Remember this graph from last summer, when we all started talking about the tax cut expiration?
Here's an update from Ezra, with the Obama/Republican deal added in.
Obama's got 156 million people splitting $214 billion in tax cuts and benefits. The GOP's got 4 million people splitting $133 billion in tax cuts. On a per-person level, the GOP's tax cuts are much larger. An individual billionaire is getting a far better deal than an individual unemployed American. And that's galling. The problem is that to take the money from the billionaire means to also take the money from the unemployed individual. Actually, taking the money from the billionaire means taking the money from a lot of unemployed Americans.
And this is what it looks like:
That's a problem. It's a big problem of fairness (pastordan via digby has some wise words about that) that's compounded by the ticking bomb it sets. The stimulus it might create, largely status quo stimulus, is going to be nullified by the spending cuts that Republicans and ConservaDems (those deficit peacocks like Kent Conrad who support this deal) demand because of what is going to become "The Obama Deficit."
All for making that big black ball at the bottom of Ezra's chart a few degrees bigger.