Opinion Analysis by Tala Karkanawi, Staff Writer

November 12th, 2020

To read part 1 on healthcare click here

To read part 2 on foreign policies click here

The US elections have historically played a critical role in the formation of multiple possible changes affecting the global arena across borders. With the US being one of the powerful leading countries of the world, who's hands the leadership lies in matters to a grand portion of us global citizens. The election raises a heavy load of queries for the American citizens questioning their decisions and whether the next four years will be a mess or not. Both candidates have placed their economic plan on display for the voters to compare.

Presidential candidate Joe Biden and his Democratic party, especially the ones within the US media industry, have been trying to convince us that Joe Biden’s economic recovery after the Bush administration with Obama led the US out of a disastrous recession. That is true, Biden’s economic recovery plan did in fact last for eight years, and by the end of his and Obama’s tenure, the US was still recovering, possibly the slowest economic recovery in American history. 

 Donald Trump was then elected president. His effort to reduce taxes on American businesses, in addition to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, and his power and willingness to fight for the interests of the citizens in international trade has led to the U.S. economy to enhance in the past 4 years immensely.

From a wider perspective, the difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s economic policies are vast. Trump offers a Republican-friendly style of cutting down taxes and decreases regulations, while Joe Biden offers a Democratic style of taxing the rich and wealthy while using the money to spend on infrastructure and other potential projects. What is common between them is their unity in making sure more Americans are hired in the US, rather than offshoring the jobs to other countries. However, Joe Biden’s take on the economy will only hurt American businesses. 

Biden and his campaign clearly stated how they would want to raise the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21% and the top marginal income tax on individuals would go from 37% to 39.6%. Increasing the tax on the rich and wealthy would lead to consequences that would prevent new CEO’s to form their start-ups, and harm the ability of successful CEO’s to form new businesses. Biden has proposed to expand access to different aspects of the country using the money from the raised taxes and focus on infrastructure projects. however, the cost to fund universal healthcare, decrease the national debt, and launch a Green new deal, will be tolerated by the upper class, the middle class, and the lower class, not just the wealthy. 

Liberal ideologies and mind-sets are desperate in wanting to implement the so called American dream by applying a socialist economic plan of equalizing everyone like the Nordic nations. With unbalanced visions of magnificence, the Biden campaign and their allies believe nothing could go wrong, all while structuring a policy that is for sure oblivious to the law, and will highly raise the unintended consequences.

President Trump's approval ratings on the economic issues the country was facing, angered and frustrated the Democrats. This increased their concerns regarding whether their candidate and former vice president Joe Biden has what it takes to overtake what the Trump administration has done, in addition to the horrible economic damage the country is facing after the outbreak of COVID-19. President Trump had displayed how the 8.4% of the unemployment rate in August was ‘much better than expected’, and it decreased significantly from a 14.7% in April to a 10.2% in July

Not only did Trump help in an extremely fast economic enhancement, but by December 2019, 76% of Americans believed that the economic state of the country was highly optimistic, and the highest mark since 2001. Moreover, before the COVID-19 pandemic spread vastly, forcing businesses to close and imposed sweeping, it was said that the citizens had finally seen a growth in their wages, and a median income.  The president also mentioned how, "We've cut far more regulations by a factor of a lot than any other administration, from any other presidency.” 

Usually when leaders emerge into an office, they envision a powerful economic plan that is meant to transform the country, create wealth, and distribute it amongst their people. Some leaders prefer to shape the political and economic forces subtly as they inherit it. Joe Biden belongs there; he firmly believes that the ones deserving of his economic belief are the hard-working Americans who have suffered. However, this brought both the left and the right wingers questioning the aspects of Biden’s economic thinking. If Biden wins the election, he will face an extraordinary pressure from both political sides, as well as the pandemic’s issue that left millions unemployed, and a debt that would exceed almost 106% of the country’s GDP.  

If Biden’s plan gets implemented, and if the wealthy and the rich were not cautious enough to hide their wealth to avoid such taxes through various shell corporations, non-profits, and much more, let’s not forget one thing; the wealthiest of the wealthy will not, and could not fund the visions of the so called American dream of the left. Will all the plans of saving the economy and building new infrastructure, and much more, what the rest doesn’t know is that implementing a massive welfare state is an obligatory arrangement to transfer enormous amounts of wealth from the American middle and lower class to the central planners. 

It is great to dream, however don’t expect the rich to shoulder an entire country. If it doesn’t work in European countries or Venezuela, it won’t work in the United States of America.