Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appears to take inspiration from past efforts to confiscate wealth.
Ocasio-Cortez Says 70% Ultra-Rich Tax Could Pay for Climate Plan
By Sahil Kapur
5 January 2019, 04:56 GMT+10Progressive House Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for a sharp tax hike on the highest incomes in order to fund a massive “Green New Deal” plan that would phase out fossil fuels by 2030, as she tries to push the political debate to the left.
“It’s ambitious,” the New York Representative told 60 Minutes in an interview scheduled to air Sunday. “It’s going to require a lot of rapid change that we don’t even conceive as possible right now.”
Asked how high taxes should be set, Ocasio-Cortez didn’t specify a figure but offered praise for policies in the past that set top marginal rates as high as 70 percent. The current top income tax rate is 37 percent.
“Once you get to, like, the tippy tops — on your 10 millionth dollar — sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent,” she said. “That doesn’t mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate, but it means that as you climb up this ladder you should be contributing more.”
…
I guess we can no longer say Ocasio-Cortez has not thought about how to fund her new green deal.
Occasional Cortex says ‘give us most of your money, trust us, and we will fix this problem that we just dreamed up for you, eventually.’
No cerebral cortex functioning there even occasionally, however those of kidneys, adrenal glands and the thymus appear to be fine more often than just occasionally.
She has some other glands that are truly outstanding.
Sandy Ocrazio Cortez was far less unpleasant in her previous incarnation is an internet roof-dancing phenom.
She has acquired a grating tone that is extremely unpleasant.
taxing the extremely wealthy is a great idea. Just a shame to blow it all on a non existent problem.
As Lomborg says, it would be better to help people now than worry about some hypothetical projections of what may happen 3 or 4 generation down the line.
Now if they opened up health care insurance to some true competition the middle class would all be a lot better off.
“taxing the extremely wealthy is a great idea. ”
What do Al Gore and DiCaprio and all the Hollywood stars think of the idea..
Or are they exempt?
fred, private jets and big yachts should be banned ‘to save the earth’ from CAGW. https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/27/new-york-times-private-jets/
Burning fossil fuels is only a problem when the other guy’s burning them. When Gore, DeCaprio, et al burn fossil fuels, it’s righteous.
Greg, the wealthy will just shelter their wealth. The optimum tax rate is the highest percentage where the wealthy don’t send it overseas. There’s still a lot of money that flees the US.
Another example of how the left feels that as long as someone has more than I do, it’s ok to steal from them and spend the money on themselves.
The definition of “wealthy” is, of course, anyone who makes a dollar more than you do.
taxing the extremely wealthy is a great idea
Greg, while that may sound fine in theory, it ignores a very important inconvenient fact – the extremely wealth have options. They can shelter their money from the tax man and they can move to more favorable tax climates any time they want.
It also ignores another very important inconvenient fact -there isn’t enough money among the extremely wealthy to pay for all of the socialist wet dream ideas the left have been pushing even if you could take 100% of their wealth.
Let me see: tax the stinking rich at 70% to pay for her bright ideas…
Okay, how much of that is coming out of her pockets????
Has she discussed this with anyone besides her own image in the bathroom mirror? Seriously, you’re the new kid on the block and you think you’re smarter than the kids who have been there awhile, and you didn’t talk to them about your brilliant ideas first?????
She is obviously a Big Fan of the Good Idea Fairy. As I understand it, the Good Idea Fairy just loves to yank the rug out from under people like this.
Anyone besides me think that either Pelosi or DiFi is willing to fork over 70% of their cash to this Brillian Concept? Yeah, me neither.
“tax the stinking rich at 70% to pay for her bright ideas…”
LOL
No, it’s not just “the rich” who will pay, if they pay at all.
It also means the lower brackets will pay much more, i.e.:
69% for the next bracket
68% for the bracket below that
67% for the bracket below
etc, etc.
That’s how we’ll see the middle class nailed with massive tax rate increases.
That’s exactly how it would work.
It’s all about the makers supporting the takers.
Already ca. 50% of US workers pay ZERO, ZERO federal income taxes while they rake in free everything as if they did.
Now what’s this about taxation & representation?
Almost forgot to mention …. the illegals who pay nothing and take everything.
Exactly. The income tax was sold as a means to keep people from getting too rich and would, in 1933 dollars, be collected from only the top 1.3%, or was it 3%, of all the residents of the U.S. Through fully intended unintended consequences income tax is now assessed against all wage earners who have worked more than a ~month during the year, which is especially hard on college students who are typically unmarried, have no children, do not own a home, nor make contributions of any kind; in other words can avail of no tax dodges available to even the low income middle class. So it’s almost impossible for them to avoid it. And I was a college student 40 years ago, it’s probably even worse now.
