Transcript
Hello, everybody, welcome to Wednesday, the S&P 500 was up almost .4% today. But the really big news, as far as I’m concerned is the speech that President Biden gave today about what we were calling the infrastructure plan. They’ve renamed it, the American Jobs Plan. And I’ll give you some of the details of what they’re talking about doing. And then how I see it impacting, you know, our money, so to speak, in the stock market, kind of the pros and cons of what what what’s going to happen, and I’ll give you my opinion.
So first of all, they’re talking about, you know, re-paving and re-fixing 20,000 miles of roads, there’s 10 main bridges that they see as critical infrastructure pieces from an A commerce standpoint, that they’ve identified that they want to replace another 10,000 bridges that they’re looking at either replacing or repairing also, and they want to give an incentive for electric vehicles and put in 500,000, charging stations across all of this, you know, country as far as that goes. They’re looking at broadband, apparently, according to what they were talking about today. 35% of Americans mostly in rural, rural areas have no access or poor access to broadband, they want to bring broadband access to every single American, which, obviously, you know, after what’s happened here, in this pandemic, you can see what that important would be, the main focus will be on, you know, 5g, want to really work on cybersecurity within that process to redoing the electric grid. As far as that goes, some of the money is going to go towards affordable housing, which will be part of this infrastructure build out. And they really want to work on domestic manufacturing.
One of the things that happened during this COVID processes, we realized, you know, how much stuff has been shipped overseas for manufacturing. And some of that stuff needs to be here. You know, obviously, with the PPE and those types of things, masks and other things also, but they talked predominantly today about kind of the chips as semiconductor chips, and being able to have more of that manufacturing being done here, incentivizing companies to bring their, you know, manufacturing into the country, especially in critical areas, they want to spend more money on R&D. Right now, it’s .7% of gross domestic product, they want to bring that up to 2% of gross domestic product. And I’m probably one of the most fascinating things to me, because I deal with this constantly within the clientele, is the concept of being able to establish in home care at a cheaper rate. And so they’re going to subsidize in home care. So if you need to have somebody come in and help you cook, and you know, those types of things, because right now, it’s obviously incredibly expensive. And it’s a really big problem. You know, on average, people live longer, that are able to stay in their home, but a lot of people can’t afford stay in their home. So this is something they’re adding to this particular. And it would be a, you know, a jobs program for caregivers, which I think would be kind of fascinating.
So that’s the outline of kind of what they’re offering. Let me give you what I see is kind of the negatives. And then you know, what are some of the positives of that. So first of all, the big negative is how they’re going to fund it. So they’re talking about increasing corporate taxes from the current rate of 21%, back to 28%. So that would take about 5 to 9% off of the earnings of the S&P 500, for example. And so price ultimately is attached to earnings. So if you’d knock the earnings down, because companies have to pay more tax, then the price could come down. Because of that, also, they are expecting that to generate about a trillion dollars over the next 15 years. So this is part of their funding program, they did not talk about today, but has been talked about in the past, also increasing the total tax rate above $400,000 worth of income. So if you had more than $400,000 of income, the tax rate would be at 39.7%. And so that’s one piece wouldn’t change, if you’re below that. They’re also talking about increasing have talked about increasing capital gains tax. So if you have more than a million dollars worth of income, your Apple gains would be at the ordinary income rate, which would be 39.7%. In that particular situation. So you know, that’s a drag on the economy, as far as that goes, although it only is really affecting, you know, kind of that upper echelon of incomes as far as that goes, but that that’s what they’re talking about from that standpoint.
The other negative is the possibility for inflation. So when you, you know, really push this right now. There’s 11.1% of Americans that are either underemployed or unemployed. And so if you really push this out, and it works, and it does create all kinds of jobs, when the job labor market gets tight, that’s when inflation comes. So that’s that’s an interesting aspect. And then of course, they have to fund this you know, and Short term, theoretically, they’re gathering this money coming in from these taxes, and then they’re spending it out on this program is spread out over eight years, but they might have to issue you know, treasuries, which, of course, would put pressure on the Treasury market, which is what we’re seeing right now, because of this, you know, $1.9 trillion stimulus program that just came out.
So those are the those are the issues that I think are problematic in terms of what can happen. Now, I actually see some other things that I think are quite fascinating. On the opposite side, I think this is going to be a positive for the stock market. Number one, they’re not starting in into October, which I do think is important, we’re just reopening, the economy is still, you know, trying to get going. And so you know, raising corporate tax rates right now, I do think October will be a better time to do that, that could make a difference. But then you also have the possibility of having the up that 11.1% that’s under or unemployed, getting jobs, not just from the reopening, but also from these, you know, programs that they’re talking about. More people that have jobs, the more money they can spend on all these products.
I’ve read many studies that say that two thirds of the growth in the S&P 500, you know, price really comes from consumer spending. So obviously, the more people that are employed, the more that could go. And then of course, you kind of just sort of grease the skids, so to speak, if the electricians, you know, if the electrical grid is working, if the road infrastructures working and broadband is more, you know, available, you know, all of those types of things allow for some, maybe some energy independence with some more the clean energy, which we saw move quite heavily today, actually, you know, those are all things that I think make the country possibly run better. And that’s, that’s the big investment that they’re making. The fact that it’s spread out over eight years, I think will mitigate some of the inflationary pressure that could come and that part is a really big deal in my mind, because it allows tax revenues to come in.
And then you know, they don’t have to sell as many treasuries. And then they can allow for some, you know, slower growth as far as that goes. And it’s not this crazy thing, where we’d have just this huge spike, because we’ve already had this big stimulus piece. I think that was partly scaring the market a lot was this talk about this $2 to $4 trillion infrastructure bill, you know, right after we just did $2 trillion, almost $1.9 of this, you know, stimulus piece. And so now, it’s October instead of right now, and it’s over eight years. So I think that mitigates some of the pure inflationary pressure that’s out there. I think it’s worth looking into, as far as that goes, I do like that it’s funded, the 28% tax bracket is still, you know, pretty competitive. That’s still lower than the tax bracket has been between the, you know, end of World War II and 2017.
So hopefully, that still, you know, works and is a stimulative as far as that goes. So very interesting. I think this is a fascinating piece, lots of things that need to happen before this actually does happen, what they’re talking about right now may be different than what they do. The last thing is just how do you invest for this? You know, do you? And I don’t believe in that, I don’t know, when I don’t believe in investing in what the politicians say they’re going to do, because it’s so hard to get these things through. I think the best strategy is to invest in reopening type stocks, okay, because I feel very strongly the reopening is going to happen, it might be delayed by some or not, and what have you, but those reopening stocks that are also going to benefit from the, you know, possible infrastructure play. So like a Nucor steel, or, or some of these different things that are really already moving because of the reopening would then obviously have even more chance of doing better.
Because one thing Biden didn’t talk about was sourcing the materials that inside the country, the jobs would be inside the country, when they replace the vehicles for the government with the light, they want to source that inside the country. So, you know, that’s looking at those companies that could both be reopening play and an infrastructure rebuilding play. I think that’s where the money is going to be made going into pure infrastructure, on hopes they passed the bill, if they passed the bill, probably be great investment. But if they don’t, they’re probably parts of those would fall apart. So that’s what I always watch out for when I’m looking at these types of things. You know, there’s, there’s the talk, and then there’s actually getting it done. So you know, we’ll see what happens.
But anyway, so that’s those are the when I see the pros and cons overall, I think it’s a positive. I think it’s going to be interesting. I know that not everybody agrees with that. But I think this type of spending, with some revenue source coming in spread over eight years, could work. So look forward to talking to you tomorrow. Thank you.