In public, President Biden and corporate America appear to oppose each other’s interests and blame each other for the economy’s problems.
In private, Biden and the business community have been ramping up collaboration, especially on infrastructure goals.
So, part of how Biden funded his massive programs on climate change and domestic manufacturing was through a massive corporate tax increase. For one look at the impact, you can check out Amazon’s taxes paid per quarter which show a huge spike at the beginning of 2023 when the new taxes went into effect.
Corporations actually should be happy about that tax policy, since building a working economy is also to their benefit even if they have to pay some taxes to make it happen (as opposed to just putting 100% of the burden on the working class until everything at all levels collapses, which is pretty much the point we’ve reached as of today in this country). But painting Biden as a solely corporate-focused candidate of a piece with the norm for US politicians is, like a lot of emotionally-resonant criticisms of him that get repeated multiple times a day here for some perfectly organic reason, pretty much the opposite of the truth.
The increased corporate tax also helps offset the tax breaks that sub-$400k earners will see this year. He had to wait until Trump’s disproportionate tax cuts for the wealthy expired before his could go into effect. His new plan really cracks down on the top bracket and billionaires, so that’s good news for us, but not so great for executives. There’s also a 4x increase on stock buyback tax for corporations.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/03/11/fact-sheet-the-presidents-budget-cuts-taxes-for-working-families-and-makes-big-corporations-and-the-wealthy-pay-their-fair-share/
Yeah, true dat.
There’s a ton of stuff in the budget proposal for this year that goes a bunch further; I just didn’t feel like it was completely fair to claim credit for stuff that hasn’t happened yet. The corporate minimum tax is already happened. But yeah, this year’s proposal is way more.
I added another article for you to comment on Mozz. Biden claiming he was VP during the pandemic.
He was VP during a pandemic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic
See this is some solid propaganda. He clearly just fucked up because he’s old, and it’s hard to deny that that’s what happened, and it definitely makes him look silly.
It doesn’t have anything to do with his record, or what he’ll do with another 4 years, or how terrifying the prospect of another Trump presidency would be – but I think hammering on this kind of thing will be effective. I think you should focus on this kind of stuff (and, the general “the economy is so so so bad” without even referencing Biden, and just trusting that people will connect the dots). I could see that being pretty impactful – definitely more so than making up things about people walking out of his Morehouse speech, or trying to imply he’s corporate-friendly which can lead to teeing people up to come in with “well akshually” and spread information about what he actually did.
I mean the economy for everyday Americans is horrible. Biden’s fault? Not all of it. Corporate greed and late stage capitalism is also to blame.
Yeah. That’s what makes it effective.
The fact that Biden’s been busting his ass trying to strengthen unions, and increasing wages even outpacing historic inflation which he didn’t do anything to cause, is certainly relevant. But, people feel the inflation every time they go for groceries, and things are still pretty grim, so it feels really weak-sauce for someone to try to come in when you’re talking about how bad it is and say “Yeah but Biden actually has been making it better, remember back when he took office when we were bailing out literally half of the country with weekly assistance checks” and then a bunch of charts. That’s slow, complex, and abstract, whereas “Bro I just know things fuckin SUCK, I spent like $200 at Von’s and no one’s helping me out anymore” is quick, simple, and can connect emotionally.
Like I say I definitely think you should be doing more of just emphasizing how bad things are. Oh! Also you can point out that the US military and State Dept (and ICE) under Biden are often a sinister force in the world. That’s another thing that it’s gonna be pretty hard for anyone to take any kind of disagreement with, and tangentially it makes Biden look bad because it implies that he was the one that invented it all.