Obama's Big Speech

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That speech today? Pretty much as expected.

The proposals included an R&D tax credit, $50 billion in infrastructure spending, and a plan to allow businesses to write off investments through 2011. The Journal has a nice summary.

Perhaps more interesting were Obama's comments on tax policy. The President pledged to extend the Bush tax cuts for middle class families but to allow the tax cuts to expire for the richest Americans, a group that is said to include many small businesses:

With all the other budgetary pressures we have – with all the Republicans’ talk about wanting to shrink the deficit – they would have us borrow $700 billion over the next ten years to give a tax cut of about $100,000 to folks who are already millionaires. These are among the only folks who saw their incomes rise when Republicans were in charge. And these are folks who are less likely to spend the money, which is why economists don’t think tax breaks for the wealthy would do much to boost the economy.

To be sure, a compromise on the income tax rates is still possible, but assuming this proposal went through, how would your business be affected?

Senior contributing writer Max Chafkin has profiled companies such as Yelp, Zappos, Twitter, Threadless, and Tesla for the magazine. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. @chafkin