Dr Zalmay Gulzad, Professor of Social Sciences at Harold Washington Community College in Chicago, Illinois, believes that plagiarising Trump's economic plan "is not unusual" for Biden.
Sputnik: US President Donald Trump has accused Joe Biden of plagiarising his economic plan. In your view, how similar are Biden's proposals to those of Trump?
Zalmay Gulzad: It is similar to that presentation, that Donald Trump’s stuff that was copied. Most of the media here realised it was a copy of his plan. But Joe Biden goes for copying. I wonder when he copied the speech of the Labour Party candidate in England. It's not unusual. So the problem is I don't think either of these political parties cannot solve America's problems.
And I was a student in a public college of political science and I watched both of them. We have millions of people homeless in this country. Capitalism did not solve the problem here. So we have two political parties: one is talking about raising taxes and the other is trying to lower the taxes. What Biden will do – he will increase the taxes and try some of the stuff he copied from Donald Trump. And the result is that the media picked this up and barely tried to focus on the problem of economics in the country.
Sputnik: Trump claimed that tax cuts and deregulation of the economy were the two key moves that helped him build "the greatest economy [the US] ever had" and that without them Biden's plan is bound to fail. How do you assess Biden's "Build Back Better" economic plan? What are the weaknesses and strengths of this plan in your opinion?
Zalmay Gulzad: The problem is that they have increased taxes already. People are leaving from New York and from big cities. For example, I live in Chicago and we are losing many people every month because they cannot afford the home taxes, and they are moving out of Chicago. The same thing is happening right now in New York for many reasons. These big cities are getting very expensive. People cannot afford it – they want to leave for cheaper rural areas mostly. So the idea to increase taxes in the country right now is a disaster because people cannot afford it.
Sputnik: How realistic is it that Biden can get it through Congress, given that the Republicans still control the Senate?
Zalmay Gulzad: That is another question. First of all, the elections are in November. And the way it is going I don't think they will be able to win the Congress. So if the Congress is not fully Democratic, then the problem is how Joe Biden is going to pass this. The problem is that coronavirus created this economic problem, but otherwise, if this economy picks up and we have it as we had before corona, the economy will grow very fast. I guess there is a big shortage of goods in the United States and this factor – if everything is OK – they will start producing and working. People will be working overtime to produce more to get rid of the shortages of goods in the country.
But it depends on what's going on with that. How they can organise working, and what the election result would be. Both sides are kind of doing the same thing: because Donald Trump is trying to cut the taxes and the others have tried to increase the taxes. So we’ll see what will happen, what people decide here. But it's not as it sounds like it's a very democratic election and all this kind of stuff. We know that outside of the United States many people think that it's a very beautiful democracy and everything is working very well. No, we have millions of homeless people on the streets of Chicago, San-Francisco and California – all these places. So it's not as beautiful as it sounds outside of the country.