes on the rich/corporations and cut taxes on the middle class and poor, which would be great for me!
Elizabelle
Good to hear the Catherine Rampell shoutout. She is good.
Thinking on reupping with the WaPost, at least for a little while.
Also: MSNBC is rebroadcasting their live coverage of 911 as it happened. Appreciate that. It’s history, and the network shined in reporting without hysteria (in the early hours).
Tom
@samiam:
I see what you did there.
Tom
@JPL:
I think they’ve made that pretty clear for some time now.
Oatler.
@debbie: They’ve been making out like bandits since Reagan.
boatboy_srq
@debbie: More “Establishment candidate” than anyone could prevent.
Elizabelle
@JPL: I think we should write snail mail or email letters to the NYTimes publisher, editor in chief, and ombudsman.
Their political coverage has been horrendous. I would like a discount from them on the poli coverage I pay for but cannot read. (Do not feel the same way about the sports and fashion pages I don’t read, because I assume they are covering that competently.)
Firings or at a minimum reassignments need to happen at the NYTimes politics desk. Bring in some farm teamers, even if they don’t have great contacts yet.
The contacts the current elite staff do have is skewing and poisoning their coverage.
Jeffro
Would be great if every GOP candidate was asked what they think of Jeb!s plan…get them all (except Trump and Kaisch?) on record as supporting a “reform” that explodes the deficit and gives the rich an even better deal than they got with W
boatboy_srq
@JPL: I’m reminded of a Benny Hill skit:
A Ghost To Most
@Elizabelle:
Jennifer Rubin still works there. That is when I stopped paying for it
BillinGlendaleCA
@samiam:
That’s the thread downstairs.
Bobby Thomson
@JPL: forget about young couples and first houses. Anyone with a combined income over 150k gets killed. The mortgage deduction maxes out at 2% and the property tax deduction is gone.
Cermet
If just a few dollars are saved by the rubes in direct taxes who are middle class, it just does not matter that their State and user fee’s go way up – the tax cut is gooooood. Liberals, always bad. Jeb the stump want-to-be will shine because …don’t ask because he said lower taxes.
JPL
@boatboy_srq: lol
BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: I recommend reading “The Hunting of the President”, this behavior by the NYT is not new. It’s been going on for almost 25 years.
Jeffro
@Oatler.:
True indeed.
People really need to understand that these rate cuts are what explode the deficit and put so much money back into the 1%ers pockets. It really is the elephant in the room and has been since 1980. All these ‘reforms’ that simplify rates always cut them, don’t they? They never propose simplifying them and staying revenue-neutral, even (much less raising taxes enough to begin eliminating the deficit and the debt)
MattF
The notion that Richard Cohen would ever commit ‘journalism’ is… well, odd. Cohen’s ‘beat’ for the past couple of decades has been the inside of his own head– where he discovers, mirable dictu— that all those awful prejudices and stereotypes that he was supposed to abandon, being a Librul, are actually true– at least for Richard Cohen.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Bobby Thomson: That’d make what happened in 2008 to the Real Estate market look like a walk in the park.
Elizabelle
NY Times:
Bobby Thomson
@BillinGlendaleCA: yep. It’s one of the worst policy proposals I’ve ever heard and worse politics.
Elizabelle
@BillinGlendaleCA: Thank you. Will put “The Hunting of the President” on the 6-8 month reading list.
gogol's wife
Speaking of another of DougJ’s favorite columnists, Brooks has really outdone himself today. He saw some cheap souvenirs being sold on the street in St. Petersburg, so he’s concluded that Russian culture is dead.
Belafon
When Democrats propose raising taxes on the wealthy, a good portion of them will be raising taxes on themselves. When Republicans propose tax cuts on the wealthy, a good portion of them will be lowering taxes on themselves.
That most of the electorate never sees this shows a serious flaw in our system.
Cervantes
@Elizabelle:
Not unreasonably, if you ask the publisher or the editor-in-chief, who hired them.
(See above.)
The aforementioned Hunting of the President is a fine book, in the context of the Bill Clinton era.
Here’s a more general analysis of the political economy of the mass media.
Stella B
@Bobby Thomson: or another way to put it is that people living in blue states get killed. That’s a feature, not a bug.
Cervantes
@gogol’s wife:
Good thing he’s an expert on humility.
NonyNony
@cmorenc:
It should, though I’m assuming that given his track record so far by the general election Jeb! will have so much low hanging fruit lying around the Democratic nominee might have a problem focusing on any one problem with him as a candidate.
