November 2, 2016

President

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. Trump,

Hello! It's so nice to meet you in a letter form! In this letter, I, Michael Nguyen, Jr., want to discuss an important issue in the United States of America. As you already covered in your 3 debates, the economy of the United States has been rapidly declining, yet its recovery has been hindered by unknown reasons. According to http://kairoscenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Poverty-Fact-Sheet-Feb-2015-final.pdf, “More than 1 in 5 children in America (21.8%) are living under the official poverty line. Half of all children will be on food stamps before they turn 20, including 9 out of 10 African American children.” This is an example of the rapidly declining economy around us, and why you MUST take action. As Hillary Clinton, your former enemy, stated in her 3rd presidential debate, “We need to raise pay, create good-paying jobs, and build an economy that works for everyone—not just those at the top. I’ll cut taxes for the middle class, raise the minimum wage, and ensure the wealthiest pay their fair share. I’ll invest in infrastructure, clean energy, and education. And I’ll help parents balance work and family.” How will you do that? I don’t know, but I, and more than half the US, am trusting you to do the right things. I’ll be referring back to this quote later on.

From my heart, I believe that the United States of America should improve its declining economy by lowering high taxes, increasing high paying jobs + decrease poverty, and increasing middle-class wages.

To begin my inducement, I’ll begin with the necessity for a decrease on high taxes. Taxes are one of the main barriers of worldwide economic prosperity and freedom. They prevent communities and families within the US to live in a location where they can afford most items and have some type of vacation. Instead, they work overtime just to earn enough money to support their families. They don’t get the vacations and breaks like Americans did in the past, when everything was more prosperous. According to http://solutions.heritage.org/the-economy/tax-reform/,” Tax rates for families, individuals, businesses, and investors are too high. After the fiscal cliff tax increase in early 2013, Americans in some states now pay marginal tax rates exceeding 50 percent. Such outrageous, high marginal rates discourage work, savings, investment, and entrepreneurial risk taking—the building blocks of economic growth. By reducing incentives to engage in these activities, the tax code reduces the strength of the economy.” If you analyze this, you can observe that this website, which includes government information, that many different Americans throughout the US are spending their hard-earned money on minor taxes, now exceeding 50% in rates. This causes a major instability in the economy as more and more Americans are getting discouraged from “[working], savings, investments, and entrepreneurial risk taking-the building blocks of economic growth”. As this action happens more and more, the economy declines heavily, leaving behind the people who would work and produce goods to pay for the marginal taxes. The same website says,”Less investment due to those higher costs hurts productivity gains, wage growth, and job creation.” This concludes my reasoning that taxes will affect the economy as a major factor. Many investors will drop their deals due to the higher prices and costs, hurting the “productivity gains, wage growth, and job creation.” This makes the US one of the worst economies available, even though they are the best in manufacturing products and goods. The website lists many great solutions to help with the reform of taxes, which will help with the recovery of our economy. One of those ways, that is great in my opinion, is by lowering “individual and business tax rates”. Tax reform must lower the major rates now, and the minor rates can be handled in the future. In particular, tax reform should start with the highest marginal rates and go down, as it would make Americans focus on the main taxes. This will definitely strengthen the economy by getting them back on their feet to work, save, invest, and improve. The Tax Foundation proves that the economy could grow as much as 15% over the course of 10 years. After these long years or pure work, the average family’s wages will “rise by almost 10%” (Source: http://solutions.heritage.org/the-economy/tax-reform/) If this were to happen, we as Americans could rise to the top of the economic market and improve our GDP. Although the other side of this argument would probably say,”If the president were to change the taxes/tax rates, our national debt would increase over time.” While this is true, decreasing the national debt would make Americans more focused on their jobs, therefore bringing back more jobs. What do the goods of jobs have attached to them? Taxes. As more people get jobs, they can pay for the things they want, and the tax that they pay can go to the government. As long as more people buy what they want with their new money, they will constantly be overflowing the tax bins, bringing the national debt down instead to making it rise. This can only happen if you, President Trump, decide to take actions now instead of prolonging them for the future. Hillary stated herself that she will cut taxes. How much is the question. I hope that you will listen and cut them by a reasonable amount so the middle class can support their families without much hassle. You MUST complete her fulfillments to make America great again! Without further ado, next topic!

