The dead giveaway that Donald Trump’s tax plan is total BS
Remember when Trump White House adviser Gary Cohn was publicly lambasting Donald Trump for his racism? It appears that brief moment of virtue has come and gone, because Cohn – long a Wall Street shill – is now promoting Trump’s tax cut plan for the wealthy in stunningly dishonest fashion. But his lies about who benefits from the tax plan may not be the worst part of it. Cohn appears to honestly have no idea how much anything costs.
Cohn appeared behind the White House podium and pushed the (largely false) claim that the Trump tax plan will save the average working class household around a thousand dollars per year. Various independent analyses have revealed that some middle class households would actually see an tax increase under the plan; after all, someone has to pay for the tax cuts for the wealthy. But then Cohn got to the part about what he thought the common folk could use that imaginary thousand dollars for.
“They can buy a new car,” Cohn exclaimed (link). That’s right, he thinks a new car costs a thousand dollars. Some have floated the notion that perhaps Cohn was referring to a thousand dollar down payment on a new car. But that’s rather thoroughly disproven by the fact that Cohn also said in the breath that a kitchen renovation costs a thousand dollars. In other words, he truly has no idea what any of these things cost – or how numbers work in the real world economy. That means any tax plan he’s come up with has to be total nonsense.
Gary Cohn has a net worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars, thanks largely to his time with Goldman Sachs. It’s not as if he’s bought a Toyota Corolla lately. But if he’s going to be in charge of revamping the tax structure for the middle class, he owes it to the American people to take a moment to find out what the middle class actually pays for things. Or maybe he got his math skills from Trump University.