Considering the fact that the bottom 50% of income tax earners only pay about 1% of all income taxes, I’d be extremely surprised if there are any college students who don’t get it all back (and maybe then some) at the end of the year.
bottom 50% pay 2.8% according to
https://taxfoundation.org/summary-federal-income-tax-data-2017/
but your point remains the same, the vast majority of income taxes come from the top 50% (97.2% of all income tax)
top 1% paid 39% of income taxes
top 10% paid 70.6% of income taxes
top 50% paid 97.2% of income taxes
bottom 50% paid 2.8% of income taxes
in comparison
top 1% had 20.6% of income
top 10% had 47.4% of income
top 50% had 88.7% of income
bottom 50% had 11.3% of income
Everyone in Congress will exempt themselves-they always do.
All those who can afford it simply move to avoid it 🙂
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-samsung&ei=t_IxXPDtMfCLmgWD9oiQAw&q=cortex+training+&oq=cortex+training+&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.
Which is why it’s not a good idea to elect 29 year old bartenders to Congress. But the bar seems to be dropped pretty low these days, pardon the pun. Too much emotion, not enough common sense. Somebody needs to take a few of these newbs down to Catacomb 33 under the Capitol building and EXPLAIN a few things to ’em–start with middle-school math and physics.
Democrats’ absolute low bar … DNE.
There is always another level of Hell into which they can take a society if allowed to.
To wit: Venezuela – where new desperate lows are found every day.
Most but not all of the problems in Venezuela are because the US is trying to strangle its economy. You may argue about the merits and justifications of doing that but don’t blame the govt of the country whose economy you are actively trying to destroy for not running its economy properly.
LOL
Greg, that’s rich. You’re one funny guy.
Greg? All of Venezuela’s problems are caused by its own government. Get a clue.
Greg…You so FUNNY!
Socialism only fails because greedy capitalists keep sabotaging it, amirite.
Couldn’t possibly be from any fundamental flaws in the system itself, oh no.
Greg, Antonio Gramsci warned you people about cultural hegemony 80 years ago. That is to say, he predicted the revolution in Venezuela would fail 80 years ago.
To say that “problems in Venezuela are because the US is trying to strangle its economy” is ignorant to an astounding level. Which says you are not an intellectual leader over your movement, but rather just another useful idiot.
To wit: -Cortez. She probably is too. But it’s possible that she is surrounded by so many Leftards who agree with her that she believes cultural hegemony has been achieved, and what she suggests is going to roll in with ease. It may play well in NYC, and with her constituency. They did vote for her.
Meanwhile, in fly-over country, she is preposterous, ignorant of the 20th century. Socialism is the politics of 8 year olds. You really said, “Most but not all of the problems in Venezuela are because the US.” We have it here, now documented for all time.
I hope you live long enough to realize some day what a tool you are.
So another acolyte of the church of It-Doesn’t-Matter-What-Happens-In-The-World-It’s-Our(U.S.)-Fault worship center. At this point I am unaware of U.S. imposed sanctions against Venezuela. Can you please enlighten us? Legislation? Executive Orders? Regulations? State Department Directives? References of any kind?
Greg, you have really OD’d on the kool-aid. There is no US embargo on Venezuela.
Never has been. Like most leftists you can’t accept the fact that socialism doesn’t work, so you always invent new boogymen to blame for it’s failures.
Greg, you incredible ignoramus. Everything that is wrong with Venezuela is YOUR FAULT.
I feel much better now.
Having family in Venezuela, and having followed Vz a lot more than you, I can say without hesitation that you have no idea how wrong you are.
hunter, I doubt that Greg cares how wrong he is.
His goal is to try and blame the failures of socialism on anyone other than the socialists.
This just in:
‘Socialism is becoming more normalized among Americans who identify as Democrats, according to a recent poll, as their approval of capitalism falls at the same time.’ – Breitbart
Again, their problem is that 80% of the people don’t want it. It is impossible to implement without broad support. So the Democrats public face for the time being is a philosophy that most abhor. What do they think the upside is ???
Perhaps my data is out of date but of all the paying customers for Venezuelan oil, the one that buys the most of it ( 40%?), isn’t that the ,uhh.., United States of America?
Some strangler.
