Blog 2: "An Economy Built to Last"

This past week, Obama addressed the nation with the State of the Union address. The theme of his speech, “An America Built to Last”, explained to all American’s what Obama’s plan was to better our country as a whole. A major part of Obama’s speech was his plan to better the American economy. The way that Obama wants to execute this plan includes bettering the American business, yet being involved with trade agreements in countries around the world and also in-sourcing jobs back to the American economy so that we can sell our products on a global scale. Some of the proposals that Obama has to support American business would be to lower tax rates for companies that do business within the United States, require companies to pay a minimum tax on overseas profits, double the tax deductions for high-tech manufacturers who make production in the United States, and provide financing help for companies who relocate to communities that lost factories during the economic recession.

From a sociological perspective, the inequality of incomes in America (the 99% vs. the 1%) is a huge social and national problem. Rather than global, but by being a national problem, we can find ways to solve it by being involved with the rest of the world. Obama has signed three trade agreements (as stated in the state of the union address.) These trade agreements are with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. The agreement with South Korea is estimated to support 70,000 American jobs, and the agreement with Colombia is suggested to increase the United States gross domestic product by $2.5 billion. A third agreement with Panama guarantees access to Panama’s $20.6 billion services market.

Obama has also proposed the “Buffett Rule” which states that if an individual makes over 1 million dollars per year, they must pay at least thirty percent in taxes. Currently, a quarter of millionaires pay a lower tax rate than millions of middle class families. This rule also states that if an individual has a salary of less than $250,000, their taxes should not go up. This could greatly solve the inequality struggle within the United States.

There are many other proposals that Obama mentioned in his state of the union address, but unfortunately I’d be writing for days if I wanted to break down every part of that. The main focus here is that our President wants not to eliminate the global market, but make the United States a bigger part of that market by in-sourcing American jobs to therefore create more products and goods to sell to other countries around the world. From a sociological perspective, these proposals are logical, but there must be cooperation from many different components of the government, American people, corporations, big businesses, small businesses, and many other components. As the president stated at the end of his speech, we must all work together, just like the Navy Seals that worked together to accomplish the capture of Osama Bin Laden.

source: http://www.barackobama.com/state-of-the-union?source=DNC_HDL