6 Reasons for Progressives to Stop Worrying and Love the GOP Tax Scam

December 20, 2017 9:06 am
6 Reasons for Progressives to Stop Worrying and Love the GOP Tax Scam
By
Eric Levitz

Don’t fear the grifters. Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images


The bad guys won. In the most unequal advanced democracy on planet Earth — where middle-class wages are stagnant, 41 million people live in poverty, corporations celebrate record profits, and the richest one percent of individuals claim more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined — the Republican Party has found a way, over the long term, to raise taxes on the poor to slash them on plutocrats.

The GOP tax bill isn’t the most dangerous legislation of the Trump era (a distinction that belongs to the Republicans’ various schemes for taking health care away from 20 million people). But it might be the most dispiriting to anyone with a taste for democracy. Despite promising Americans a “middle-class tax cut” that would give no benefit to the rich; despite the utter lack of a plausible policy rationale for slashing taxes on wealthy investors at a time of high inequality and a soaring stock market; despite an urgent need for new government spending on an opioid public health emergency and a devastated Puerto Rico; and in defiance of reams of public opinion data showing mass opposition to the Republican plan — even among the party’s own base — GOP lawmakers dutifully honored their fiduciary duty to their billionaire investors.

But don’t Google “Canada immigration process” just yet.

While the intended consequences of the Trump Tax Cuts are contemptible, the legislation’s unintended consequences could actually, eventually make this country a better place. There’s good reason to think that the bill’s immediate effects will be less destructive than liberals feared — and that, in the long run, its passage could actually make the United States a more progressive nation.

Nothing is certain. We could be on the cusp of neo-feudalism (or nuclear war). But the accelerationist case for the Trump Tax Cuts is surprisingly strong. Here are six reasons for progressives to stop worrying and learn to love the GOP tax scam:

1) It will help Democrats take back power.

The worst thing about this bill from a democratic perspective is also the best thing about it from a Democratic perspective. The “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” is the most unpopular piece of major legislation in three decades — and the first tax-cut bill to earn a net-negative approval rating since at least 1980.

Chart:: FiveThirtyEight

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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/how-the-gop-tax-scam-could-make-america-more-progressive.html