Willard was always a Sneaky Bastard

Just redefine the Middle Class.

This: Romney's Plan to Help the Middle Class if you define the Middle Class as folks with $10 Million in Bonds.

Mitt Romney wants to offer a middle-class economic agenda. (Or anyway, his consultants have decided he needs to offer a middle-class economic agenda. Motives don’t matter for our purposes here.)

That agenda reduces itself to one point: elimination of taxes on capital gains, interest and dividends for Americans earning less than $200,000 a year.

How much benefit will this plan offer middle-income people? Precious little. Americans earning less than $200,000 (and by the way, at $200,000 individual income, we are rising well above the economic middle) do not receive many returns on invested capital. To the extent that under-$200,000s do receive capital income, it’s already protected from tax inside retirement accounts.

Retirees may benefit somewhat more. Some retirees may have accumulated significant assets during their working lives, and are now spending those assets down. For that population, the Romney plan will prove a windfall. But that must be a very small group of people – and a group that most Americans would regard as affluent, not middle class. It’s worth remembering that at current interest rates, it takes more than $10 million in government bonds to throw off $200,000 in interest income. It seems an ineffective means of aiding the troubled middle to allow a $10 million bondholder to receive up to $200,000 of interest tax-free.

From Romney's perspective the average middle class $10M bond holder is hustling just to survive and thankfully for these struggling few, Willard has got a plan.

Of course Newt called Willard out on this plan as too mean to those holding more than $10M in bonds. It is these people who Newt would help out. I'm still waiting for one of these clowns to propose a negative capital gains tax - start paying rich folks every time they sell a yacht.