The White House called it, with deceptive simplicity, the American Jobs Plan. But the comparison, by impact, is actually meant to be with great turning points, such as Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.
Joe Biden’s plan for relaunching American infrastructure – which has the ambition to fight economic and social plagues and project the country into the future – will be unveiled in the evening in the halls of a popular carpenters union training center in Pittsburgh. The curtain was raised on the first, crucial phase: the expenditure of two thousand of the perhaps four thousand billion that in all intends to mobilize, summarized in the President’s speech and in 25 pages released by the administration full of interventions on old and new borders. On transport as well as on eliminating lead from aqueducts. On strengthening broadband for Internet access. And on the production and distribution of ever cleaner electricity. Again, on huge investments in research and development, in industrial innovation starting with semiconductors.
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The increase in taxes
The high cost of the project immediately refers to historical predecessors: the two trillion billions expenditure is expected in eight years. To finance it, however, it will require a full 15 years of corporate tax hikes, in particular an increase in the current rate to 21% to 28%, albeit less than the 35% of the pre-Trump era. Taxes on corporate profits generated abroad will also be raised: the minimum tax is doubled to 21% and applied on profits generated in each foreign country to avoid resorting to tax havens. Biden’s bet is that Americans today are willing to give unprecedented credit to the government and its ability to intervene, encouraged by the experience of its response to the pandemic and the crisis.
The goal is to create millions of jobs
Creating an opportunity for ambitious democratic strategy despite stiff opposition from Republicans and part of the business, which fears damage to competitiveness by cracking down on taxes. Additional components of the Biden plan, to be announced in the coming weeks and paid at least in part with new taxes on higher individual incomes, should raise the bar again, with greater investments in the so-called “human infrastructure”, assistance, nursery schools, education, professional retraining . The great promise, recalled by the very name of the plan, however, remains the creation of millions of solid jobs in the wake of a constructive role of the government.