156 to 4
David Corn makes the case for Obama's tax compromise in a column today, and on the way he explains the deal in startling numbers:

Obama's desired provisions will provide about $214 billion in tax cuts and benefits to 156 million people, and the GOP's treats will dole out $133 billion to 4 million. You can do the math without a calculator and see that those poor rich folks will be handed oodles more than the rest. One comparison: On average, people with more than $1 million in income will end up with an extra $140,000. A taxpayer in the $40,000-to-$50,000 range will receive $1,679. You may ask yourself, why do millionaires and billionaires warrant more pocket money, particularly when it's generally accepted that spreading cash among the rich is not effective economic stimulation? The answer: That's what Republicans want. And Obama is right: They held the rest of America hostage -- no cuts and benefits for you, unless there's "relief" for the gazillionaires.

Read the whole thing.

Narrative
One maddening thing about Democratic congressional strategies - say on this tax cut extension business - is they seem to think they can overturn long-held narratives with something as simple as facts.

It's true - Republicans in the House yesterday voted against extending tax cuts for all families on the first $250,000 of income. They did that, they say, because they will accept nothing less than extension of tax cuts for all income levels. Still, Democrats *pounce*: they voted against tax cuts for the middle class! They voted to raise your taxes! And, surely, they did. But this reality is not going to sink into a public consciousness that for generations has known that Republicans are for all tax cuts all the time. Which party wants to keep taxes low, you ask? Republicans, they will say, regardless of what just happened in the House on a Thursday afternoon in December.

That's frustrating, but it's reality.

Democrats should focus on the one honest truth that is also ingrained in the public's mind: Republicans care more about lowering taxes for rich people than they do anything else in the world. They will sell out the middle class, explode the deficit, and likely trample their own dear mothers in pursuit of this ignoble goal. Even that argument is unlikely to work though, as Republicans sell every effort to stand in their way as the desperate attempt by Democrats to raise taxes, thus exploiting the narrative.

Facts (Obama has lowered taxes for almost every single American), figures (continuing the tax cuts for upper incomes will explode the budget deficit) and earnest efforts to find compromise... none of these things matter.

What's a Democrat to do?

Memo to America: Your Taxes Have Been Cut
The NYTimes notes that most Americans wrongly believe their federal taxes have gone up. In fact, taxes have been cut for 95% of the country. One reason why Democrats have failed to capitalize on this fact - apart from our general inability to hammer away at politically popular talking points the way Republicans do - is that the tax cut was meant to go mostly unnoticed. Why? Because it would be more effective that way. That's right: faced with the choice of instituting a tax cut that would be obvious and celebrated, or hidden and more effective, President Obama chose against political expedience and took the route that had the better chance of helping the economy.

Faced with evidence that people were more likely to save than spend the tax rebate checks they received during the Bush administration, the Obama administration decided to take a different tack: it arranged for less tax money to be withheld from people’s paychecks.

They reasoned that people would be more likely to spend a small, recurring extra bit of money that they might not even notice, and that the quicker the money was spent, the faster it would cycle through the economy.

Economists are still measuring how stimulative the tax cut was. But the hard-to-notice part has succeeded wildly. In a recent interview, President Obama said that structuring the tax cuts so that a little more money showed up regularly in people’s paychecks “was the right thing to do economically, but politically it meant that nobody knew that they were getting a tax cut.”

Patriotism
Harry Potter-style

I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism.

That's author JK Rowling on why she stays in Britain even though she could move elsewhere and pay a much lower tax rate.

Could this be a key difference between liberals and conservatives? Liberals can imagine themselves in trouble and needing help; conservatives can imagine themselves on easy street and not wanting to be bothered.

Wrapped in Plastic
This is pretty remarkable. In Washington, D.C. a new tax on plastic bags has had a much bigger impact than expected:

The District’s 5-cent bag tax, which started in January 2010, netted approximately $150,000 during its first month of enactment. According to the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue, only 3 million bags were issued in the month of January compared to 2009’s 22.5 million bags per month average, and it appears that the new law DC shoppers has been successful in altering shopping bag habits faster than was expected.

22 million down to 3 million in just one month? I have been reading about the success of little "nudges" like this in a book called, well, Nudge. Obviously we'd all like to think we'd do the right thing even without the incentive of a nickel. Would it work on me? I don't know. Currently my sadly immense plastic bag consumption can be attributed to 3 things:

1) I go to the grocery store all the time - every day in some stretches (I eat less, and more responsibly, when I don't buy a weeks' worth of food at a time) - and usually when I'm on the way home from somewhere else. So, I almost never remember to put my cloth bag in the car.

2) My newspaper subscription, which generates a bag, and sometimes two, every single day. They don't even bother trying to deliver it bagless anymore, even on perfectly clear sunny days. I love getting the paper every morning. Something about it just makes me feel good. But it's a pointless habit, right? That stuff is pretty much all online. I've been meaning to scale my subscription down to weekends, when I really have the time to read it through, and would still get the coupons and Sunday puzzles I put to good use. For some reason haven't made myself follow through yet.

3) Even though I don't remember my cloth bag often enough, I occasionally remember to put my stash of plastic in the car and take it to the recycling bin. Now that plastic bags can be recycled, it makes me feel (foolishly) less wasteful for using them in the first place.

Would a .05-cent/bag tax put me over the edge and make me call the newspaper and get better about remembering my cloth bags? I dunno. Would it help you? Or do you need help?