More Taxes ?!
James Malone
To combat the growing budget deficit, and also to quell the calls that the government is leading the country off a cliff, President Obama has proposed a new tax increase on individuals who make more than $1 million a year.
In detail, the plan calls for tax increases on those who derive their million-dollar salaries from stock market profits. Currently these individuals pay a 15 percent tax on profits, which is less than half of what they would pay if their income was treated like income not made from the stock market. The new rate is expected to rise to about 25 percent.
Not everyone has taken kindly to the president’s call for tax increases, though.
Gregory Pratt, a professor of economics at MCC, said that he thinks this is a bad proposal for the country.
“Taxing the income of the most productive people of the country will do nothing to help the country grow its economy or become more economically efficient,” he said.
Brian Dille, professor of political science, takes a different perspective.
He said that this is a decent proposal that will lower the deficit without hurting the country’s jobs deficit.
“As observable from the economic growth of the 1990s, the moderate tax increases. Clinton initiative did nothing to hurt the economy. They helped close the deficit gap and were part of a decade of economic growth,” Dille said.
“I would also like to see some kind of grand compromise too,” Dille said. “Slightly higher rate for millionaires is not the only thing that needs to be done to close the deficit; there needs to be structural reform to entitlement systems that will help prevent the budget’s total collapse.”
However, both do agree that the possibility of the tax plan becoming law is slight.
“Due to the constraint and the bureaucratic nature of the Congress, the idea of the president’s proposal passing both the Senate and the House is slim,” Pratts said.
“If this were a different president, or at least a president who seemed to be in control, I could be wrong; a president who had more control of the Congress, or at least his own party, could get more of his proposal to become law,” Dille said. “There is just too many fractions with both parties, and President Obama just seems unable – or maybe, unwilling – to control both.”
One student thinks that no matter what happens, both parties are not looking out for him.
“It just seems that no one seems to be out for me. They both (Republicans and Democrats) seem to be just about supporting their donors and the well-connected,” Eduardo Estrada, student and employee at a local car shop, said.
