Shikha Dalmia has responded to my earlier post.
Recall that she had said that the Lee-Rubio plan hikes taxes on the middle class, specifically on people making between $150,000 and $411,500. I made two points. First, I noted that these people are in the top 10 percent of households by income. That does not mean that they should all be considered rich, but it does mean that even if Dalmia’s factual claim were right — that the plan raises average tax rates on people in this income range — it would not show that the plan raises taxes on the middle class or, as she puts it, on “the supposed beneficiaries of these reforms.” Her response: “He claims that my definition of the middle class is too expansive because folks making over $150,000 are not the upper-middle class, but the rich.” I didn’t say that.
Second, I noted that her generalization is not true even for the people in the income range she identified. I cited examples involving families making $200,000. Her response to that point: “Look at the said table [p. 23 here] and you’ll see that this $200,000-making couple would need to have two children and charitable donations of $10,000 before it comes out ahead under the Rubio-Lee schema. Otherwise, they lose.” This is simply false. The table shows no such thing. As I noted in that earlier post, if the couple had no kids its tax bill would still drop by $7,300. Assume they gave nothing to charity and had no kids, and they would still come out ahead by $6,600.
The rest of her post is based on this mistake. She posits that the Lee-Rubio plan entails “class warfare” against people whose taxes it would actually cut.