Obama's Deal From a poor Person's Perspective

[Ian62]

66. The fiscal cliff deal is primarily directed at protecting Corporate profits

and Corporate interests.

The bill ensures that marginal and middle class tax payers are worse off, whilst protecting the income of the top 0.1% whose income is primarily derived from Corporate profits.

Corporate profits are at record levels.
The massively bloated military budget and massive Corporate Welfare weren't touched. Indeed they added some new goodies for Corporations.
There are easy savings of over $1 trillion a year from these. But nobody wanted to put these on the table - they were never up for discussion.

Social Security cuts via chained cpi were only mentioned so that they could later be dropped and the gullible would breathe a sigh of relief. They are not tenable for public opinion at the moment.
They have now been put into the public consciousness for injecting into the agenda for future discussions though.

Increasing taxes on those earning between $400,000 and $1million is neither here nor there - it involves a trivial amount of money - around $50bn a year. Another red herring for the gullible.

The payroll tax hike nets over $100bn a year.
AMT and the closure of middle class tax breaks net over $200bn a year.
(It is reported that AMT is going to be "resolved". No details are available as to what that "resolution" might be.)

It ensures that America will see a recession in 2013.
The coming tax hikes on marginal and middle class tax payers are going to make the coming US recession far worse.
The politicians "solution" to the "Fiscal Cliff" is no solution at all.

In fact what the politicians have just done is to push American workers and America straight off the economic cliff into mass economic deprivation.
Expect unemployment to be significantly higher than it is now by the end of 2013.

What the politicians should have done is to cut the massive military spending and Corporate Welfare and prevent tax hikes on the lower paid - e.g. by REDUCING income taxes on those earning less than $50,000 a year or by raising tax thresholds on lower incomes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022116278