Penn’s Wharton School Disses Alumnus Trump for Joe Biden’s Economic Plan

Mary Trump in her book about her uncle, Donald Trump, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” claims that Trump paid a proxy to take the SAT for him. “The high score the proxy earned for him, Ms. Trump adds, helped the young Mr. Trump to later gain admittance as an undergraduate to the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Wharton business school.”

At least half a dozen professors at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School have called on the University of Pennsylvania to investigate an allegation that Donald Trump paid another person to take the SAT exam on his behalf and was therefore fraudulently admitted to Wharton. Wharton Profs Demand Probe Of Claim That Trump Cheated On The SAT:

The professors—all of whom teach ethics at Wharton—believe the university should revoke Trump’s 1968 undergraduate business degree if a probe can confirm the claim originally made by his niece in her best-selling, tell-all memoir published last month.

“When a student gains admission by fraudulent means, it undermines the integrity of our academic standards and fairness of our admissions process,” the professors wrote in a letter to Penn President Amy Gutmann. “Concerns about cheating are exacerbated when the alleged perpetrator is a public figure in high office. Failing to investigate an allegation of fraud at such a level broadcasts to prospective students and the world at large that the playing field is not equal, that our degrees can be bought, and that subsequent fame, wealth, and political status will excuse past misconduct.”

The University has since rejected their request. Provost Wendell Pritchett responded to the professors on behalf of Gutmann. “We certainly share your concerns about these allegations and the integrity of our admissions process,” Pritchett wrote. “However, as you suggest in your message, we have determined that this situation occurred too far in the past to make a useful or probative factual inquiry possible. If new evidence surfaces to substantiate the claim in the future, we will continue to be open to investigating it.”

Sounds a lot like excusing George W. Bush’s “youthful indiscretions” to me. The real reason is that if Penn investigated Donald Trump for this, it would open the door to investigating all those other “legacy” rich kids who cheated or bought their way into Wharton School with their daddy’s influence and money. Oh, we don’t want to open that can of worms!

So this is probably the best that we can hope for from the prestigious Wharton School. CBS News reports,
Trump alma mater says Biden plan would lead to more economic growth
:

Joe Biden’s economic proposals would create a faster growing economy, higher wages for American workers and reduce the debt compared to where the U.S. is headed under President Donald Trump, according to new analysis from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

That conclusion could give a further boost to the Democratic presidential candidate, who has generally led Mr. Trump in the polls but who often trails the president on the issue of the economy.

See: Democrats Have Always Been Better For The Economy … Always.

The former vice president’s plans would also significantly increase government spending and raise taxes, though mostly on higher-income Americans, the analysis found. In all, Biden would boost government spending by $5.4 trillion in the next 10 years, which is a significant increase.

But the analysis, published on Monday, found that Biden’s proposals on education, infrastructure and health care would largely pay for themselves. That would be in part by raising taxes, but also by boosting wages and lowering health care costs.

“If you got the U.S. on this path, you would lower the debt and raise GDP,” said Richard Prisinzano, the director of policy analysis at the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a nonpartisan group at the top business school. “It is productive spending that Mr. Biden is proposing.”

Wharton’s analysis was compiled over the past few weeks, and does not include Biden’s recent proposal to penalize, through higher taxes, companies that move jobs and manufacturing overseas. Penn Wharton could not do a similar analysis for Mr. Trump, according to Prisinzano, because the Republican incumbent hasn’t offered any plans for his second term with enough detail to do an analysis.

But Wharton school researchers were able to compare Biden’s proposals to where the Congressional Budget Office believes the economy will be in a decade with Mr. Trump’s current plans, including the 2017 tax cuts, in place.

To be clear, the U.S. national debt would rise dramatically, ballooning by more than $13 trillion under both Mr. Trump’s current plans and Biden’s proposals.

But after 10 years, Penn Wharton found that Biden’s plan, which includes trillions in additional spending, would only increase the national debt by roughly $300 billion more than Mr. Trump’s. And after two decades, Biden’s plan would result in a federal debt 2% lower than under Mr. Trump’s governance.

Biden closes some of that gap by raising taxes. Wharton found that Biden’s plan would add nearly $3.4 billion in new federal levies in the decade after he is elected, but most of those costs, both direct and indirect, would be paid by people with incomes of $400,000 or above, Wharton found.

Wharton estimated that Biden would increase the effective federal income tax rate on the nation’s richest 0.1% of individuals in 2021 to 43%, nearly 13 percentage points higher than where it is today. The tax rate on the average American would basically be the same as it is today — up 0.4 percentage points to just over 17% — and down from where it was under President Obama.

