We should get behind what Reihan Salam calls the Zero Plan - getting rid of the deductions that benefit the overly powerful upper middle class

Ryan Streeter

This is a very smart post by Reihan Salam and reflects the ConservativeHome view of income and politics.

My view is that heavy emphasis on raising MTRs [marginal tax rates] for high-earners reflects the stranglehold that upper-middle-class households in the largest U.S. metropolitan areas have on our politics. These households, in New York, D.C., and Southern California, have enormous influence in the media and in both the Democratic and Republican coalitions, though perhaps more in the Democrati    c coalition, and I see this influence as far more insidious than the comparatively trivial collective influence of the top 0.01 percent.

He goes on to add:

Our political discourse rarely focuses on the how the self-interest of the upper-middle-class has corrupted our public life, in no small part because the upper-middle-class dominates political conversation.

Salam believes the dominance of the upper middle class is the reason we should take on the Zero Plan - the elimination of all deductions and exemptions with a few exceptions (he preserves the EITC and the child tax credit; I think you've got to keep charitable deductions, too...but then, here we go, making exceptions...).

This is absolutely the right thing to do, I think. I have long believed that reforming this part of the tax code will actually be more politically difficult than reforming entitlements.

But it should be done.

The problem, of course, is that success will depend in large part upon the support of the overly influential upper middle class, who has the most to lose.