If the Democrat economic plan were not primarily beneficial to government coffers, I would be for it.
I serious doubt the economy will benefit greatly by merely maintaining the Bush tax cuts for the middle. Those with incomes over $250,000 may benefit more, but they also have more disposable income to spend. Spending helps maintain GDP. More importantly, it maintains tax revenues. Therefore, I have to agree with the Republicans. Raising taxes on anyone during a prolonged economic recession is not a good idea. Because the high-income group has more disposable income to spend, they are key to keeping a modicum of economic stability.
Democrats are doing a very poor job of making themselves look good. They are showing Americans that their agendas are more important than the common good.
Someone is bound to respond: Well, duh!
However, when looking at taxation and economic growth in the long-term, I think Americans with taxable incomes over $250,000 should pay considerable higher taxes.
How could that be good?
First, it’s contiguous with founding idea of economic liberty. Thomas Jefferson is representative of a large numbers early Americans who believed the rich should pay for government services to the poor. They believed it was immoral for rich Americans to have much while poor Americans lacked. Thomas Jefferson was no welfare socialists either. Like many others, he opposed low paying wage labor because it was a form of slavery.
Second, the rich paying for welfare to the poor should inspire them to change the political economy engendering poverty and welfare. Jefferson seemed to think making the rich pay to help the poor would motivate the wealthy to devise programs to ensure the poor actually gained skills by which to earn high incomes in order to live independent of rich charity or tax funded government services. I suspect Jefferson would have favored living wage standards as opposed to minimum wages.
Lastly, it seems unjust for the working poor and the middle class to pay for problems created by the wealthy and societal institutions. The Courts didn’t have to encourage the working poor to adopt socialism in order establish economic rights against big manufacturing firms. The Courts could have forced Congress to deal with the issue of low wage slavery. Against the ready argument that freedom of contract and market value would be violated, the Courts and other authorities could have applied Adam Smith’s capitalistic view that large manufacturing corporations were quasi-government institutions requiring regulation, i.e., regulation to prevent low wage slavery. It was the founding generation, those like Jefferson, who thought it unjust to tax all Americans (including the working poor and middle class) to cover the problems of the poor.
Remember, Jefferson wrote “all men were created equal,” which appears not to mean equal opportunity to pay taxes for welfare.
Besides all of that, the stock markets have not declined to 1990 levels, which indicate a somewhat healthy economy still exists–that is if a political economy can be regarded as such. It is healthy because those making over $250,000, like the Democrat and Republican politicians on Capitol Hill, are working to keep their stock portfolios profitable.