And people conveniently forget about tHugo Chavez’s tactic to undermine US energy companies by supplying fuel oil to northeast states at massively reduced prices during winter months, all while crying about his starving people and demanding America ship him 100s of thousands of tons of wheat, corn and soybeans, which America did. He then merrily transshipped much of it to Cuba since his people at that point were not starving. A sweet little scam both Bush and Obama happily assisted him in.
“EXPLAIN a few things to ’em–start with middle-school math and physics.”
Unfortunately, middle school math and physics is far too late for her. Not understanding GRADE school math and physics make it nearly impossible to learn middle school math and physics.
I took my grade school math and physics in a one room country school with a teacher having but a two year teaching certificate. She had me build a sling psychrometer for a 5th grade science project. I probably learned more about math and physics from that project alone, than Occasional and her contemporaries learn in their entire school career. It demonstrated water vapor, relative humidity, evaporation, airflow, centrifugal force, reading thermometers, accuracy, math tables, and more. It was enough to make one understand why CAGW is a fraud, in one simple lesson.
I recall a hugely entertaining lecture where an post grad economics lecturer tried to explain to a bunch of engineers how it was possible for governments to continue to borrow forever to fund social programs.
Every time he tried to change from absolute values to percentages (which was often and required to make it sound plausible) the increasingly hawk-eyed and blood smelling students pointed out his errors. He went from an arrogant shite laughing at our questions to agreeing with us that is was not actually possible. That was the best 25 minutes in a lecture I have ever spent. He really cracked the shites when we then asked of any dodgy sounding assertation “Is this like that government borrowing error?”
In Canada we elected a drama teacher as Prime Minister who declared his admiration of China because its a “basic dictatorship.” So…we got that going for us. He too wants to save the climate through the use of tax money, lots of it of course.
Aren’t politics a fascinating nonsense ? Probably the only job with zero qualification / aptitude requirements.
By analogy, just imagine the following pre-flight announcement:
-And now Ladies and Gentlemen, we will democratically proceed to the election of the first officer and captain for this flight, those interested in the positions, please stand-up.
Exactly what happens in politics at a much larger scale. A situation where elected non necessarily trained to the task individuals steer the destiny of millions of souls.
The rub is that politics as the Founders’ saw it, was not a career in of itself. Holding a public office was, well, an office, not a job. They were businessmen, landowners, and/or tradesmen first and public servants second. Career politicians were almost unheard of and frowned on as opportunists bereft of principle.
Now careerism has nearly rotted politics through and seriously threatens the health of science.
Goldrider January 5, 2019 at 3:50 pm
I don’t think that being a “29 year old” …… or being a ”bartender” ….. has anything to do with an ever increasing problem of a dysfunctional US Congress.
Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, ….. just to name two (2) of the many, are not “29 year olds” …… or claim to have been ”bartenders”.
Emotional, …. rather than logical, ….. decision making is a biological inherited “survival instinct” that the females of a species will, …… more often than not, …. choose as a response when addressing a perceived problem.
I’ve handled a pack of, er, female hounds and that survival instinct you mention is right there. All you need to know about humans I’ve learned from animals, really . . .
“YUP”, most every “student of the natural world” is a lot smarted and experienced than students that are limited to “book learning”. 😊 😊
This is the Congresscritter who had to run when asked if she was going give her salary to charity (her idea) during the shutdown.
All economic systems are imperfect, including capitalism – get over it. Capitalism is still infinitely better than the alternatives.
Leftists (aka Marxists, Progressives, Socialists, Greens, etc.) are the great killers of our age – Stalin and Mao killed about 130 million of their own people and Hitler killed more than 50 million in WW2. Then there are the lesser leftist killers, like Pol Pot in Cambodia. Greens have killed almost as many more with their phony wars against DDT/malaria and CO2/global warming.
Greens can also take credit for the food-for-fuels fiasco, the clear-cutting of the rainforest to grow sugar cane for ethanol and palm oil for biodiesel, the rapid draining of the Ogallala aquifer for corn ethanol and biodiesel, wind-and-bat-chopping wind turbines, runaway energy costs and reduced grid reliability, increased winter mortality and similar social and environmental disasters.
The question to ponder is:
“Are leftists really that stupid or is this green destruction part of their intended plan to destroy the economy and take control?”
Before you say “NO, of course not!”, consider Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and about 100 other failed countries in the world, where leftists obtained power through false promises, and then destroyed the economy and became dictators, ruling from the top with the help of the army, looking down on all the peasants. Is this just a remarkable coincidence, or is this their covert plan?
