Walker claims "typical family" gets $200 a month. Will you?

Well, now that the Piece of Shit tax bill is signed into law, GOP politicians and their corporate puppetmasters are trying an all-out propaganda blitz to convince the public that it isn't a Piece of Shit, and will make everyday Americans better off. And our fair Governor wants to be a major part of this effort.

The federal #TaxCutsandJobsAct will result in a $2,508 tax cut for a typical family of four in Wisconsin, according to analysis by the @WI_Revenue. That’s $200 a month more in the pockets of the typical Wisconsin family. #WIWorking https://t.co/hqU93RL5ch pic.twitter.com/zFH1kT3sys

— Governor Walker (@GovWalker) December 27, 2017

My initial reaction was to roll my eyes, but if you take what Walker's Department of Revenue considers to be the "typical family of 4", its largely true. I got this info via email, and I can't find it on the Web (feel free to forward it to me you find it), but the Department of Revenue used a median income of $86,700 as the median "married, filing jointly with 2 kids in Wisconsin" figure. Then inflated it to $94,700 to account for income growth three years later, in 2018.

(Side note, per capita income is only up 3.46% in the last 24 months in Wisconsin. That 9% assumption by Walker's DOR is iffy at best. But let's humor them.)

If you punch in "$94,700, married filing jointly with 2 kids" to this tax calculator from the Reason Foundation, then it says....tax cut of around $2,500. The reasons? About 2/3 in rate cuts and an expanded standard deduction, and about 1/3 from the expanded child tax credit. But that expanded standard deduction is also a problem, because this also reduces the incentive to own a home (like the "typical Wisconsin family" does), and Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics says that US housing prices will be 4% lower in 2019 than they otherwise would have been as a result.

If you figure the median Wisconsin home is around $160,000, that's a $6,400 difference in wealth. So much for your one-time tax cut, "typical family."

And as we've found continually with this Piece of Shit bill, YOUR OUTCOMES MAY BE VERY DIFFERENT. For example, me and my wife are both well-educated, upper-middle class homeowners. We would save all of $900 a year ($75 a month), and a 4% drop on our home values is more like $12,000. Thanks assholes!

And that's what Todd Berry of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance cautioned when Walker tried his spin job yesterday.

Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance president Todd Berry said the biggest problem with Walker's analysis is that it chose a two-income, two-child family which is no longer "typical."

"The largest number of filers in Wisconsin are single," Berry said. "And, among those who file jointly, two kids of tax credit age are less and less the norm."

And so let's go back to the tax calculator and look at some other circumstances. Even worse, a single parent making $65,000 with 2 kids owning a house saves less than $3 a week, and likely loses that and more in home value. Single professional with no kids making $65,000 but renting? That person saves a whopping $4 a week. Don't spend it all in one place!

Here are a few other examples from Wisconsin.

Married empty-nest couple, making $400,000, living in a pricey house- GAIN $8,079

Married couple, two kids, making $175,000- GAIN $4,341

Married couple owning a middle-priced home, making $75,000, no kids - GAIN $1,228

Single person making $35,000, renting with 2 kids - GAIN $521

Single person making $40,000 and renting - LOSE $194

Does that seem remotely fair, or do anything to end our crippling inequality? Now add in the higher medical costs for lower-income people due to the GOP messing with Obamacare in the same Piece of Shit bill, and those people fall even further behind.

And memo to Scott Walker- you know what else puts $2,500 in the pockets of that "typical Wisconsin family of 4"? A 4% RAISE IN PAY! And we wouldn't have to drive up the deficit, take away health care and threaten the future of Social Security to do so.

The reality of low pay and declining standard of living is what Scott Walker and Paul Ryan and all the GOP charlatans aren't telling you. The overwhelming majority of Americans don't need tax cuts, they need better pay and better benefits. And the pay and benefits part are what will get worse, especially since corporations are now incentivized even more to cut jobs and wages in order to maximize profit under this Piece of Shit bill.



And that's before the stock and housing Bubbles pop, partly due to the rampant Wall Street speculation that this tax bill has caused in 2017, and the resulting changes in behavior from continued low wage growth and falling house prices. Do not fall for the GOP spin that any one-time bump in your take-home pay makes the damage to our economy and increased inequality close to OK. The last 40 years prove otherwise, and this chart is going to get worse, unless we throw these corrupted bums out of office in massive amounts in 2018 and reverse this crap ASAP.