{"id":2601,"date":"2010-04-22T13:36:59","date_gmt":"2010-04-22T18:36:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/?p=2601"},"modified":"2010-04-22T13:36:59","modified_gmt":"2010-04-22T18:36:59","slug":"middle-class-welfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2010\/04\/22\/middle-class-welfare\/","title":{"rendered":"Middle Class Welfare"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/matthewyglesias\/~3\/st61L5dsHWE\/americas-costliest-tax-break.php\">Matt Yglesias points us to a great illustration<\/a> of  how much &#8220;middle class welfare&#8221; exists in American society.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/yglesias.thinkprogress.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/chart.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>From a social justice perspective, there&#8217;s little reason why a homeowner should get a tax-break from the federal government at the expense of non-homeowners or why those who can place money in an IRA get a break at the expense of those who cannot do so.  Of course, these are not &#8220;hand outs&#8221; because they are presumed to have been &#8220;earned&#8221; in some form.  <\/p>\n<p>This is what made the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.irs.gov\/individuals\/article\/0,,id=96406,00.html\">Earned Income Tax Credit<\/a> in the 1990&#8217;s such good policy.  It is not perceived as a subsidy when in actuality it means the same thing to the federal government&#8217;s bottom line.  The public is supportive of matching what poor people earn through a credit rather than providing them with direct assistance.  Similarly, we wouldn&#8217;t be too happy with the federal government handing us money for buying a home, but that&#8217;s what we essentially do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matt Yglesias points us to a great illustration of how much &#8220;middle class welfare&#8221; exists in American society. From a social justice perspective, there&#8217;s little reason why a homeowner should get a tax-break from the federal government at the expense of non-homeowners or why those who can place money in an IRA get a break [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2601"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2603,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2601\/revisions\/2603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}