Robert Reich : "Mitt Romney wants to increase the incomes of people earning more than $1 million a year by an average of $295,874 annually - By reducing government revenues, Romney's tax cuts would squeeze programs for the poor even further"

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Mitt Romney pays a very low tax rate on Big earnings of $20 million and he wants to pay even less with his absurd tax proposals. Mitt Romney is making as much as the combined earnings of a thousand American families at or just above the poverty line"

"Extending the Bush tax cuts will add $1.2 trillion to the nation's budget deficit in just two years".

What Mitt Romney wants is a Plutocracy with Racist Overtones. And the Middle Class will be downgraded and pushed to be very Poor.

San Francisco Chronicle
Middle class losing ground even amidst job growth
Sunday, February 12, 2012

By Robert Reich

Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at UC Berkeley and the author of "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future."

Middle class losing ground even amidst job growth


Some excerpts :

Mitt Romney says he's not concerned about the very poor because they have safety nets to protect them. He says he's concerned about the middle class. Romney doesn't seem to realize how much of the middle class is becoming poor.

But Romney doesn't like safety nets to begin with. He has been accusing President Obama of inviting a culture of dependency. "Over the past three years, Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based society with an entitlement society," he says over and over, arguing that our economic problems stem from a sharp rise in dependency. Get rid of these benefits and people will work harder.

He and other Republicans point to government data showing that direct payments to individuals have shot up by almost $600 billion since 2009, a 32 percent increase. And 49 percent of Americans now live in homes where at least one person is collecting a federal benefit such as food stamps or unemployment insurance, up from 44 percent in 2008.

But Romney and other Republicans have cause and effect backward. The reason for the rise in benefits is that Americans got clobbered in 2008, and many are still sinking. They and their families need whatever help they can get.

The real scandal is that America's safety nets are too small and shot through with holes. Only 40 percent of the unemployed qualify for unemployment benefits, for example, because they weren't working full time or long enough on a single job before they were let go.

The unemployment system doesn't recognize how many Americans work part time on several jobs, and move from job to job.

Romney's budget proposals would shred safety nets even more. According to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, his plan would throw 10 million low-income people off the benefit rolls for food stamps or cut benefits by thousands of dollars a year, or some combination.

"These cuts would primarily affect very low-income families with children, seniors and people with disabilities," the center concludes.

At the same time, Romney's tax plan would boost the incomes of America's most wealthy citizens, who are already taking home an almost unprecedented share of the nation's total income. Romney wants to permanently extend George W. Bush's tax cuts, reduce corporate income tax rates, and eliminate the estate tax.

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