I’m now at the point where I am starting to suspect that Jeb! nosedives before Super Tuesday despite being the guy with all of the money. He’s got the brains of GWB, the political acumen of Steve Forbes, and the charisma of … Steve Forbes. It’s just starting to look like maybe establishment Republicans made the wrong choice when they pressured Romney to stay out and threw their money and backing towards Jeb!
(It’s weird – in 2012 I was sure that Romney was going to be the nominee in August of ’11 and no matter how stupid Romney’s campaign got I never doubted that he was going to win it. I would just look around and think “well, if Romney can’t win it which of these other bozos is going to win it” and there wasn’t a contender. With Jeb! it seems like I should be thinking the same way and yet I just can’t. And looking over the historic polls at RCP, it looks like the polling kind of supports my memories – Romney was consistently polling in the 20-25% range from September on, meanwhile Jeb!’s struggling to match Newt’s numbers from 2012. The popular opinion is really against Jeb! in a way that makes Romney look like the People’s Champion…)
Elizabelle
@Cervantes:
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky.
Thank you. Goes on the reading list too.
Full metal Wingnut
@Elizabelle: A lot of that is bad luck-the events in Baltimore could’ve ended any but the most talented Mayor’s career. That said, she did frequently seem like she was in over her head. Understandable I suppose since you can’t really know if you can handle that kind of stuff until you’re in the middle of it. But still.
BillinGlendaleCA
@NonyNony: I’m really coming to the conclusion that GWB is the smarter brother.
Elizabelle
Tom Brokaw: on the 911 rebroadcast:
“There has been a complete failure of intelligence here, and there will be a heavy price to pay.”
Uh, nope. It’s OK if you are a war-mongering Republican who invades the wrong country in response.
JPL
@Elizabelle: Yup! The intelligence failure was made at the Supreme Court when they anointed GW president.
benw
@Elizabelle: Everyone paid a heavy price except the wrong people.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@JPL: The NYT REALLY wants a Republican in office this time around, and the only two media outlets being more brazenly partisan about the upcoming elections are Fox and WaPo.
It’s not just young couples, it’s some of us older folks too, who didn’t have money to buy until a bit later in life. It’s anyone with a mortgage payment. This plan fucking destroys them.
I understand the long term plan is to have us all renting our homes from the banks, but to see someone attempt to put it into effect this early, and this brazenly, is more than a little shocking.
Redshift
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I’ve come to the conclusion that neither of them is the smarter brother.
Elizabelle
For the first time, I wonder if it’s wise to rebroadcast the 911 broadcast. They’re talking in real time about the prowess and strength of Osama bin Laden. I am wondering if it could be used as a recruiting tool.
Mass murder and catastrophe yes, but drastically effective. Unloosed the forces that brought us ISIL.
Reassure myself realizing virtually no one watches MSNBC, and they are likely losing viewers daily with the changes they’re making.
shell
Tax cuts for Mr Money Bags like him, but…..
“I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues.”
Ehhhh, not so much
PurpleGirl
From 1776: Cool, Cool Considerate Men
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/1776-revisited-conservatives-are-stil
“… But don’t forget that most men without property would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich, than face the reality of being poor.”
ETA: I think most people DO NOT UNDERSTAND how rich men become rich. Or how much money really constitutes being rich.
Paul in KY
@Belafon: Democratic candidates need to hilite this more.
Paul in KY
@Redshift: Maybe Neil is the smart one?
Paul in KY
@PurpleGirl: Adam Smith was one of the keenest judgers of human nature that I have ever read. Also, a very good writer (prose understandable, without all those rhetorical flourishes that many times make reading works from 1700s a chore).
BillinGlendaleCA
@Redshift: I didn’t say smart, smarter.
Another Holocene Human
@NonyNony:
Yes. I, too, find it odd. It’s too early to feel this way, but Jeb! is not doing well.
NonyNony
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Certainly the more charismatic.
I will say – GWB benefited from running in an environment where Clinton was handing off a decent economy. And he didn’t have a brother who had very recently tried to destroy the country via fiscial and foreign policy mismanagement. Had he had that albatross around his neck he probably wouldn’t have done very well.
Still I suspect he’d be doing better than Jeb! Jeebus.
Another Holocene Human
@Paul in KY: Adam Smith blew my mind with the observation that in wealthy countries, more people are idle, because their industry brings in enough to support multiple people. In poor countries, the young and the old, the weak and infirm, toil from sunup to sundown and sometimes that isn’t even enough.
