Here’s how Trump can win the income inequality debate

Donald Trump was defeated by Secretary Clinton in Monday night’s debate. That is quite clear. For the first segment of the debate, Trump had the ability to turn the income-inequality argument against Secretary Clinton, but fell flat on his face.

When you take an in-depth look at Trump and Clinton’s tax plans, there is a stark contrast. Trump exempts the first $15,000 from being taxed for an individual and $30,000 for joint filers. Trump’s tax plan does a better job of helping middle-class income earners than Clinton’s. Under a Trump tax plan, middle-class income earners would only pay a 12 percent rate up to $75,000 after the standard deduction.

{mosads}Under a Clinton administration, the lowest income earners in the United States would continue to pay a 15 percent tax rate up to $37,650. Middle-class Americans would end up paying a 25 percent rate up to $91,150. Last time I checked, eliminating the income tax for the poorest Americans, while slashing the rate in half for the middle-class is far a better option to fixing income-inequality than just raising taxes on the super rich.

According to the Institution on Taxation and Economic Policy, every state in the United States is regressive. This means that the bottom 20 percent of all income earners pay a higher share of their income in taxes compared to the top one percent.

In my home State of Missouri, there have been several bills filed in the Missouri legislature with similar tax plans to the one that Mr. Trump has proposed. Some of the bills that were worked on included eliminating the income tax for people making less than $15,000. The Republicans have a super majority in the Missouri house and senate.

During one of the committee hearings on one of these bills in 2015, two African-American Democrats voted in favor of this tax cut proposal.They believed it benefited the poorest Missouri taxpayers the most. If Mr. Trump’s tax plan were ever to be implemented, nearly 30 percent of Missouri taxpayers would never pay federal income tax. The poorest Americans would be getting a tax break and not the top one percent.

Senator Sanders offered a progressive ideology of dealing with income-inequality during the primary season. Raising taxes on the top one percent and redistributing it to others just does not fix the problem. If you truly want to eliminate income-inequality in the United States, the benefits for the top one percent need to be eliminated and the taxes need to be slashed for the lowest income earners.

I don’t mind keeping the tax rates the same for the richest one percent of Americans right now. Although, I think a 39.6 percent tax rate is too high. I hope progressives and conservatives can have a structured debate on how to fix the income-inequality problem we face in America. Income-inequality grew under George W. Bush, but has only gotten worse under President Obama. Neither tax policy these two presidents implemented fixed the problem.

The Trump campaign only has a few more weeks to use the argument that his tax policy will help fix income-inequality in America. The clock is ticking and time is winding down for the debate to shift into Trump’s favor. If I were Donald Trump, I’d make sure I hit on this in the next debate. Secretary Clinton is correct that trickle down economics does not work. If working class America pays attention to tax policy, they’d know that Trump favors the poor and middle-class over Secretary Clinton’s.

Ken Newhouse is a graduate student at Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA.