+1 MSNBC moderators.
Per that Tax Foundation link:
Top 1% would get a 11.5% increase in after tax income
Middle 10% would see from 1.1 to 1.7%.
Lowest 10% would get a 44.2% increase.
The numbers are modified if one accepts, as the Foundation does, that the tax changes would stimulate GDP (the “dynamic view”). Then:
Top 1% would get a 27.9% increase in after tax income
Middle 10% would see from 15.0 to 15.2%.
Lowest 10% would get a 55.9% increase.
So claim of top 1% to the middle of twice as much increase in after tax income change (which of course is much much more in absolute income) is roughly correct for the “dynamic” view that assumes huge increases in GDP as a result of the changes and actually 10X as much if one questions those assumptions. Harwood was correct and a statement by Rubio that he was not was a falsehood.
Lowest 10% currently tops off at $5,068 for a single individual, $23,478 for married filing jointly. It is true that these lowest 10% units would, according to the Tax Foundation, see large relative percentage increase in after tax income, larger relative to their income than the top 1% receives. Not the statement Harwood made.
Of course in absolute dollars about $10 would go to the top 1% for every $1 that goes to the lowest 10%.
They estimate it would lower revenue by $414 billion annually, raising Federal debt into 2021 then positive impacts on growth bringing it back to current levels by 2040. If they are correct about all the stimulatory impacts of lower taxes … which we have heard before.
The moderator’s job is to moderate and nothing more. They’re supposed to moderate, keep the peace, and stay neutral.
I’m a moderator here. Suppose someone is acting out and breaking the rules…which should I say?
"Hey, have you read the rules? You’re not supposed to do that, so let’s try not to again, okay?
Or…
“Hey, have you read the rules? I assume you have, so how much longer are you going to keep acting like an annoying asshole? Let’s try not to show yourself to be a total idiot again, okay?”
One is within the mods allowance of how to act and the other isn’t. It’s not the mods (moderator of ANYTHING, be it of a message board, presidential debate, or even keeping watch over a children’s play) job to make it personal or make jabs of ridicule, I’m thinking it’s their job to stay unbiased and just moderate.
More fun calculations about Rubio’s tax plan btw … again all taking the dynamic economic stimulatory effects of lower taxes at face value
Assuming that the proportional increase in after tax income does not further increase for the top 0.1% (a big assumption but let’s accept it), the top 0.1% gets significantly more of an increase in actual dollars of after tax income than the entire lower 10% does.
The top 1% gets more absolute dollars than the entire middle 10% does. And if those dynamic stimulatory effects are hooey then the top 1% gets 3 to 4 times as much as the middle 10% does in absolute dollar terms.
$400 billion/yr cost? No thanks. A party that isn’t even willing to implement the $110 billion/yr sequester shouldn’t be proposing tax cuts of that size.
Your point is well taken but I disagree. I maintain these are not debates at all, merely joint press conferences. In a press conference, you ask tough questions. You even ask loaded questions. If a candidate can’t handle a tough question, even an attempt to rattle his cage and piss him off, then how is he going to deal with the likes of Putin? How would he deal with a hostile Congress? Let’s see how these candidates deal with unfair questions. Let’s see how they deal with hostility.
I don’t think it would be a bad idea to have say Limbaugh, Hannity, and Savage be the moderators of a future “debate”. Let them see who will will willing to go off the scale right in order to placate their base. Then give Michael Moore a shot at them. Let’s see them handle overly friendly questions and outright hostility.
Agreed, but I think the problem here is that the word “moderator” for what this panel of questioners does is an unfortunate misnomer, and as BobLibDem says, these aren’t really even debates – that’s another misnomer.
If the candidates were actually debating each other, then a true moderator could stay in the background and merely intervene if rules were being broken or otherwise to restore order and keep things on track, just as moderators do here. You’re right of course that such a moderator would be required to be strictly neutral. But this panel is really a panel of questioners – an interrogation panel, really, whose relationship to the candidates is necessarily adversarial. “Neutral” here just means that they should treat all the candidates equally, not that they play nice with them except for maintaining a reasonable level of civility. To draw an analogy with a courtroom trial, I see the panelists being like prosecutors and the candidates like defendants. A true moderator here would be like a trial judge, and no such position exists in these “debates”, though perhaps it might have been useful to have one in this last round judging from the fiasco that apparently ensued.
I’m not defending CNBC. Based only on what I’ve heard and read as I didn’t see the actual debate, it seems they went overboard in some of the questioning. But as I said earlier, I think Harwood’s question to Trump – one of the big points of contention – was a question that was well justified to the extent that he itemized some of the outlandish things Trump had said, and said often. The problem with it was that the question at the end of it was hostile and insulting and should have been much more professionally and diplomatically phrased – not “isn’t this a comic book campaign?” but something like “please explain if you meant these statements seriously and if so, in what way were they serious”.
Then give 4chan and 8chan a shot at them. (For the uninitiated, 8chan is for people who think 4chan is too polite and too tightly-moderated. For the lost, 4chan is for people who look at Donald Trump and think “Why is he holding back?”) With any luck, they’ll be begging to go back to normal “debates” moderated by legitimate media personalities and cut it out with this whole “play nice or we stop showing up” nonsense.