John McCain is a blithering idiot, much like G.W. Bush, but every once in a while he manages to tell the truth, as when he confessed, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should." He should have stuck with that, because his recent attempts to sound knowledgable have been cringe-worthy at best.
McCain recently attacked Obama's alleged "socialism," using the narrative trope of "Joe the Plumber" supposedly unmasking Obama's "hidden plan". This trope, of the simple everyman unmasking the "so-called experts" is a perennial favorite of rightwing populism, and McCain got lots of jollies from using it. Just one problem: the "hidden plan" he unmasked wasn't hidden, wasn't socialist, and wasn't even new. It consisted, quite simply, in some folks getting tax credits beyond the taxes that they owe. And, as this chart from Visualizing Economics makes clear, many low-income taxpayers already pay negative income taxes, largely thanks to the Earned Income Tax Credit, first signed into law by that old Marxist, Gerald Ford, and later expanded by Comrade Reagan.
Here's how the Boston Globe described McCain's use of [Not] Joe the [Not] Plumber to attack Obama as a socialist:
In his weekly radio address today, John McCain uses the ubiquitous Joe the plumber to all but accuse Democratic rival Barack Obama of being a socialist.
McCain reminds listeners of the story of Joe Wurzelbacher, the Ohio man who complained to Obama last weekend that his tax plans -- to end the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 -- would put a crimp his plans to buy a plumbing business.
In an exchange recorded for posterity on a YouTube video, Obama told Wurzelbacher that in the economic crisis it would be good to "spread the wealth around."
"Joe, in his plainspoken way, said this sounded a lot like socialism," McCain says in his radio address. "And a lot of Americans are thinking along those same lines. In the best case, 'spreading the wealth around' is a familiar idea from the American left. And that kind of class warfare sure doesn't sound like a 'new kind of politics.'
McCain adds that the "spread the wealth" philosophy "would also explain some big problems with my opponent's claim that he will cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans. You might ask: How do you cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans, when more than 40 percent pay no income taxes right now? How do you reduce the number zero?
"Well, that's the key to Barack Obama's whole plan: Since you can't reduce taxes on those who pay zero, the government will write them all checks called a tax credit. And the Treasury will cover those checks by taxing other people, including a lot of folks just like Joe. In other words, Barack Obama's tax plan would convert the IRS into a giant welfare agency, redistributing massive amounts of wealth at the direction of politicians in Washington."
You know, it's just too bad that McCain never got the hang of Google or Wikipedia, because then he could have found this:
Earned income tax credit
The United States federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC or EIC) is a refundable tax credit.
And if he'd learned how to click on a link, he would have discovered:
Tax credit From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Refundable tax credit)
The term tax credit describes two different concepts:
* The first is a recognition of partial payment already made towards taxes due.
* The second is a state benefit paid to employees through the tax system, which has the effect of increasing (rather than reducing) net income....
Tax credits as a form of state benefit
Tax credits may be characterized as either refundable or non-refundable, or equivalently non-wastable or wastable. Refundable or non-wastable tax credits can reduce the tax owed below zero, and result in a net payment to the taxpayer beyond their own payments into the tax system, appearing to be a moderate form of negative income tax. Examples of refundable tax credits include the earned income tax credit and the additional child tax credit in the U.S., and working tax credits or child tax credits in the UK.
Hence, the chart above.
In the immoratal words of Nobel Laureate in Economics, Homer Simpson: "D'oh!"
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