We need to think about how current trends in poverty and inequality affect future economic contributors. We already know that by age three, i nequality is clear—the children of the wealthy attend school, while those of poor and low-income families stay home. In addition, we know that high levels of inequality mean that people who are born near the bottom quintile tend to stay there. Why? Top earners, the one percent, have more money to invest in their children and these children are better positioned for economic opportunities than their poor counterparts. The result of this, according to Raj Chetty’s Equality of Opportunity Project, is that only 60 percent of children from poor families are likely to be working by age 30, compared to 80 percent of those from median or higher income families. … It is impossible to evaluate the GOP tax plan without this context. This tax reform plan is a petri dish for increasing inequality. As the New York Times reports, “The bottom 99 percent of taxpayers would see their federal tax rates drop 0.4 to 1.7 percentage points on average next year. But the top one percent would benefit much more, with average tax rates falling by 5.7 percentage points.” And the tax cuts would shrink for every group except the top one percent by 2027.

Moreover, if one suspects that Republicans intend to cut domestic programs (as they attempted to do with Medicaid) to partially pay for lopsided tax cuts for the rich, the wealth gap would widen further. Quite simply, taking from the poor and allowing the rich to get richer will widen social and economic stratification. If you think that is a recipe for economic failure, social instability and political extremism, this should concern you greatly.

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The blatant sop to the rich also alarms some conservative scholars. At the American Enterprise Institute, Angela Rachidi sees that one group is entirely excluded from any benefits from the tax plan:

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This tax plan is not designed to help low-income families. Low-income families mostly do not pay federal income taxes, so it might make sense that they are excluded from a tax overhaul. But the tax system currently transfers income to low-income working families, largely recognizing that they pay other taxes (such as payroll) and that their earnings have stagnated while the costs for things like child care have gone up. Excluding these families from a tax-overhaul misses an opportunity to support them and their children.

And, of course, taking away social services to fund tax cuts that the poor don’t receive adds insult to injury.

Rachidi would like to see expansion of the earned income tax credit. “A recent study of an expansion to the EITC for workers without dependent children found that it effectively transferred income to working individuals, without negatively affecting employment (although it didn’t do much to increase employment either),” she argues. “Even with these positive impacts, there’s more to do. Still, 15.1% of children are in poverty according to the supplemental poverty measure, with about one-third in families that work full-time and two-thirds in families that work at least part-time, part-year. Expanding support programs could help them move up the economic ladder.”

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To sum up, there is no denying (except if you work at the White House or peddle its phony talking points) that the tax plan will direct considerable tax savings toward those who have done the best over the past couple of decades. It might do something for some in the middle class, but there is nothing in there for the poor, who may also see a reduction in federal services. The solutions should be obvious: No tax plan is better than the tax plan the GOP is suggesting, and if the GOP really wants to encourage work, opportunity, upward mobility and family cohesion, it will not diminish its revenue but rather use some of it to try lifting up those at the bottom of the income distribution.

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