Damon Silvers is the policy director and special counsel of the AFL-CIO. 

The psychology of Mitt Romney's apparent attack on 47 percent of Americans is fascinating. It’s all about the excuses the very rich make up to cover for their refusal to bear their fair share of the costs of maintaining civilization. Because, of course, the poor actually pay a higher share of their income in taxes than people like Romney do, it's just they don’t pay it in federal income tax. The poorest 20 percent of America pays 23 percent of their income in state and federal taxes—in payroll taxes, sales taxes and other excise taxes and state income taxes. As we know, in the one year Romney has disclosed, he paid just under 14 percent in federal taxes, almost all of his income was not subject to payroll tax, and his state income tax bill was likely far less than 8 percent of his income.  By the way, in 2011, 13,000 families in the top 1 percent of income paid no federal income tax.

America’s workers are existing on the edge of financial disaster: 40 percent say they live paycheck to paycheck, according to a recent CareerBuilder survey. Worse, 37 percent say they sometimes need to rely on the next payday to make ends meet. Although the percentage of those literally living for payday has decreased from 42 percent in 2011 and from 46 percent in 2008, the height of the recession, this is not good news.

In addition, the survey found:

There are responsible tax cuts—and then there are tax giveaways for the already really rich.

In discussions over extending the Bush tax cuts, Republicans propose massive tax giveaways for the wealthy while the middle- and lower-income families would pay slightly more, according to a new analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).

When we talk about letting the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire, or asking the wealthy to pay more, it’s often described in terms of “tax fairness” and “paying their fair share.” And indeed that's a big part of it. But there is more to it than that. As Eduardo Porter writes in The New York Times today, the math works, too.

First, multimillionaire Mitt Romney told a group of jobless workers he’s also “unemployed.”

Next, Romney thought there was no problem in stating publicly that he likes to “fire people.”

Is it patriotic to ship America’s jobs overseas? President Obama doesn’t think so. He’s right, of course. We live in a globally connected world, but let’s face it: Home-grown corporations must first focus on their own back yards—a novel concept all to many, it seems.