If this country had a functioning media, they would never let Republicans away with screaming against government debt out of one side of their mouths, and calling for the extension of the Bush tax cuts to the rich out of the other. But we do not have a functioning media and they do get away with it. Remember, the Obama administration has agreed to extend the cuts to all but the top income groups. Extending it further turns out to be incredibly expensive and incredibly unfair.
It would cost $680 billion dollars over 10 year. This is far greater than the cost of extending unemployment benefits to those out of work, something the Republicans opposed vigorously (the unemployed do not fill their coffers). It gets worse. Nearly all of the benefit goes to the richest 1 percent, those making more than $500,000 a year. Even more than this, 55 percent of the benefit goes to a mere 120,000 people – the top one-tenth of 1 percent of all taxpayers. Doing the math, that comes to an average $3 million tax reduction to those lucky enough to sit at the helm of the income distribution. It is indeed the preferential option for the super rich. This would be troublesome at the best of times, but in the current economic climate when so many struggle to get by, it’s simply immoral.
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