an Architects' vote on the american elections - Who Should You Vote For?

I like how analytical and "statistical" american elections get.

I love how the voting actually is so scientific based to the point where even architects and based on the industry development can form a say with their vote.

below is an article i found on architectmagazine explaining the development of the industry from 2008-2012 and what a vote for each candidate can be !

Here's where they stand at least online :

·      politics

Who Should You Vote For?

Architects have had a particularly rough go these last few years, being acutely affected by a recession and slow recovery. Will the next four years get any better? Two political reporters say that it depends on who you vote for.

·       

The Opinionators

Jamelle Bouie is a staff writer at The American Prospect and a Knobler Fellow at The Nation Institute. His work has appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic, CNN, The Washington Independent, and The Washington Post. He is based in Washington, D.C., where he covers politics and public policy. To read his rebuttal of Klein's defense of the Romney/Ryan ticket, click here.

Philip Klein is a senior editorial writer for The Washington Examiner, with a focus on domestic politics and policy. Prior to joining the Examiner, he served as Washington correspondent for The American Spectator, and as a financial reporter at Reuters in New York. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, and The Dallas Morning News, among other publications. To read his rebuttal of Bouie's defense of the Obama/Biden ticket, click here.

With the presidential election coming up, we asked two seasoned political writers to break down the case for which candidate would most benefit architects and other design and construction professionals—Jemelle Bouie of The American Prospect defending the Democratic ticket of Barack Obama and Joseph Biden, and Philip Klein of The Washington Examiner defending the Republican ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. (In true debate style, we also gave Bouie and Klein the opportunity for a rebuttal to each others’ cases. Check back tomorrow to read those.)

Below, we begin first with Bouie’s defense of the incumbent. Klein’s defense of the challenger begins on the next page.

A Vote for Obama/Biden
By Jamelle Bouie

So far this year, a lot of pundits have wasted a lot of digital ink on the idea that this is an unusually high-stakes election. Commentators say this for every election, and most times, they’re wrong. But, at the risk of sounding cliché, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and in this case the pundits are on point.

But if this is an important choice for the public writ large, then it’s a critical one for architects. As a profession, architecture has been in a tough spot for the last four years. Compared to other workers with college and graduate degrees, architects were hit hard by the housing bust and financial crisis—unemployment for experienced architecture college graduates is 9.2 percent, according to the American Community Survey, compared to 4.1 percent for college grads as a whole.

A critical choice, though, doesn’t have to be a tough one, and if one looks at recent public policy, it’s clear that the profession would be best served by a continuation of the path set by the Obama administration.

Since entering office in 2009, President Barack Obama has pursued a series of tax measures to benefit small businesses. The stimulus, the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act, and the Small Business Jobs Act included tax exemptions for key investments, tax credits for hiring out-of-work Americans, greater deductions for startup costs, capital-gains tax cuts, and a measure that raised the small-business expense limit to $500,000.

The Affordable Care Act is another measure that benefits small architecture firms. Under the law, businesses with more than 50 employees will have to provide insurance to their employees—or face a penalty. Of course, this exempts most architecture firms, the large majority of which employ fewer than 10 people. Those firms—and the people they employ—will have the opportunity to purchase insurance off of the regulated markets established by Obamacare, where insurers will compete with each other for customers on the basis of price. The hope is that this will lower costs and make it easier for small-business owners to provide a key benefit to their employees. Businesses that take this step will receive a tax credit to help cover the cost.

On the other hand, Obama has promised to raise taxes on high earners in his second term, and there’s a real worry that this will affect small-business owners and middle-class workers. But the good news is that, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, just 3.5 percent of small-business tax filers—or 940,000 individuals—would pay a higher rate. Another analysis, from the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, notes that only 2.5 percent of small-business owners who are taxed at individual rates—a somewhat smaller pool of people—fall into the top two income brackets. Given architects’ median income of $72,550—according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—odds are good that most architects will see little change in their tax burden.

There’s also the issue of the architecture students and graduates who have been hit hard by high tuition costs and a sluggish economy—at a time when average in-state tuition and fees for bachelor programs in architecture have increased by 3.4 percent to $20,115. (For graduate programs, the increase is closer to 2 percent.) The Obama administration has recently moved forward with a program that would ease the burden on those struggling to repay federal student loans. The Income-Based Repayment Plan would allow borrowers to cap their student-loan payments at 15 percent of their discretionary income. And for the long-term, it has proposed a “Race to the Top”–style program for higher education to reward schools that lower tuition costs and boost value.

Other than a few references to cutting taxes for small businesses or helping out students, you won’t hear much about these policies from Obama on the trail. But they are all concrete steps that will continue if he’s elected to a second term, and might even expand if he can get congressional support. That’s what happens when you elect a president who sees a role for government in the maintenance of the economy.

