So let's start today with some policy analysis. Nothing, nothing more exciting than that for sure.
But this is actually very interesting. We've talked before. In fact, we spoke earlier on
the bonus show yesterday about this. But I do want to do a deeper dove on it because it's
very important. A conservative think tank did an analysis of Joe Biden's tax plan and confirmed
that the tax increases will go almost exclusively to the very rich and will be stimulative to the
economy overall. And this is so wild because it's so obvious when you look at Joe Biden's tax plan
that the tax hikes go overwhelmingly to the top five and one percent. And yet Republicans
and Trump not only have been lying about what's in the plan, they lie about the impact that the
plan will have. So let's set it up and go through it piece by piece. When Donald Trump was running
for president back in 2015, 2016 and proposed his tax plan, nonpartisan groups looked at it and they
said this is not going to stimulate the economy and it will blow up the deficit. And of course,
every time Donald Trump was asked about it, when Trump's advisers were asked about it, they would
say, I don't know what they're not calculating. Is that the tax plan will grow the economy so much
that we will get new tax revenue. So even though it might in the short term look like it increases
the deficit, the growth aspect will weigh override that and we're going to get more tax
revenue and the economy will grow in all this different stuff. The deficit will actually go
down. We knew it wouldn't happen at the time and it hasn't happened. Donald Trump gave tax cuts to
the rich. The deficit exploded. The growth hasn't happened. And this is before. Corona virus. Yes,
Corona virus has thrown a monkey wrench into the entire thing. But even pre coronavirus,
it wasn't happening. So Joe Biden puts out a tax plan and the tax plan includes a number of
different provisions, higher taxes for the very rich. He would uncap Social Security taxes beyond
four hundred thousand dollars in annual income, huge revenue increase. He would tax capital gains
as ordinary income in certain cases for certain people earning over a million dollars a year. He
would eliminate the stepped up basis loophole. I don't have to explain each item. But the point is
Joe Biden puts out a specific tax plan. We look at it and it's unremarkable, given our understanding
of economics, that Joe Biden's tax plan would work perfectly reasonably if indeed it is made law.
Donald Trump has been hammering on Biden's tax plan by saying things like he will quadruple your
taxes, mathematical impossibility if you already pay 35 percent. How do you quadruple? That doesn't
make any sense. Trump says under Biden's tax plan, your Forell one case would implode. We would have
a recession. We would have a depression. All of that different stuff. And Donald Trump has been
saying Biden will raise your taxes if you are in the middle class. If you're a middle class
American, Joe Biden will raise your taxes. Biden, he clearly has said he wouldn't do it. OK, now,
financial firms like Goldman Sachs have already looked at the plan and they've confirmed what any
reasonable person would realize when looking at the plan and understanding history, which is that
Joe Biden's tax plan would likely grow the economy. We know the economy tends to do better
under Democratic presidents. We can debate why. We can debate whether it does better enough. But the
reality is any indicator you look at inflation, stock market, job creation, unemployment,
GDP growth. Historically, they do better under Democratic presidents. OK, but now incomes,
the right wing think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. This is, again, a right wing think
tank. They've analyzed the plan and they agree that no one, almost all of the tax increases that
Joe Biden proposes go to the richest five percent of households. And that Joe Biden's tax plan will
reduce taxes for the bottom 95 percent of Howth households. So top five percent, your taxes go up.
Bottom 95 percent taxes go down. Biden's tax plan, according to the right wing think tank AEI,
will raise federal revenue by nearly three trillion dollars over the next decade. It
would be deficit negative. And then here is the real kicker. All of this stuff Biden is
going to do. Trump says it will destroy the economy. Okay. All of it over 10 years will
lower GDP. Get ready for this by zero point one six percent. OK. That's essentially nothing.
Zero point one six percent decrease the GDP over a decade. But and here's the really amazing thing.
Demand side stimulus works, my friends. Biden's plan is going to take some of that tax money and
spend it on social investments, which will increase economic growth. So in other words.
The direct impact of Biden's tax plan is an almost zero decrease of GDP of point one six percent over
10 years. But it will create growth. This is what Trump claimed his plan would do, even though it
wouldn't. Biden's plan would create growth such that new tax revenues would exceed the cost.
And we are expecting that GDP would actually increase more quickly thanks to this plan.
This is exactly what Donald Trump claimed his plan would do. It didn't. It was never going
to. But even a right wing think tank acknowledges that it is exactly what Joe Biden's plan would do.
We are in bizarro world with Republican voters continuing to fall for Trump's claims that Biden
will be bad for the economy. That Biden will tax the middle class more. He won't. And by the way,
even if you want to argue that this will be bad for the rich, because the rich will have to pay
more taxes on investment income and pay higher estate taxes in the long run, this is probably
good for the rich as well, because when you stimulate demand side in the middle class and
lower middle class, when you give tax cuts to lower income people who will spend the money,
where are they going to spend it? Those people are going to go and spend the money at
businesses owned by the rich. So understand that by. By giving the middle class a tax cut,
you help the rich. By funding government programs properly, people will be able to get vital
services and better serve the business interests of the rich. And every time we dig into the
details, this is what we find. And this is nothing new. We've gone through this routine analyzing
Trump's tax plan. Barack Obama's tax plan, George W. Bush's tax. But this goes back as long
as we've been doing this, the political season changes. But understanding the fundamentals of
supposed supply side economics, demand side stimulus, we always end up in the
same place. And even the right wing think tank here, AEI American Enterprise Institute,
agrees that that would indeed be the case. Very interesting, but not altogether surprising.