For all of McCain & Palin’s bluster about Obama raising “your” taxes, the proposals are pretty clear: Obama is proposing hefty cuts to the middle class which taper off as you reach $250,000 a year; he then starts raising taxes, those hikes becoming notable at the half-million mark and above. McCain, in contrast, wants cuts for everyone but gives the lion’s share to the wealthiest Americans. His cuts for lower and middle class Americans ($0 to $100,000) are less than Obama’s. Where Obama wants to tax wealthy people, McCain wants to give them yet another tax cut, and reserves the biggest windfalls for the richest people.

In that sense, their plans are diametrically opposed: Obama proposes a 5.3% cut for the poorest Americans which reduces to 0% around a quarter of a million dollars, then rises to an almost 8% rise for multi-millionaires; McCain gives the poorest Americans a paltry 0.2% tax cut which gradually increases with income until you see the wealthiest getting a 3% cut.

So the questions become simply: (a) should we raise taxes for rich people? and (b) should we lower taxes for the middle and lower classes?

Yes, there is a serious economic downturn. But that does not change the fact that if a person is making a million dollars a year, they are making a million dollars a year; if their income is still so high, then obviously the downturn has not made them poor yet. If the bad economy knocks you down into the middle class, then Obama has bigger cuts waiting for you there–this is a self-correcting mechanism. But if you’re still making lots of money, then the downturn only helps you, as your relative purchasing power has become stronger. If you could afford those tax hikes last year, you can afford them this year.

I have always believed in bottom-up economics. Top-down is ludicrously flawed, because the money tends to stay at the top. Money tends to circulate up, not down, as those who have money use it to keep it and to continue taking it from people with less money. Bottom-up makes sense as a system of circulation and economic health because people at the bottom can’t hoard money like people at the top can; people with little money usually have to spend it, else have it work for the local economy while they wait to spend it.

Then there is the cumulative view: over the past 30 years, taxes for wealthy people have been slashed, while the middle class has gotten far, far less–and possibly is paying more for less by this point. Obama’s plan works toward coming closer to a balance.

The plan Obama proposes makes sense on just about every level–it is less of a burden on the deficit and debt than McCain’s plan, stands to jump-start the economy (hopefully along with minimum wage increases and other legislation which corrects past imbalance) by getting money back into circulation, and is far more fair and even-handed than the “fair” tax cuts for the rich that Bush and the GOP used to help wreck the economy in the first place.