Lots of working class people have absorbed this notion that everyone should be running around working crazy hours all the time, and it’s nonsense!
Paul in KY
@Another Holocene Human: Mr. Smith was a brilliant man.
redshirt
Spinal Tap reference for the win, DougJ.
Bobby Thomson
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I don’t know any homeowner without a mortgage, especially after the bubble.
Bobby Thomson
@Elizabelle: I started boycotting murder commemorations years ago.
Bobby Thomson
@NonyNony: I agree. If Jeb had been minimally competent there are powerful structural advantages to his candidacy. He still could turn it around, but it will require skills he hasn’t shown.
Elizabelle
@Bobby Thomson: That’s a good idea.
Elizabelle
@Paul in KY: Wealth of Nations goes on the one-year reading plan too.
So many classics out there, and I read to entertain myself on the nets.
EconWatcher
@gogol’s wife:
Well, in fairness, Russia doesn’t seem to be producing great literature any more. Pelevin? Meh.
JustRuss
@Another Holocene Human: I know what you mean, Jeb just isn’t presidential material.
For all of Romney’s negatives, he had some positives: While I didn’t care for how he did business, he clearly had some skills and ability in that area. Jeb, not so much, he’s made some money but it was through standard Bush cronyism. Romney’s speaking style was awkward and occasionally weird, but he seemed to have a fairly decent grasp of the issues. Bush spouts gibberish when he gets off his talking points, and often when he’s on them. And Romney looks like a president, Jeb doesn’t. I’m amazed he got elected governor, the fact that Florida picked both him and the ghoulish and corrupt Rick Scott is mind boggling.
Paul in KY
@Elizabelle: I would think you would learn some things. I did. It’s not a novel though, it is an academic book.
Paul in KY
@JustRuss: It was like once Lawton Chiles & Bob Graham stopped running on our side, well, there wasn’t any ‘our side’ left.
Elizabelle
@Paul in KY: Hear you. Planning on reading it slowly, in small doses.
boatboy_srq
@Another Holocene Human:
Edited for accuracy.
gogol's wife
@EconWatcher:
Most of the best isn’t being translated (or isn’t being published if it is).
Lurking Canadian
@boatboy_srq: The strange thing is that even most of the 1%ers run around working all the time. I mean, it’s not “work” in the sense that waiting tables or laying paving stones is work, but most of them are at their desks doing stressful shit for fourteen hours a day, too. Most of us would retire if we ever had a few million in one place. Your average Goldman trader makes that much each year but for some reason keeps going to work.
At least in the ancien regime the aristos knew enough to lie around gambling and whoring all day while the peasants worked. I don’t understand the new batch at all.
mclaren
Here.
Right here.
This is why Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign isn’t going anywhere.
Back in 1981, when Reagan floated these kinds of savagely regressive tax cuts, the gullible no-neck American voters were feeling fat and happy, so they didn’t care.
Then in the year 2000, when the Drunk-Driving C Student lied his ass off about what his tax cuts actually meant, Krugman and Al Gore and few other wonks protested and pointed out his lies, but the gullible dupes in the voting booths were still getting buoyed up by the do-com boom, so they still didn’t care.
But now?
In 2015, we’ve slogged through 6 years of crushing economic depression and no one is feeling rich…except the genuinely rich, the guys who fly to work every morning in their helicopters. So even the most gullible no-neck voter looks at this kkind of turd sandwich in 2015 and says, “Woah…this is not a delicious cheesesteak!”
Plus, Jeb hasn’t even bothered to lie about what he’s doing. Fatal mistake.
Can you imagine the hay Demos will make in their campaign commercials just from this one policy proposal…?
Say hello to President Hillary or President Bernie. One or the other, but clearly not President Bush. You need a combo of truly slick lies + an American voter fat and sassy enough not to care about how much your Republican policies will hurt hi/r in order to elect a Repub president post-2009. And Jeb isn’t even bothering to try with either of those long cons.
Matt McIrvin
@Lurking Canadian: It’s how they justify to themselves that they deserve it. And they believe that nobody else works as hard as they do. I read an essay once arguing that the modern US was the first society in history where the rich worked harder than the poor.
John
@redshirt: Gimme some money!
boatboy_srq
@Lurking Canadian: There’s just enough institutional memory of things like the Great Depression, stagflation and other woes to keep people running even when they have enough to be comfortable. Also, places like Wall St never stand still: you’re always having to prove you can do better / make more than your peers or you’re shortlisted for the next downsizing (or outsourcing, depending on the industry). The problem isn’t earnings but wealth, as has been said here and elsewhere. Folks in the 1% earning bracket aren’t necessarily in the 1% wealth bracket and vice versa, and the ones that are in the former but not the latter are very insecure because they’re so close they can taste it but still aren’t getting there.
There’s also the insecurity that comes from having to worry about expenses in retirement: those segments and industries haven’t grokked how ACA will benefit them yet and are terrified of having to spend all their saved earnings on healthcare (note that I use “saved earnings” not “wealth” – see above). Until recently that was a very real possibility; now it’s highly unlikely, but it’s only been highly unlikely for the last two years which isn’t long enough for it to sink in.
I have no problem with (honest) talented workaholics making a fvcktonne of cash: they’re doing a job they’re highly effective doing, and they’re getting rewarded for that. The problem I have is with Daddy Salesbucks characters like Sam Walton and Koch Sr. who leave enough loot to pay off Greece’s debt without feeling it to their kids who underachieve because Daddy was rich yet do their utmost to make sure nobody else has a shot, and who genuinely believe they’re on top of the world because of some special talent or skill.
mclaren
@boatboy_srq:
I’ve got a big problem with Sam Walton, and not because he leaves boatloads o’ cash to his spoiled-brat kids.
Sam Walton made his multibillion-dollar fortune on crushing unions. That should be illegal. When a corporation in the U.S. shuts down a store if its workers vote to unionize, it is incumbent upon the United States government to shut that corporation down. Break it up. Strip out the assets, throw its founders and CEOs in prison for anti-trust and union-busting felonies, and distribute the cash of the corporate assets to the workers thus brutalized.
mclaren
@Lurking Canadian:
Look at the psychology experiments. They all converge on the conclusion that the sensation of wealth is not determined by a person’s asbolute income, but by one’s income relative to others in a nearby social bracket.
This is where mathematics comes in.
In the old days, the king had almost all the money and the barons and dukes and businessmen had some cash but in the case of the nobility, the money was mostly tied up in land. And in all cases, the scale between the king (richest person in the kingdom) and the most impoverished duke or count was a relatively narrow ratio, maybe 50:1 or 100:1.
But today, the power law scale of wealth has exploded, so that the ratio between a merely wealthy person (say, a guy with $500,000 a year income from a car dealership or custom home building business) and the world’s richest people (Bill Gates, Warren Buffett) is now an exponential mind-boggling ratio like 200,000:1.
Look at it this way: if you make ten million a year, you can afford a smallish yacht and a 10,000-square-foot Bel Aire mansion and a Bugatti Royale. But if you make 50 billion a year, you can afford to buy your own island, you can afford this half-billion-dollar insane house in Los Angeles the size of a small town, and your own 757 complete with onboard swimming pool and rotating orgy bed.
Now, anyone who goes on vacation to one of those $5000-a-day luxury resorts and mentions to hs fellow guests “I came here in my 100-foot yacht” will feel like he’s impoverished when the other guy at the next table says, “Yeah, I came here in my private submarine.” And anyone who lands with his learjet at his Cayman islands airfield to do some offshore banking is gonna feel like he’s on Tobacco Road when he sees the entire airfield getitng cleared because some zillionaire is landing his fleet of private 757s.
This is how you get people who make a couple of million per year and still think of themselves as “middle class.” Yeah, I’m middle class…because I don’t have my own submarine. Because I don’t have a fleet of private 757s. Because I don’t own my own town-sized half-billion-dollar HelL.A. mega-mansion with a dozen outbuildings.
mclaren
@boatboy_srq:
No, it’s not 1%er propaganda, it’s puritanism.
American puritanism says: suffering is good. Pain purifies. “No pain, no gain.” Therefore if you want to be an upstanding moral worthwhile human being, you have to work yourself to the bone. The more you slave away, the better you are morally.
You also have to make other people suffer. Suffering is good. Pain purifies. So not only must you work like a maniac slave 100 hours a week, you must crush and deny food stamp benefits and WIC single-mother-with-children benefits and health insurance to any of those evil slackers who isn’t working. Because if they’re not suffering, they’re corrupt. Suffering ennobles. Pain is good. “No pain, no gain!”
American puritanism explains America’s sick twisted prison system, our depraved “justice” system, our sociopathic economic system, our politics, and our demented attitude toward sex.