Mar 20, 2017 03:34 pm | Mark Price
In Pennsylvania, the top 1% of families have captured just over half of all the growth in market incomes between 1979 and 2013 (Figure A above). As we have argued, this imbalance is largely the result of policy choices that have favored financial executives and CEOs over working families.
Now, Congressional Republicans have proposed eliminating the net investment tax and additional Medicare tax, which were enacted to pay for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has estimated that 86% of these tax cuts would flow to the top 1% of families (Figure B above).
The Affordable Care Act provides critical access to health care to over a million Pennsylvanians, with a portion of that extended coverage paid for by high-income families, the primary beneficiaries of economic policy in the last 36 years. We think that’s a fair tradeoff.
Leave a Reply