Writer:  Darren Ng

Op-Ed

Can Tax Cuts Help Improve the American Economy?

In this paper, I intend to pursue a discussion which fundamentally affirms the relative benefits of Senator Barack Obama’s plan to increase taxes, in view of the telling need to rescue the American economy, against the disadvantages of Senator John McCain’s proposal to push for tax reductions. I intend to take cue from the manner by which these two senators have capitalized on the current state of the American economy to proffer their respective views on the economy. Surely, the American people are a witness to the epic battle between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, especially in respect to the contrasting stance they took on thorny issue of tax levies; i.e., while Senator Obama has staunchly supported the concept of keeping the American economy afloat through a tax increase scheme, McCain has, on the other hand, espoused the more populist tax-reduction approach. Through this brief paper, I intend to prove that Senator Obama’s proposal to relatively increase taxes is what the American society needs right now, so as to restore the people’s confidence in the state of the economy.

I must admit that I am hardly surprised at all to see that Senator McCain’s proposal for tax cuts has been gleefully welcomed by a majority of the Americans, who feel that they are to become the direct beneficiaries of such a program. As far as McCain himself is concerned, he believes that by lowering taxes, he would be able to stimulate the economic trends of the country. In an article by a political reporter named Abdon Pallasch, she reports that according to Douglas Holz-Eakin, adviser to the McCain camp, the latter’s proposed tax policy is essentially a “job-first plan that keeps small businesses in the game” (SunTimes). But what McCain’s tax reduction scheme unfortunately undermines is no less than the wellbeing of the already battered American economy. I have reasons to believe McCain’s tax-cut scheme would end up benefiting the rich enterprises with large sum of money inasmuch as tax cuts would give them more money to invest more on than place their assets on commodity consumption and/or providing services. There is only a need to show why and how.

In order to explain why tax cuts would most probably not yield considerable benefits for the American economy, I find it appropriate to cite the principles which enable economist to measure the economic growth of a given country. Under normal circumstances, a country’s economy is measured by rate of its Gross Domestic Product – “the goods and services produced and consumed in the private, public, domestic and international sectors of the economy” (Frumkin 114).  And what determines the real expansion of GDP, according to The World Book Encyclopedia, can be summed in the following: private consumption, investment expenditures, government purchases and total value of exports. Put in other words, personal consumption and expenditures – i.e., for food, clothing, cars and household appliances – contribute directly to a given economy. Second, the expenditures of business enterprises, specifically when they spend for buildings, machineries and tools, also keep the economy robust. Third, the government’s public spending relative to education, healthcare or social services is also crucial. And last, the summary cost of a country’s export is likewise constitutive of real GDP growth and value (WBE 382).

I feel the need to further underscore the fact that financial investments – i.e., those investments placed in bonds, stocks or trust funds – by big businesses do not translate to real GDP growth rate and value. This is because they do not actually fall into the category of goods or services produced by a country. This is where I believe tax cut proposals fall short of stimulating a given economy. Since tax cuts proposals yield greater returns for big business than they do for average American families, then it is highly likely that these tax benefits shall be translated to financial investments, which in turn would leave the GDP growth as is. The academic entry from The World Book Encyclopedia is very crystal about the fact that “consumption” is a direct determinant of GDP growth. Without it, there can be no driving force to get the economy back in shape from a serious slump.  In fact, according to Kogan Richard – a critic of tax-reduction schemes – since “the economy expands so much as a result of tax cuts that it produces the same level of revenue as it would have without the tax cuts” (Kogan), then there is no point at going through the risky business of tax cuts that can leave the economy scathed from yet another crisis. And if tax cuts would not translate to real GDP growth, then we have all the more reasons to believe that the converse holds true – i.e., that increasing taxes can in fact stimulate the American economy; specifically, a relative increase in tax cuts can provide greater stimulus not only for private consumption, but even more so for public spending.

To this end, it would be insightful to look at the wisdom of Senator Obama’s economic roadmap. On the one hand, raising taxes may not look rosy for average Americans; but it certainly would give big corporations more reasons to spend for projects that may qualify them for tax incentives. This usually happens when they contribute a part of their revenues to funding certain projects, say construction of roads and schools, which would benefit the people in the long run. In the process, they could have these expenses lined up for tax exemptions. The point here is that increasing taxes would encourage, if not force big businesses to spend for goods and services. When they are spared from taxes, they would tend to keep their resources, and have them re-diverted to non-measurable financial investments. On the other hand, increasing taxes would also stimulate public spending – i.e., those types of spending entered into by the government on behalf of the people. This is because the continued inflow of tax levies would ensure that the greater American public would benefit from the government’s provision of basic services such as education, healthcare, and social services, among many notable others.

Now, since it would appear that Obama’s tax increase would benefit the American economy by way of stimulating large-scale private and public spending, I wish to therefore propose that, in order that the plan may not hurt average Americans, the government under the leadership of Barack Obama must implement a discriminate tax increase scheme. This means those big enterprises, as well as those who belong to the upper classes of the American society, are the ones to be levied with more taxes in the next few years. This is certainly far from being unfair. Instead, it would ensure that those who are capable of spending for goods and services are given welcome avenues to jumpstart the growth of the GDP.

For such reasons, I wish to briefly conclude that Obama’s tax plan – which is to increase taxes for the rich, and keep them the same for the rest – is the most viable solution for our battered economy right now. With a significant increase in taxation, the government can inspire large-scale spending so as to keep the economy afloat. Conversely, I strongly disagree in McCain’s tax cuts, as his proposal cannot promise to stimulate private or public spending on goods and services. In the final analysis, I find it imperative to remind the ever passionate Senator McCain of the fact that taxes constitute the backbone of the great American economy.