I think this is in fact the plan of the leadership of the Democratic Party in the USA, and similar leftist parties in the developed world. To believe the left is simply guilty of incredible stupidity is to assume that they are all total imbeciles. I suggest that nobody, with the possible exception of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is THAT stupid. This is planned.
It is a plan but it requires eliminating the Electoral College, which democrats proposed on Day One of their takeover of the House, and then disarming the citizenry through repeal of the Second Amendement which is another goal of, at least, the left wing of the Democrat Party.
The Electoral College and the Second Amendment are two unique methods to diffuse political power in the US and the left is beginning to realize just how much of a roadblock they are. Certainly, creation of three branches of government promotes that objective, with perhaps the Supreme Court being the most pivotal. The architects of the constitution, although flawed as we all are, were quite brilliant in their attempt to prevent centralization of political power to the point that it threatens individual liberty.
Communism IS evil and socialism IS just a step or two away.
(And my apologies if I am duplicating others’ thoughts later in the thread as I have not read it completely.)
Ah, I see a comment later in the thread from rah, I believe, wondering if a goal of the left is a civil war. I have pondered the same for many years now and believe that, for the present, a less radical transformation is desired. Why? For one, the left is not structured nor strong enough to win a civil war. Yes, there is the SDS and DSA but their numbers are still small. Two, they hope that the Constitution and its diffusion of power principles, which stands in the way, will be negated in the near future and; three, the Second Amandment is a major concern for them because most of the 300+ million weapons in civilian hands are not in their hands. The real risk of civil war will rise when the population feels that the Consitution’s guarantee of individual liberty is threatened or abolished. Then civil war is a possibility. Timeframe? Not soon. Hopefully: never.
No other continuous government has lasted the 230 years of stability created by the US Constitution, in the history of the world.
One of the most important rules in the engineering profession goes like this: “If it ain’t broke, DON’T fix it!”
Our Constitution is working just fine, thanks, hands off…
They can propose such things all they like, but unless 3/4 of the states agree to go along with it, it’s just empty posturing.
It won’t even get as far as the states as 2/3rds of both the house and the Senate has to sign on board. That’s not happening anytime in the next two years (they don’t have 2/3rds support in the house let alone the senate where it’ll never even make it to the floor).
typo:
bird-and-bat-chopping wind turbines
Thank you JRF:
I travelled to East Germany many times, once thorough Checkpoint Charlie four months before the Berlin Wall fell and more times thereafter. Later I ran an energy project in Kazakstan, subsequently sold to the Chinese for US$4.2 billion. I also ran a company in Egypt, now worth several billion dollars, and spent time in Tunisia during Arab Spring. I co-financed the discovery of a mine at 14,000 feet elevation in South America, and also did business in Europe and Australia. In all, I conducted major business on six of the world’s seven continents.
Some observations about societies and governments, based a strong education and many decades of global experience:
The workers in the Former Soviet Union (FSU) had a saying:
“We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”
After the reunification of Germany, there was a cultural clash between the West Germans, who have a strong work ethic, and the “Osties”, who do a great job of pretending to work, while doing little.
The fatal flaw of leftist governments is the excessive concentration of power at the top, and the tendency for sociopaths to seize leadership. “Progressives” fail to see this flaw, and despite the many horrific leftist holocausts of the 20th Century, somehow believe “It will be different this time”. It won’t.
Leftist governments quickly become phony-left dictatorships, often family-run cabals like North Korea, Cuba (and Canada?). A few people at the top benefit, and the majority soon become poor peasants, serving their masters. The leaders of these “bully societies” typically become brutal, top-down dictators, and that bully mentality then pervades the entire society (boss shouts at worker, worker shouts at wife, wife shouts at kid, kid kicks dog).
Another of my observations, not limited to the FSU but observed in many “bully societies”:
In bully societies, people don’t tell you the truth,, especially when there is a problem – everyone makes up a different story that sheds blame away from them. The result is informational dysfunction of the organization, whether it be a business, a government body, or whatever. That disinformation, along with centralized planning, is why leftist societies function so poorly.
Children in bully societies quickly learn that they will be hit if they tell the truth, so they become adept at lying at an early age. It is not surprising that polygraphs (lie detectors), which measure stress, only work in a handful of societies in the world – and it is also not surprising that these are the most prosperous societies on the planet.
I expect the left will take great offense at the above thoughts – I certainly hope they will – they are Lenin’s “useful idiots”. Dunning-Kruger-imbeciles, too stupid to know they are being manipulated by sociopaths.
