We just elected a Republican Congress (both houses) and President. And as part of that election, they promised us tax cuts!!!! In particular tax cuts for the middle class!!!! Yeah!!!! Well, as in all things in politics the devil is in the details, and we might want to change that to Yeah????? Because you can bet that tax cuts are coming, but also that they are going to massively benefit the richest .01-1% of the people in this country. And they are going to come at the expense of the bottom half of us or so. The middle class will get the droppings from the table, but only if we are good and sit pretty while waiting patiently at the feet of our betters. Or richers. Whichever. And in the end? The middle class will continue to slip toward that bottom 50%, as the rich get more and more of the wealth. Which leads to more and more of the power. Which leads to more and more of the tax cuts and government benefits.

But before you assume that I’m just one of those leftie elite tax-and-spend-crazies (note that libs aren’t the only ones to make false assumptions!), note that the GOP will also be spending like crazy. But it will be on things like corporate subsidies, especially to the military-industrial complex the way things are going. And yes, a few temporary jobs may be created if we do things like building bigger fences along our southern border, but most of the profits from that will go to the top execs and shareholders at the companies who get the sweetheart contracts. Cutting middle class taxes by less than $300/tax payer may sound ok, but in the long run will it cover the costs of the cuts and transfers to the wealthy? That’s what we need to ask ourselves.

What are the numbers that we know about? The New York Times had a good synopsis this morning, including numbers from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center and the conservative Tax Foundation. They differ a bit, but both show HUGE discrepancies in benefits for the ultra-wealthy versus the other 99 to 99.9% of us.

The breakdown? According to the current House plan (the only one really on the table), the bottom 80% of us will get a 0.4 to 0.5% reduction in our taxes. Of course since we make the least money, this doesn’t amount to much. For the poorest, it will be an extra $50 in their pockets the first year. For the average, another $260. And for the lucky 60-80% level, about $410 per year. On the other hand, the richest 1% will get a 13.4% cut, amounting to just over $212,000/year. And the richest .01% will get a 16.9% cut, for a miserly total of $1,262,530 per PERSON per year.

Now I’m sure none of us will turn away another $250 or so, or even the $60 on the low end. But there are two problems here: the first is massive inequality in the cuts, and the second is how we will pay for it.

On the inequality side: why is it that the richest 1% of the people get the vast, lion’s share of the cuts, when they need it least? There isn’t a middle class tax cut on the table — there is a giant tax cut for the uber-rich, with table scraps for the middle class and poor — and really for the 80% of us who are tax bottom feeders. We already have an incredibly unequal society in terms of wealth, and this will make it even wider.

Now a very few may still argue that these tax cuts for the rich will be reinvested! They’ll go back into the society! They’ll create jobs!!! I’m afraid those alt-facts simply aren’t true. In an economic sense, these is a word for these ideas: bullshit. It wasn’t true when Ronald Reagan first proposed “trickle down economics” when running for President. It wasn’t true when George H.W. Bush called it “voodoo economics” — he was right, and the name was great. Please keep using it. And it isn’t true now, after 40 years of testing and analysis. There is not one demonstrable case in which tax cuts for the rich helped the economy, much less a preponderance of evidence.

What tax cuts for the rich really do is simple. They make the rich, richer. They congregate more wealth at the top. And the rich don’t spend in ways that help the economy.

By contrast, poor people and the middle class ABSOLUTELY help the economy when their taxes are cut. Give a person in the bottom 25% an additional $60/year, and you can guarantee they will spend it on daily living. Ditto anyone in the middle class with an additional $250. And those numbers really do add up to economic growth (not just growth of rich bank accounts!) and more jobs. The spending that the majority of us do is great for the economy.

The second issue is also important though. Because this tax cut, which massively over-benefits the rich, will also come with spending cuts and additional debt that will disproportionately harm the middle class and poor. It will come with cuts to Medicare. And possibly Social Security. And aid to families with dependent children (which hurts the children most, of course!) And school lunches. And overall school funding. And payments that allow people to be insured under the ACA. And it may come with cutting the ACA, which will not only make more people uninsured again, but will increase medical costs significantly according to pretty much every study out there. And it will come with more debt. This is a gigantic spending program hiding as a tax cut, with huge amounts of money being sent directly to the pockets of the rich. And as usual, our grandkids get to pay for it. And their grandkids, a new generation of trust-fund babies, get to benefit.

So who is proposing all of this stuff? Who will vote on it. The GOP House and the GOP Senate to start, both of which are proud and strong in their support of giving money to their rich friends and benefactors. And our likely new Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnunchin. He of hedge fund and Goldman Sachs fame. You know, the guy who, with his big finance buddies, brought us our most recent economic collapse, and who was in the very small class of people who massively benefited from that collapse while the rest of us saw our retirement slowly seep away. And of course our President and the rest of his cabinet. Multi-millionaires and billionaires. They’ll make a LOT of personal money off of these tax cuts.

We need to wake up and smell the money. Tax cuts for the bottom 80% of us can be very good for the economy. But the rich really don’t pay their fair share of taxes right now. They have become more rich over time by purchasing our government, in exchange for having their taxes cut and cut again over the long term.

So when this topic hits the headlines, let your legislators know. They can support the vast majority of us and not give more benefits to the wealthy few. Or they can leave their jobs at the next election. Make your voices heard. Post cards. Calls. Emails. And let them have it anytime they come back to a district near you. We need to get LOUD about taxes, and on denying more tax cuts to the richest few.