What Romney and many wealthy people conveniently ignore is the importance of payroll taxes to lower and middle income Americans. While these taxes are largely inconsequential to Romney and Warren Buffet, to Americans that make less than $100K, they take a 15.3% bite out of their paychecks.
Yes Romney is right at almost half of Americans pay no "income" tax but nearly two-thirds of those pay a higher tax rate than Romney's 13% thanks to those payroll taxes. Of the remaining 20%, most are either unemployed or elderly.
If you work and you aren't rich, you can be pretty sure that Romney is not intent on doing anything that might help you move up the ladder.
Reshared post from +Ezra Klein
“My job is not to worry about those people,” Mitt Romney said of the 47 percent of Americans who are likely to vote for Barack Obama. “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
There will be plenty said about the politics of Romney’s remarks. But I want to take a moment and talk about the larger argument behind them, because this vision of a society divided between “makers” and “takers” is core to the Republican nominee’s policy agenda.
