Adam Navarro: ‘Tax reform’ nothing but a give-away to the already wealthy

While the Trump administration’s recent policy goal to cut taxes is propagated as a “common sense” economic and moral good, upon closer inspection questions of justice and large-scale economic impact arise. Under the current proposal, characteristic of most conservative tax so-called “reform,” the majority of cuts will directly benefit the wealthiest Americans.

Though the justification for such cuts disproportionally benefiting the wealthiest Americans is that such benefits will “trickle-down” to the majority through job creation and rising wages, evidence of the past 35 years of tax cuts (starting with Ronald Reagan) show continuing rises in productivity while wages stagnate. Wealth has increasingly become concentrated in hands of the wealthier to the detriment a shrinking portion shared by most Americans.

Aside from historical economic trends, there are immediate concerns about the effects of such cuts. Since a reduction in federal revenue usually means reducing federal spending, programs that most working-class families rely on like Social Security and Medicare suffer cuts. Given the history of economic trends affected by conservative tax cuts and corresponding considerations of justice, working-class Americans should see through Republicans’ tax cuts as nothing but peddling false hope that lines the already overstuffed pockets of the well-off.

This story was originally published October 31, 2017 at 5:21 PM with the headline "Adam Navarro: ‘Tax reform’ nothing but a give-away to the already wealthy."