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A Tax Plan to Turbocharge Inequality, in 3 Charts

The Republican tax bill is an audacious attempt to accelerate the economic trends of the last half-century.

If you’re a fan of these trends — rapidly rising inequality and stagnant middle-class incomes — you should love the bill.

Over the last few decades, the rich have not only enjoyed the largest pre-tax raises, by far. They have also received big tax cuts. The middle class and poor, meanwhile, have suffered from slow-growing incomes — and from overall tax rates that are higher today than in the mid-1960s.

Middle-income families face a higher rate than a half-century ago: 28.6 percent in 2014, versus 24.8 percent in 1964.

The bill does cut income taxes for the middle class, but only modestly and only temporarily. The tax cuts benefiting the wealthy, including cuts to the inheritance tax and the corporate tax, are much larger and permanent.

Republican leaders have evidently decided that most Americans deserve more of what they’ve had over the past few decades — more income stagnation and more inequality.