This isn’t to say that the administration has been perfect for the architectural field; to wit, its lackluster response to the housing crisis has been tough for architects, whose fortunes are tied tightly to the performance of the housing market. But on a whole host of other concerns, the Obama administration has proven beneficial. This is especially true for the roughly 21 percent of architects who the IRS reports are self-employed.

It’s possible that Gov. Mitt Romney will see a need to pursue similar policies to Obama if he’s elected president. After all, he built his fortune as a sensible businessman who took wise advantage of benefits provided by the government. But, it’s also true that he’s the leader of the Republican Party, which has little interest in government as a proactive tool for improving the economy.

And while the president isn’t bound by the beliefs of his party, he is strongly influenced by them. A vote for the status quo isn’t inspiring. In this case, though, it’s the best bet for an economy that works for both architects and all workers.

Click to the next page to read Philip Klein's defense of the Romney/Ryan ticket.
To read Bouie's rebuttal of Klein's argument, click here

A Vote for Romney/Ryan
By Philip Klein

On the surface, architects may be tempted to re-elect President Barack Obama because he’s vowed that in a second term he’d spend more money “rebuilding roads and bridges; schools and runways.” Such infrastructure projects carry the promise of more work to struggling architects. The problem is, Obama tried to use government spending to stimulate the economy in his first term, and it hasn’t solved the problems facing the architecture industry.

In February 2009, Obama signed his $833 billion economic stimulus package, promising “shovel-ready” projects. Yet between 2009 and 2011, when the bulk of the stimulus money was spent, architecture firm billings dropped 41.3 percent, according to data compiled by the AIA.

For those still drawn by the allure of more government spending despite this track record, the reality is that unsustainable debt levels at the federal, state, and local levels will continue to put pressure on budgets. So, ultimately, the success of the industry hinges not on government, but on broader economic growth in the private economy.

One of the biggest policy contrasts between Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney is on taxes. If re-elected, Obama has vowed to raise the top marginal income tax rate on those earning more than $250,000 per year to 39.6 percent from its current 35.0 percent. His healthcare law also includes $1 trillion in tax increases on top of this, according to the Congressional Budget Office. At the start of 2013, a 3.8 percent surtax on investment income and a 0.9 percent hike in the Medicare payroll tax will hit higher income earners. All told, the changes that Obama has already enacted—or is seeking to enact—will raise the capital-gains tax to as much as 30 percent, or double its current 15 percent. Such tax increases would be detrimental for architects on several levels.

To start, the tax hikes wouldn’t be limited to just wealthy individuals, but would apply to 940,000 small businesses that file individually, according to a 2012 study by the Joint Committee on Taxation. This would punish architecture firms in particular, which tend to be small businesses. According to 2012 AIA estimates, “almost a quarter of architecture firms are sole practitioners, and more than 60 percent have fewer than five employees on their payrolls.”

Beyond the direct effects on architecture businesses, if individuals with income above $250,000 have less disposable income, they may decide to put off building or renovating homes. More broadly, cutbacks by higher income consumers will be a drag on the overall economy.

In contrast to Obama, Romney has vowed to repeal the $1 trillion in tax increases in the healthcare law. Not only will he not increase marginal tax rates, but he’s also proposed reducing them across the board by 20 percent (bringing the top marginal rate to 28 percent) and keeping the capital-gains tax at 15 percent. He’s also proposed cutting the corporate tax rate, which is currently the highest among industrialized nations, to 25 percent, thus encouraging more business activity at home. Romney has said that he would offset these rate reductions by getting rid of various deductions and loopholes in the overly complex tax code.

Beyond taxes, the candidates have articulated different views on regulation. During Obama’s first three years in office, the federal government imposed 106 new major federal regulations, costing over $46 billion per year, according to the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. “This was nearly four times the number—and more than five times the cost—of the major regulations issued by George W. Bush during his first three years,” Heritage wrote in its report. The continued implementation of the healthcare and financial regulatory laws would increase this number dramatically if Obama were re-elected.

Romney has vowed to repeal the healthcare and financial regulatory laws, and review and eliminate regulations that place a burden on the economy. Of particular interest to architects who have been hit hard by the housing crisis, Romney has proposed to “replace complex rules with smart regulation to hold banks accountable, restore a functioning marketplace, and restart lending to creditworthy borrowers.” Romney has also vowed to undo Obama’s executive order encouraging federal agencies to use unionized contractors in large-scale construction projects, which hurts non-union businesses and drives up project costs.

None of this is to guarantee that Romney would be the greatest thing to happen to architects since the invention of the blueprint. Obviously, all of his proposals will have to be fleshed out in more detail and will inevitably clash with legislative reality. But at least based on what the candidates are proposing, it’s fair to say that there’s a better chance that taxes would be lower and regulations would be fewer under a Romney administration, which is more conducive to spurring the type of economic growth needed to revive the architecture industry.