title:  Mike Huckabee Thinks Poor Americans Benefit From Treating Them Like We ‘Train Dogs’ (VIDEO)
text: Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, in predictable conservative fashion, has just said something extremely offensive about people who aren t wealthy white men like him.During Thursday night s GOP undercard debate, Huckabee stated that it was only  common sense  to treat poor people with the same punishment/reward techniques that people use to  train dogs  if we want to improve the economy. Huckabee claimed that because  the tax system punishes them,  the current system made it impossible for Americans to really get ahead. He said: If you work really hard and you start moving up the economic ladder, you get bumped into a different tax bracket so the government thinks it deserves more of your hard work than you do. It s time for something big. As an alternative, the former governor of Arkansas suggested the  Fair Tax  plan, which would enforce a national flat sales tax of 10 percent. It s built on the common sense with which we raised our kids and train dogs. You reward behavior you want more of. And you punish behavior you want less of. That s how I raise kids, it s how I trained our dogs. And folks, it s not that difficult. Even if you remove all offensiveness and privilege from Huckabee s suggestion that poor taxpayers should be treated with the same systems we use to train our pet dogs, Huckabee s 10 percent tax suggestion is still an awful one. Last year, the Tax Policy Center put the theory to the test and determined that Huckabee s proposed alternative would actually be more detrimental and punish the nation s poorest Americans (no surprise there). The Tax Policy Center observed: The problem is that very high-income households spend only a fraction of their income, while low- and middle-income people spend all or most of what they make. A sales tax, by design, exempts a large share of income at the top. If it includes a prebate to protect people at the bottom and doesn t add to the deficit, then it must raise taxes on people in the middle. Here s the debate footage where Huckabee talks about treating poor people like dogs:Huckabee s attitude toward poor people echoes the rest of the GOP s line of thinking. Struggling Americans are nothing to the Republican Party, and are often looked over and cast aside. If you learned anything from last night s Republican presidential debate, it s that the GOP candidates only have certain interests at heart: their own.Featured image is a screenshot