After that tax issue, we will need to move to another subject: minimum wages. A website I’ll be using for this is http://minimum-wage.procon.org/, a non-biased company dedicated towards the pros and cons of raising the minimum wages. You should check it out sometime. To start, if you, Mr. Trump, were to raise the minimum wages of the middle class people, "there would be a major job increase and a boost in GDP. Over 80,000 people can get access to new jobs", the Economic Policy Institute stated. There would become a constant job growth, said the “economists Hristos Doucouliagos, PhD, and T.D. Stanley, PhD, in a review of 64 minimum wage studies. The authors found 'little or no evidence of a negative association between minimum wages and employment.’” Although there will be a major raise, many companies will be firing employees from their positions if the minimum wages increase. Over 50% of all companies stated that they would decrease their employment levels, forcing people to get new jobs. While this can be the case, the new job growth that comes with wage minimum increase can support all those employees just fired. In addition, the reformed companies can start improving their productivity for their goods. They have more workers to help them produce all the items they need, and therefore creates a better workforce at hand. Nextly, the current minimum wage cannot support many families when attempting to afford essentials. They already have trouble paying bills and taxes, and their minimum wages can’t help them when affording homes, food, water, et cetera. If you, Clinton, were to increase the minimum wages to the point where families can pay for their required materials, there would be an decrease in the amount of people living in poverty. Everyone would be able to pay their taxes and buy essentials, and many people would have a normalized modern house with a good supply of food. While many opposers will say that the “free market should determine the minimum wages, not the federal government” (http://minimum-wage.procon.org/), the downside to that is that the businesses will definitely lower the minimum wages to the point where they will earn a profit and the workers don’t. According to Per Bylund, PhD, Research Professor at Baylor University, “The federal minimum wage ‘disrupts the balance of the market and prohibits the creation of new jobs.’ Bylund stated that the free market should determine wages based on the value of work produced so employers can hire the needed number of workers at wage levels that make sense for their businesses.“ (http://minimum-wage.procon.org/) While many people argue with that point of view, I say that many companies are corrupt and will try to lower the wages as much as possible. They will try to get the most amount of workers while paying them the least amount of money. Finally, if the minimum wages are raised, there will be a healthier population. minimum-wage.procon.org states, “A 2014 Human Impact Partners study by Rajiv Bhatia, MD, found that raising the Californian minimum wage to $13 an hour by 2017 would "significantly benefit health and well- being." (http://minimum-wage.procon.org/) The study found that those earning a higher minimum wage would have enough to eat, be more likely to exercise, less likely to smoke, suffer from fewer emotional and psychological problems, and even prevent 389 premature deaths a year.“ Elaborating on this, providing higher minimum wages for most if not all families will give us many benefits. There will be more healthy, happy people. There will be less death at premature ages, which is caused by a lack of wages/money. Having more wages means that families can finally afford rations and shelters for themselves. The health benefits and opportunities are overflowing out of the “bucket”. Although the other side will probably say,”that increasing the minimum wages would decrease employee benefits and jobs due to the increased cost of everything, the health benefits will be more overpowering than employee benefits. Everyone would have a higher chance to get housing and rations, and everyone has a chance to get out of poverty. If you look back, President Trump, you can see that many of the benefits from increasing minimum wages are overpowering the cons, and if you decide to listen to me, the US would be a better place to live in.

Finally, the final issue is poverty. Many people in the US have normal houses, and a good income to support themselves. But, there are others who are poor beyond comparison. They live in poverty. Poverty is a huge issue in the US, as there were 43.1 million people recorded that were homeless or poor in 2015, according to https://talkpoverty.org/basics/. President Trump, you should definitely increase minimum wages and lower taxes as it would definitely help the Americans in poverty. If you do what I recommend you to do, many Americans will get out of poverty and can start living life as they like it. They don’t need to beg for food, they can buy their own food. While others would say that increasing minimum wages and decreasing taxes would lose their jobs, it will also open a new “root” for job growth. People in poverty can finally get a job. This adds on to better middle-class jobs. You, Donald Trump, stated that you wanted to give the middle class better jobs. Doing this will help more families get out of poverty and debt. You can create you own jobs or improve the jobs here. This will ensure that everyone can get a living if they want to. If you take the actions that I have listed here, the economy will rocket skywards.

Hillary Clinton also stated that,”I’ll cut taxes for the middle class, raise the minimum wage, and ensure the wealthiest pay their fair share.” (#Hillary_Clinton_2016) This will mean that YOU will be the one to cut taxes for the middle class and make the wealthier pay more fairly so they have to WORK for their money. This can create a great income to the government to gradually but efficiently end the national debt while creating a fair tax system for the community. Doing this action can make the inequalities in this nation even out to become an Even Steven nation. I hope that you can complete projects that will improve the economy significantly, such as exporting immigrants to plug the loophole of cash the illegals earn. BY THE WAY, DON’T MAKE OUR COUNTRY COMMUNIST LIKE NORTH KOREA OR NORTHERN VIETNAM!!!

According to https://www.whitehouse.gov/raise-the-wage, the minimum wage falls below the smallest a family can be: 2 people. This is an example of the declining economy. Starting from the 1950’s - 1960’s, the population could support a family of 2 and possibly 3 living on a minimum wage. Over the years, however, the economy slid below the poverty line for the family of 2. This is bad because most families are a minimum of 3 (with a child), and most families can only buy supplies for 2 people. The populace of the US bases everything on the economy. Businesses and companies depend their success and fame on the people, and if the people can’t earn enough money to buy these items, the GDP and trade of goods circulating through the market will dive bomb down. This creates an isolation from the outside economy, who depend on us to create exported goods. Our outside relationships will cripple, and other countries will no longer look to us. If you can improve the economy by raising minimum wages for the middle class and lowering some marginal taxes, this economy bomb won’t detonate and create a wasteland.

The benefits of my plan are: the middle class family will be able to support their families more easily and a rise in the economy. If you read through my letter, you will see that lowering taxes and increasing minimum wages, the economy will rise. This is because the middle class is basically everyone who has an “average/median” income. My plan makes it so the middle class (almost everyone who has a median income) can increase in how much money they make, letting them support their family more. This lets them buy more goods from manufacturers, increasing the US’s economy. This can also decrease the US’s national debt, even though the process might start slow at first. This is because the more the people buy,the more money the government gets, and the more the government can pay off the debt.

In conclusion, I hope that you, Donald Trump, will work on these recommendations and improve America in the best way possible. I hope that you can decrease taxes (for the middle class), increase minimum wages, and increase good paying jobs + decrease poverty. I believe in you. I also believe that you can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!

Cheers,

Michael Nguyen, Jr. Of L.S.I.

Note: All websites were checked on the date of November 2016, and they were created between 2014-2016.

Sources:

http://solutions.heritage.org/the-economy/tax-reform/

https://talkpoverty.org/basics/

minimum-wage.procon.org

https://www.whitehouse.gov/raise-the-wage