Unsurprisingly, a Wall Street Journal opinion writer thinks poor people don’t need a raise. He says that if you factor in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), *technically* poor people are already making $9 an hour.

Couple things:

1. When you’re poor, you can’t pay the electric company by saying, “Well, in April of next year I’ll get a sweet tax return check!” When you are poor, you need money up front, in your bank account, every two weeks. The phrase “living paycheck to paycheck” comes to mind. When you’re not poor, it’s easy to wait a few months for the government to pay you back for the money they borrowed. A few thousand bucks at tax return time? Sweet. But poor people don’t have the luxury of waiting for a once-yearly bump to their income.
2. Poor people do not necessarily have access to someone who can do their taxes. If you’re rich, you can pay a high-level tax professional to comb over your receipts and help you write off $77,000 in horse expenses (remember Mitt Romney, guys? He got $77k in tax breaks for his wife’s horse. True story). That tax person can also show you how to put your money into bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands so that you don’t have to pay taxes on it at all. America!
   
   But these tax guys charge a lot. Last year, my boss’s sister (an accountant) did my taxes for me, and at the “family and friends” rate, I still paid over $100. Poor families cannot afford $100 to *possibly* find more tax breaks they’re entitled to. I’m going to have to plead ignorance on one point: I do not know if the 1040 EZ includes the EITC, or if you have to file differently to get it. Google is pulling up lots of documentation on taxes that I can barely comprehend. (ETA: Readers have helpfully pointed out that if you file the 1040EZ with Turbotax, you can apply for the EITC. But there are a lot of exceptions - you can’t get it if anyone else lists you as a dependent, for instance. Basically, it’s not an automatic part of your tax return; it’s something you have to know about when you file your taxes.) But the point still stands that many poor people miss out on tax breaks because they don’t know about them. That was the one - ONE - advantage of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan: it would have simplified the tax code. Right now, tax knowledge is a real ivory tower thing. Saying “But poor people already get a tax credit that increases their yearly salary” is ignorant of that fact.
3. Fuck you, buddy. Just fuck you. Fuck you and your “well technically poor people are already coddled with $9 an hour salaries!” bullshit. Fuck you and your tax code shit. People deserve $9 an hour. Maybe more than that. $9 an hour per paycheck, not per year. Fuck you.