Jeb! Bush's tax plan would make inequality worse, and he thinks that's a-okay.
“The simple fact is 1 percent of people pay 40 percent of all the taxes,” Bush said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Of course, tax cuts for everybody is going to generate more for people that are paying a lot more. I mean that's just the way it is.”
Some simple facts: As of 2010, one percent of people owned
42 percent of the nation's financial wealth (that's excluding homes; including homes, they owned 35.4 percent of the nation's wealth). One percent of Americans get a
20 percent share of the income in this country, and that's been growing, as they've captured
more than 86 percent of the income growth since 1979. That richest one percent got
54 percent of capital income—income coming directly from wealth.
So, yeah, it's "just the way it is" in today's America of skyrocketing economic inequality that when a President Bush hands out a tax cut, most of the benefit goes to very rich people, but that's not some immutable law of the universe. The United States once taxed rich people at much higher rates, and the economy was stronger for it, and inequality was (a lot) lower.
But that's not the United States Jeb! Bush wants to see. He wants to see himself getting a $3 million tax cut. That's just the way it is.