The USA dodged a bullet when voters rejected Hillary and elected Trump. Canada and most other democracies got hit by that bullet, and are now declining rapidly under the weight of incompetent and destructive leftist kleptocracies.
The left claims that they care about the “common” man, yet the societies they build don’t trust the common man, isolating all power to a handful of elite who claim that their actions are on behalf of the “common” man, yet always end up enriching the elite at the expense of everyone else.
Good thoughts, Allan. And when “Control the Message” evolves to “Control the People”, that is when Socialism takes the one or two steps to become Communism. You and I, plus others here, are old enough to remember the offenses of past socialistic/communistic governments; and, many of our younger citizens have had experience with fighting tyranny in various battlefields. However, many of our folks do not have that experience. I hope they do not gain it by having to live under a system that devalues the individual, has little regard for individual ingenuity and, in fact, has no regard for life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness.
Cortes’ always did that way –
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-samsung&ei=1PIxXOjSJYissgHEwJbIBA&q=cortes+in+mexico&gs_ssp=eJzj4tDP1Tcwzo3PMGAEAA-3AqY&oq=cortez++in+&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.
Cortez, the new face of stupid in the democrat party.
Why do people make them seem reasonable by calling them “Progressives” when in fact they are “Communists”?
Call them what they are.
There’s nothing “progressive” about neo-Marxism.
Please, everyone, stop giving
Alexandra DING DING DING bat Cortez
so much publicity.
Compared with her,
Trump is an Einstein.
[By site policy, single letter login-id’s are not permitted. Please logout and correct, before resuming. .mod]
OH, NO!!!!!!! Flood her stupid a$$ with publicity!!!!!!!! Post vids of her stupid a$$ EVERYWHERE!!!!!! Make her a meme for millennial stupidity to the point millennials ridicule her. Use their weapons against them!!!!!!! What the hell is wrong with people, ALWAYS use the tactics and weapons of your enemies against them. F**king morons.
The top 1% earn 20% of all income – yet pay 40% of all income taxes (and the majority of capital gains taxes, and they almost all max out their Social Security taxes as well). I guess ‘contributing’ twice their share isn’t enough…
I thought the top paid 75% of all out taxes?
…our taxes
47% pay no taxes at all. And yet they consume far more than the top 47%!
47% of U.S. wage earners pay no Federal Income Tax, yet they receive Federal cash payments for items such as Earned Income Tax Credit and other direct cash-back credits, including per-child credits.
RockyRoad says: “47% pay no taxes at all.”
…
Rocky forgets about payroll taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, tobacco taxes, liquor taxes and property taxes.
Steve Heins believes he has said something relevant.
MarkW has yet to say anything relevant.
As a come back, that was truly pathetic.
Perhaps when you get out of grade school you will be able to do better.
Steve forgets that tax incidence also shows that the top 1% pay a disproportionate share of excise and payroll taxes as well.
MarkW:
It was just echoing your own banal comment and attitude , so I guess you have just evaluated your own comment as “pathetic”.
Well done.
Even they pay sales tax, duty on fuel (which is added to almost everything indirectly) alcohol and tobacco.
So now we have entered the Peewee Herman phase of the discussion, where “I know you are, but what am I?”, counts as a snappy come back?
Greg, I see your still trying to convince yourself that you have any knowledge worth sharing.
Steve Heins January 5, 2019 at 4:27 pm
Steve Heins, ….. GETTA CLUE, ….. the majority of that “47%” …… works for “cash” money if they work at all, …… don’t own any property so don’t pay property taxes, ….. live in subsidized government housing therefore no rent or utility payments, …….. don’t own a vehicle and don’t buy gasoline, ……. given food stamps, WIC coupons, free medical …… plus a monthly “check” for incidentals (tobacco/liquor, beer/wine), …. free books, supplies and food at public schools, …… paid travel expenses, ……. babysitting expenses, schooling expenses, etc., etc.
“DUH”, those monster crowds of screaming, yelling, terrorizing, destructing, banner waving “protestors” that you see on TV News ……. sure as hell aren’t taking “time off” from their wage earning day job.
It was just echoing your own banal comment and attitude, so I guess you have just evaluated your own comment as “pathetic”.
Greg, while grade-school “I know you are but what am I” type comments may be the height of your intellectual capabilities, that doesn’t make them any kind of commentary on the original comment (no matter how banal you might think it is).
