We retired Tax Justice Blog in April 2017. For new content on issues related to tax justice, go to www.justtaxesblog.org
The theme of day two of the Republican National Convention was “Make America Work Again,” but there was mostly fire and brimstone (even a mention of Lucifer) and little concrete discussion about how to boost workforce participation rates, create more good-paying jobs, and ensure more American workers have the skills necessary to access good-paying jobs.
For now, the only tangible details the public has about how a Trump Administration allegedly would put Americans to work are his business record and his economic policy proposals. Others have done a keen job of dissecting his business record and projecting what it could mean for a Trump Administration. So we won’t opine on that. But we’ll continue to trumpet the fact that Trump’s tax proposals will not benefit working people, the constituency on whose behalf he claims he is campaigning.
Earlier this year, CTJ released an analysis of Trump’s national debt-inflating tax proposal. Since then, the candidate has been cagey about his real intentions. And a few people affiliated with the campaign have said he’s cooking up a revised plan (that will still focus on tax cuts, of course). For now, rather than submit to frequent whiplash and reading tea leaves, we’ll assume the proposal that remains on his campaign website is the one he intends to pursue if elected president.
And that proposal, aside from inflating the national debt, would deliver a windfall to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. If Franklin Roosevelt was a traitor to his class, then Donald Trump is an ally to his class whose tax policies would accelerate a reprehensible, slow return to the gilded age.
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