...That would be the far more important cliff to America's middle class, the "Welfare Cliff" as a result of which the country's workers, especially those that fall in Obama's middle class sweet spot - those tens of millions earning between $30,000 and $70,000, are perfectly agnostic if they make $29,000 or $69,000 as their net income and benefits amount to one and the same. Because being "aspirational and upwardly mobile" is so 1999, especially in a nation where it is more important to drag down the rich, than to become them. But hey - just toss this one too in the bin of perverted statist disincentives, along with all those other unintended consequences of central planning and a governmental power grab, not the least of which is the misallocation of trillions to satisfy immediate shareholder demands [2] such as dividends and buybacks in a ZIRP world, instead of actually reinvesting in capital [2], growth, and hiring of workers: those things that capitalism, at least on paper, used to be all about.
[3]
Source: Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare [4] [4]