DOES ANYONE BESIDES THE TEA PARTY BELIEVE THIS ASININE RIGHTWING HOGWASH? Here’s what Rick Perry said when announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination for President, “We’re dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax.” What a turd this guy is.

The GOP’s Reverse Class Warfare | Andrew Sullivan: Scott Galupo is indignant:

The sweeping 1986 tax overhaul that Reagan signed into law broadened the tax base, closed loopholes, and lowered individual income tax rates. It also established the Earned Income Tax Credit program, or EITC, which eliminated millions of the working poor from the rolls altogether. Expanded by President Clinton in 1993, the antipoverty program has been a smashing bipartisan success. Now it’s become commonplace among the right to question whether such programs are “fair.” …

The idea that the middle class—or whoever Rick Perry means by “We”—is suffering because the lower classes aren’t paying taxes; the idea that the rich would create more jobs if their share of national wealth was even more heavily concentrated; the idea that, if everyone had “skin in the game,” the economy would somehow improve, even as the beneficiaries of programs like the EITC are bearing the brunt of the Great Recession—all this is, to put it bluntly, a load of crap. It’s a stupid, nonempirical, and corrosive mindset.

Via PoliticalProf: Sorry for letting facts get in the way, Rick, but here goes:

As the Tax Policy Center’s Roberton Williams has explained, “a couple with two children earning less than $26,400 will pay no federal income tax this year because their $11,600 standard deduction and four exemptions of $3,700 each reduce their taxable income to zero. The basic structure of the income tax simply exempts subsistence levels of income from tax.’…

Of those households that do not owe income taxes, about a third earn $10,000 a year and a slightly smaller share earn between $10,000 and $20,000. More than three-fourths earn $30,000 or less….

Two-thirds of the households that pay no federal income tax still ante up for payroll taxes. Fewer than one in five — 18 percent of all households — pay neither income nor payroll taxes. Nearly all of these are elderly (10 percent) or have incomes below $20,000 (7 percent.)…

Examining the total tax burden — state, federal and local — Citizens for Tax Justice calculated that the top 1 percent of households (average income, $1.3 million) earned 20.3 percent of income and paid 21.5 percent of taxes in 2010.”

From Ruth Marcus, The Washington Post.

Really, who wouldn’t choose an annual income of between $10,000 – $20,000 rather than a millionaire’s because of federal income tax? And if these poor, beleaguered millionaires don’t amass even more of the nation’s total wealth, what in the world will happen to all those jobs they’re supposed to create after they’re finished hoarding the excess?

/sarcasm

(image: liberalsarecool)

Related:

• (VIDEO) The Daily Show: World of Class Warfare