Even they pay sales tax, duty on fuel (which is added to almost everything indirectly) alcohol and tobacco.
While it should have been more appropriately worded “47% pay no income taxes at all” what you say isn’t strictly accurate either:
1) sales taxes only apply to those states that actually have a sales tax (there is no national sales tax). Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon do not have a state sales tax.
2) indirect taxation doesn’t count (only taxes that an individual directly pay is considered taxation on that individual) and is impossible to track. That’s not to say it doesn’t exist, as technically every company passes on the entirety of their tax bill on to their customers (so not just fuel taxes, but corporate income taxes, any applicable taxes on the raw materials they use, payroll taxes, etc) but there’s no good way to gage just how much of a products price is being used to cover for those taxes and as already noted those taxes aren’t being levied on the customer they’re being levied on the company even if the company is then factoring them into their prices in order to pay them.
3) alcohol and tobacco taxes only apply to those who indulge in those vices. I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to the percentage of the population that is, let along what percentage of that percentage falls within the 47% we are talking about.
so 1 & 3, contrary to what you claim, don’t apply to everyone, and while 2 does apply to everyone it’s not the government that is taxing the individuals, it’s companies passing on their costs to the consumer (same way they do every other cost of doing business).
Rocky forgets about payroll taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, tobacco taxes, liquor taxes and property taxes
Let’s be clear here on who we are talking about with the 47%, we are talking those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. As such, they are
1) the least likely to own property (they rent or live in government housing, so no property tax for them),
2) not likely to be working (so no payroll tax) or are the “working poor” (so while they might have a payroll tax, they’re also getting an offsetting Earned Income Tax Credit that is as large or larger than whatever they are paying in payroll taxes).
3) For those that live in the 5 states I mentioned in another post, they are not paying sales taxes, but even for those who are, they’re also likely to be receiving SNAP benefits that exceed what little they pay in sales tax.
4) Gasoline taxes only apply if you have a car – those that live in cities (where many of the lower income can be found) likely don’t even have one.
5) That basically leaves tobacco taxes, liquor taxes, and other “sin” taxes which are easily avoidable by not indulging in the “sin” to which the tax is associated.
So that 47% that doesn’t pay income tax, a good percentage of them are likely paying net zero (if not actually having “negative” taxes – IE the government paying them more than it gets in taxes from them) in taxes once you weigh their government handouts (SNAP, Earned Income, etc) against what taxes they do pay.
Now that’s not to say anyone here is advocating “tax the poor more”, but rather just pointing out that those on the lower end of the income spectrum aren’t paying much if anything in taxes and as such the paying of taxes increases as you get into the higher tax brackets (it’s called a “progressive” tax system)
And of the states with a sales tax, some like Texas exclude certain basic goods like groceries and toiletries. Here in Oklahoma we have what’s colloquially called the “farm tag”, where certain products purchased for use on a registered farm or ranch will have the sales tax waived.
It’s complicated, eh? Warren Buffet says his secretary pays a higher % rate than he does. I’m sure he’s right. Yet maybe he pays astronomically more than his secretary in dollar terms.
Warren Buffet’s lawyer earns well into 6 figures, so she is already paying at the top marginal tax rate.
Warren Buffet said his secretary pays a higher INCOME tax rate than he does.
Her income is 6 figures. His worth is great but his actual INCOME is not.
He borrows against his assets. A loan is not considered “income”.
I’m sure he’s not. It’s been pointed out to him multiple times that he’s wrong, so at this point he’s just straight up lying.
Remember, Buffet’s secretary is paid a salary which is taxed as income. Buffett makes nearly all his money from investments – which is taxed differently (ie Capital Gains instead of income, and there are various right-offs for poor investments that can be used to offset the gains in good investments, etc) and so only has a small amount of “income” that is applicable to the income tax, so it’s apples and oranges right there.
Also, his secretary is likely well paid. Forbes estimated that she must earn north of $200k.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2012/01/25/warren-buffetts-secretary-likely-makes-between-200000-and-500000year/#3e667cb87e83
Depends upon where you cut off “the top”.
https://taxfoundation.org/summary-federal-income-tax-data-2017/
The top 10% pay about 70% of all income taxes. If you make more than ~$11,500 per month – you’re in the top 10%, and you’re carrying the bulk of the load.
The Federal Government spends over $4 Trillion a year or over $10 Billion a day. If the government could confiscate and convert to cash the net worth of Jeff Bezos, it would pay for government spending for 2 weeks, once. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet would fund another 2 weeks, once. AOC is an economic illiterate.
