Romney and Reality: Taxes

The Mitt is claiming that Americans are over-taxed, and has promised to slash income taxes. The reality is very different. Here’s a chart, courtesy of Off the Charts, showing the current and historic median federal income tax rates paid by a family of four:

Federal Income Tax Rates, Family of Four, 1955-2011

The Mitt is campaigning both to slash the deficit and to cut taxes on the wealthy. Meanwhile. he wants tp ramp up defense spending to levels beyond even Cold War levels. He seems to want to repeat Reagan. But Reagan came to office at peak taxation and we are at 1955 levels.

To quote Andrew Sullivan, “This is what happens when ideology simply doesn’t shift to adapt to reality, and when one party refuses to tell people that they cannot have their cake and eat it too.” The Mitt’s campaign position is delusional, not as a metaphor, in the clinical sense.

We’ll have to see if the voters share the delusion.