You know what’s coming next: higher taxes on corporations and America’s super-wealthy Plutocrats? “Whaaa! That’s socialism!” (These “malefactors of great wealth” (T.R.)  have been saying this stupid shit forever). The Washington Post editorializes, Biden’s tax plan isn’t socialism. It just undoes the GOP’s indefensible giveaways.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has been pretty clear about where taxes on upper-income Americans and corporations are headed if he’s elected: up. Highlights of his plan include an increase in the top marginal rate, and a limit on deductions for those earning more than $400,000 per year; an end to the favorable “step-up” treatment of inherited financial assets; an increase in the top corporate tax rate from 21 to 28 percent, with a minimum of 15 percent for large companies; and imposing Social Security taxes on wage income above $400,000.

Taken together, Mr. Biden’s plans would raise about $3.8 trillion over 10 years, with 72 percent of that coming from the top 1 percent of earners, according to an analysis by the Tax Foundation. Contrary to much Republican rhetoric, Mr. Biden’s proposals represent not confiscatory socialism but an effort to undo the least defensible giveaways in the 2017 tax cuts passed by a GOP Congress and signed by President Trump, while preserving parts of that law that broadened the tax base.

Last Wednesday, Mr. Biden added additional teeth — and complexity — to his corporate tax plans, targeting the perennial issue of “offshoring” of U.S. jobs by multinationals. During a campaign stop in Michigan, he specified that his proposed minimum tax on the foreign profits of U.S.-based companies would eliminate an automatic exclusion worth 10 percent of assets, and apply on a country-by-country basis, in effect making firms pay more to the United States on what they earn in low-tax countries such as Ireland. In addition, he would apply a top corporate rate of 30.8 percent on earnings from products U.S. companies make abroad and sell in the United States — coupled with a 10 percent tax credit for investments that reopen closed plants or “reshore” jobs from abroad.

The political benefits for Mr. Biden of this message, delivered in the Midwest, are clear enough. The benefits for the economy are more mixed, as is often the case with policies that seek to direct capital from one potential investment to another. It makes sense to reduce artificial tax advantages in the 2017 tax bill for operating, or parking intellectual property, in tax havens abroad. Mr. Biden’s proposed surtax on foreign manufacturing, however, seems to deny the reality of global supply chains. Americans certainly wouldn’t like it if, say, Germany penalized BMW for exporting cars from South Carolina. The surtax applies to U.S.-owned call centers or services overseas “where jobs could have been located in the United States.” Meeting that amorphous standard will surely create jobs for lawyers and accountants. So will qualifying for the job-retention tax credit; to the extent companies succeed, the proposal narrows the corporate tax base Mr. Biden elsewhere seeks to broaden.

I’m certain that economists and tax experts can figure this out far better than the editors of The Post, who are only interested in protecting their corporate tax bottom line.

Mr. Biden is right to present alternatives to Mr. Trump’s economic bromides. He is also right to advocate maximum job creation in the United States. The best way to achieve the latter goal, though, is to ensure the United States is a desirable place to invest — generally. Higher business taxes can be compatible with that goal, as long as the rules are clear and consistent.

Agreed.




1 thought on “Penn’s Wharton School Disses Alumnus Trump for Joe Biden’s Economic Plan”

  1. POLITICO’s headline says it all: “Trump hails ‘manufacturing miracle’ as factories bleed jobs”, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/16/trump-manufacturing-jobs-record-415588

    Four years after he won the Midwest by vowing to revitalize the U.S. manufacturing workforce, President Donald Trump is campaigning for reelection on a job well done. The numbers tell a different story. [He’s lying.]

    Trump’s anti-trade agenda and a pandemic-induced recession have combined to shutter factories and accelerate decades-old trends toward automation, eliminating hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs, many for good, including in the Rust Belt states he needs to win in November.

    [T]he White House’s trade wars kicked the sector into another slump in 2019, with Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Pennsylvania facing declines or plateaus in manufacturing employment even back in February — well before Covid-19 forced layoffs at dozens of plants. As of July — the most recent month for which data is available — each state is down between 20,000 and 40,000 workers from prepandemic levels.

    Michigan was down some 66,500 manufacturing workers in July 2020 from July 2019 — and the general trend, even before Covid-19, was down as well. There were 10,200 fewer manufacturing workers in the state in February 2020 than there were in February 2019.

    Ohio was down 48,000 manufacturing workers in July from last year. Pre-pandemic, it had lost 2,200 workers in February from last year.

    “Trump has been all in on this huge resurgence of manufacturing employment, and that has not materialized,” said Mark Muro, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “Productivity-enhancing technology, such as robotics, and then international competition: To me, that’s a recipe for continued downward pressure on employment. I don’t think mass employment is likely to return.”

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