Bingo. A lot of folks are. They honestly have no idea the math or economics involved.
According to US IRS data, The top 1% pay 40% of all income taxes, the top 20% pay 87%, and the bottom 50% PAY ZERO%…
Leftists say, “the rich don’t pay their fair share.”… Not so much…
The Immutable Law of Taxes: The more Leftists tax the innovators and job creators, the less innovation and jobs are created..
“Rich” people get rich by providing goods and services to people who are willing to pay their hard earned dollars to improve their own lives. Usually these are services that the government has no interest in providing. So by over-taxing “rich people” who provide those “in-demand” services and destroying their incentive, actually you are making your entire society less wealthy.
If ignorance was monetized, AOC would be in the highest tax bracket.
I wonder how many of her uber wealthy supporters actually think this is a great idea?? Oopsie!! Ain’t socialism grand? 😁
It’s fine while you have other people’s money to spend!
Socialists never propose taxing the highest earners. They only propose “income tax”. For those of us in the know, that means all capital gains, dividends, payed speaking engagements, and those royalties propping up Hollywood’s 6 and 7 figure incomes are exempt.
Huh? Royalties and paid speaking engagements (any personal service) are ordinary income. Dividends get a break at the individual level, but they are taxed at the corporate level before they are paid.
26 U.S. Code § 61 – Gross income defined
(a) General definition. Except as otherwise provided in this subtitle, gross income means all income from whatever source derived, including (but not limited to) the following items:
(1) Compensation for services, including fees …
(2) …
(6) Royalties;
(7) Dividends;
The Uber rich live off of old money which is invested (by someone they married or their inheritance… these asshat socialites never worked a day in their lives)… They wont be taxed on their assests or savings, only the interest, so its unlikely the will be affected by the higher rates. They have the best accountants cooking the books for them…
King of Soul-san:
Wrong. Only 15% of the “Uber Rich” inherited their wealth; sorry to burst your Marxist bubble..
Marxism’s penchant for: envy, jealousy, hatred, resentment, covetousness, and anger are truly dangerous and evil, and led to the murder of 100+ million people my Marxist regimes in the 20th century…
Why can’t people learn from history?
The Trump tax bill doubled the personal deduction and increased per child deductions. The liberals are talking about rolling those changes back so that they can have more money to spend on middle class welfare.
The government takes your money so that it can give it back to you. And most of the myrmidons are grateful.
BS MarkW: https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-tax-plan-doubled-standard-deduction-2017-9?r=US&IR=T
More BS MarkW:
https://www.fool.com/taxes/2017/10/02/why-trumps-doubled-standard-deduction-wont-do-yo-2.aspx
As usual Stein has no idea what he is talking about.
Both of your posts agree with me.
MarkW should read the links before showing how much he’s swallowed the propaganda/misleading talking points.
Your link didn’t even include the final numbers from the plan, but you’re certain (97% perhaps?) of the actual legislation. If you are interested in an honest take on it, then Riedl is your guy, or you can just spout the narrative.
The projection is strong with this one.
What you have just discovered is the continued class-warfare that lies under nearly all Liberal policy proposals. For the uber-wealthy, they won’t feel even a 70% marginal income tax rate all that much. They already have their mansions, yachts, sports cars, furs, summer homes, lake homes, island retreats, etc., and even a 70% marginal income tax rate will still leave them plenty to eat and buy the latest fashions and etc. At least part of the motivation for their supporting such confiscatory tax rates is to keep themselves amongst the 1%, and keep any of the climbers and wanna-bes from breaking through and joining them, and cluttering up their posh neighborhoods with McMansions and Chryslers and such trappings of the hoi-polloi. It’s those people in the next 4% below the top 1% who will be most hurt by this kind of a tax. And that is a feature, not a bug.
…and I should have added, after “…latest fashions…”, I should have said, “…, and they have already hired accountants who will advise them how to avoid or at least reduce the total amount of money they have to pay under the new tax rate.” There, fixed it.
“It’s going to require a lot of rapid change that we don’t even conceive as possible right now.”
And that’s because it isn’t possible now and won’t be possible ever. Will green left-thinking people ever grow a single bain cell that spurs a logical thought ?
If they did that, they wouldn’t be the Left now would they?
Umm,
Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, has been digging hard into AGW lately.
He could really use some input, he wants it, so lets educate him ?
Re Scott Adams…
Cannot sit through his videos, and he seems to have discontinued a printed form of his blogging.
