{"id":51116,"date":"2012-09-19T11:30:01","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T16:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=51116"},"modified":"2012-09-18T21:02:41","modified_gmt":"2012-09-19T02:02:41","slug":"mitt-romney-and-the-47-meme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/09\/19\/mitt-romney-and-the-47-meme\/","title":{"rendered":"Mitt Romney and the 47% Meme"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Caroline Heldman’s Blog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

On\u00a0Monday,\u00a0Mother Jones<\/em><\/a>\u00a0released\u00a0a video recorded\u00a0in May of presidential candidate\u00a0Mitt Romney speaking at a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in the\u00a0Boca Raton home of \u201cprivate equity party boy<\/a>\u201d and \u201csexy party<\/a>\u201d host, Marc Leder.\u00a0A hidden camera\u00a0caught controversial remarks about\u00a0Israel<\/a>,\u00a0Iran<\/a>, and a joke about\u00a0being more electable if his parents\u00a0had been born in\u00a0Mexico<\/a>, but\u00a0the topic of this post is Romney\u2019s\u00a0use of the 47%\u00a0Meme<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 47% Meme is\u00a0the idea that half of Americans take from rather than contribute to tax coffers. It sometimes surfaces in the form of the \u201ctakers vs. makers\u201d frame. I have\u00a0encountered this \u201cargument<\/a>\u201d for years on\u00a0Fox News<\/a>,\u00a0so it is\u00a0surprising\u00a0to see it gaining national attention now. Romney did a superb job articulating\u00a0the 47% Meme in response to a question of how he might win in November:<\/p>\n

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that\u2019s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Many myths start with a\u00a0kernel of truth<\/a>. The 47% Meme is\u00a0loosely based on\u00a0the statistic that\u00a047% of Americans pay no income tax (down to\u00a046%<\/a>\u00a0in 2011). This meme is\u00a0wildly\u00a0dishonest since people pay a host of other federal, state, and local taxes. It\u2019s about as honest as saying a person doesn\u2019t eat vegetables because\u00a0she only eats carrots, celery, bell peppers, cucumbers, and cabbage, but not\u00a0broccoli<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So who is paying taxes, and what taxes are they paying?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Federal Income Tax<\/strong><\/p>\n

The\u00a0Tax Policy Center<\/a>\u00a0finds that two\u00a0main groups\u00a0comprise the 46% who do not pay federal income tax: (1) The poor whose subsistence-level income is not taxable, and (2) those who receive\u00a0tax expenditures<\/a>.\u00a0This chart shows that the\u00a0lion\u2019s share of tax expenditures goes to\u00a0senior citizens, children, and\u00a0the\u00a0working\u00a0poor, with the notable exception\u00a0of\u00a07,000 millionaires<\/a>\u00a0who paid no income tax in 2011.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Other Federal Taxes<\/strong><\/p>\n

But enough about income tax since this narrow focus only serves to further the misleading 47% Meme. The chart below shows a more accurate picture of who pays federal taxes. If we don\u2019t count retirees, only 8% of Americans pay no\u00a0income or\u00a0payroll<\/a>\u00a0taxes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Americans also pay federal\u00a0excise<\/a>\u00a0tax on\u00a0gas, liquor, cigarettes, airline tickets, and\u00a0a long list of\u00a0other products, so virtually every American pays federal taxes in some form. And contrary to the\u00a047% Meme,\u00a0poor and middle-class Americans actually pay a greater percentage of their income in federal payroll and excise taxes than wealthier Americans.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

State and Local Taxes<\/strong><\/p>\n

When it comes to state and local taxes, the\u00a0Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy<\/a>\u00a0finds that\u00a0the poor\u00a0pay more in\u00a0state and local taxes in every state\u00a0except Vermont.\u00a0As the chart below indicates, state and local\u00a0taxes are regressive, meaning that those who can least afford\u00a0to pay, pay more.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Romney has\u00a0apologized<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0the inelegance of his statements, but\u00a0stands by their substance, despite ample data debunking the dependency\u00a0(above) and\u00a0entitlement<\/a>\u00a0bases\u00a0for the 47% Meme. I don\u2019t believe that Romney believes that half of the people in the U.S. are pathetically entitled \u201cvictims.\u201d He is a smart person, and this is a\u00a0ludicrous line of reasoning. But what does it say about our\u00a0bitterly partisan<\/a>\u00a0nation that heaping unmitigated scorn on the poor brings in big bucks from the base?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Caroline Heldman’s Blog. On\u00a0Monday,\u00a0Mother Jones\u00a0released\u00a0a video recorded\u00a0in May of presidential candidate\u00a0Mitt Romney speaking at a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in the\u00a0Boca Raton home of \u201cprivate equity party boy\u201d and \u201csexy party\u201d host, Marc Leder.\u00a0A hidden camera\u00a0caught controversial remarks about\u00a0Israel,\u00a0Iran, and a joke about\u00a0being more electable if his parents\u00a0had been born in\u00a0Mexico, but\u00a0the topic of this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,36,3920,85,8121,304],"class_list":["post-51116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-economics","tag-nation-united-states","tag-politics","tag-election-2012","tag-the-state"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51121,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51116\/revisions\/51121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}