{"id":385,"date":"2012-10-17T13:30:16","date_gmt":"2012-10-17T20:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.reed.edu\/politika\/?p=385"},"modified":"2014-03-18T10:10:20","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T17:10:20","slug":"everyone-is-middle-class-in-the-united-states-so-romneys-claims-about-capital-gains-may-resonate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/2012\/10\/17\/everyone-is-middle-class-in-the-united-states-so-romneys-claims-about-capital-gains-may-resonate\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyone is middle class in the United States, so Romney&#8217;s claims about capital gains may resonate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/ezra-klein\/wp\/2012\/10\/17\/the-second-presidential-debate-in-graphs\/\">Ezra Klein<\/a> correctly points out:<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/2012\/10\/17\/everyone-is-middle-class-in-the-united-states-so-romneys-claims-about-capital-gains-may-resonate\/screen-shot-2012-10-17-at-1-04-12-pm-2\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-387\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-387\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/files\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-17-at-1.04.12-PM1-300x272.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"302\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/files\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-17-at-1.04.12-PM1-300x272.png 300w, https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/files\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-17-at-1.04.12-PM1.png 961w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 333px) 100vw, 333px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Romney said \u201cEvery middle-income taxpayer no longer will pay any tax on interest, dividends or capital gains.\u201d As this graph from the Tax Policy Center shows, few people in the middle-income brackets actually pay capital gains taxes to begin with \u2014 most of the burden falls on the wealthy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>and helpfully provides us a pretty chart.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is that if we substitute &#8220;middle class&#8221; for &#8220;middle income&#8221; (as Klein does himself at Wonkblog), we run smack into the uncomfortable reality that the vast majority of Americans see themselves as &#8220;middle class&#8221; even if they have high incomes.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/2012\/10\/17\/everyone-is-middle-class-in-the-united-states-so-romneys-claims-about-capital-gains-may-resonate\/screen-shot-2012-10-17-at-1-19-34-pm\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-388\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-388\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/files\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-17-at-1.19.34-PM-300x209.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"209\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/files\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-17-at-1.19.34-PM-300x209.png 300w, https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/files\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-17-at-1.19.34-PM.png 719w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>The data shown here are from the <a href=\"http:\/\/sda.berkeley.edu\/cgi-bin\/hsda?harcsda+gss10\">2010 General Social Survey<\/a>, and while the categories don&#8217;t match up to what Klein has posted, 80% still consider themselves &#8220;middle class&#8221; even among those who earn more than $150,000&#8211;only 9.1% of families according to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.census.gov\/prod\/2012pubs\/p60-243.pdf\">U.S. Census.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ezra Klein correctly points out: Romney said \u201cEvery middle-income taxpayer no longer will pay any tax on interest, dividends or capital gains.\u201d As this graph from the Tax Policy Center shows, few people in the middle-income brackets actually pay capital &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/2012\/10\/17\/everyone-is-middle-class-in-the-united-states-so-romneys-claims-about-capital-gains-may-resonate\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty","category-paul-gronke","category-political-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":545,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions\/545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}