Now the only way to hear what he has to say is to sit through long and interminable coffee klatch type powwows, complete with the sip-of-the-day, etc.
I like the guy, but forget it.
If he wants to stay interesting, he needs to at the very least do some editing of the seconds-long dead air between sentences. Maybe something like what Paul Joseph Watson does.
He has gotten lazy.
Long slow video is boring!
Almost all video is boring, unless there is some pertinent visual information to impart such as a demo. I used to read his blog every day. I never watch his videos.
I read way, way faster than people talk. I can refer, copy, store text. Video not so much.
People are becoming illiterate through excessive video use.
Agreed.
His written pieces were interesting.
And could be read in a few minutes.
45-50 minutes of him drinking coffee, wiping his nose, reading, and sniggering to, the comments scrolling past, and talking pretty darn slow when he is talking…um, not so much.
I hope he reads WUWT as a lurker or anonymous commenter and reads this and gets back to giving people, who are his fans, but who do not have the patience to watch a nearly hour long video of him sitting in front of his computer and drinking coffee, what they want.
+100 Zig
Oh my! Pity the poor billionaires forced to pay back some of what they have stolen from us–mostly with the help of huge government subsidies like the TARP bailout. My eyes are red with weeping. Or is it from laughing at the suckers on this site who defend those who are picking their pockets?
Keep in mind a rich person to a democrat is anyone with disposable income
First;
I’ll be the first to say that I’m not a Warren Buffet fan, but where do you think his billions are located? One big vault at the bank?
It is tied up in companies, which is also to say people.
He buys a mansion and a yacht?
How many people are employed by that supply chain of raw materials to manufacturers?
What happens when the uber rich stop investing and buying?
Worse yet, what if they go a full John Galt and have zero income for a year?
Sadly, it is the Marxist revolutionaries like AOC who get tired of waiting and start overturning their superiors in the party to make the change happen now.
When Reagan cut the top tax rate from 70% to (if I remember correctly) 25%, tax revenue collected went up dramatically.
Mark
This is what is missing in this debate, it’s real growth in Adjusted Gross Income. From 1945 to 2000 the Real Growth in Adjusted Gross Income was over 3%. From 2000 to 2016 Real Growth in AGI was ~1%. Real Growth under Reagan and Clinton was far superior to the years since 2000. The bigger the tax base the more taxes are collected. We have an entitlement structure predicated on post war growth of 3% but reality is 1%. Regardless of the top marginal tax rate if Income and thus the tax base, the spending will continue to outgrow the tax revenue.
The big Democratic myth is that Clinton balanced the budget by increasing the top marginal tax rate. No, he balanced the budget because of sustained growth in the Real Adjusted Gross Income, which at times exceeded 5-6%.
All tax revenue increased by $925 Billion under Clinton. Of that $200 Billion was SS Tax Revenue, $100 Billion Corporate Taxes, $100 Billion Misc Taxes, $100 Capital Gains and $100 Billion from the increase in Marginal Tax Rates. The rest was RealGrowth in Adjusted Gross
Income.
Some more perspective on how our economy stopped growing in 2000. From 1948 not a single year did the AGI drop below a previous year. Not one. Since 2000 there were 9 years up to 2016 where the AGI was below a previous year.
If the economy doesn’t start growing faster than 1% Real Growth it doesn’t matter what economic illiterates like the nitwit AOC want to do with the top marginal rate, the tax base can’t support the soon to be $5 Trillion budget.
That taxed money will go right back into the pockets of wind farm tycoons and car company CEOs through the same subsidies and bailouts.
So nothing will change, except that there’ll be constant blackouts on windless days, and the cars won’t be able to take you between cities without a ten hour recharge. Or more likely, there’ll be a revolt against those policies far before it gets to that.
If you tax the wealth (not income) of the richest 1% at a rate of 5% per annum (about what many ordinary folk pay on their houses) you generate over half a trillion per year– a tidy sum. If your green energy source is fusion, you will be paying less for energy. AOC’s green energy plan includes lots of new housing, hospitals and other infrastructure the US badly needs. Her one mistake is think the Democrats will back it. A new party is needed for that.
Cortez is anti nuclear and insists on 100% renewables, meaning wind and solar.
Also, we don’t have fusion, or technologies to replace all fossil energy in steel, cement and plastic production, other industrial processes, transportation, agriculture, etc with electricity and heat from a source like fusion.
And she isn’t proposing to invest in energy research, unless that was what she meant by green jobs.
And that tax will be a declining number and will never achieve the predicted amounts of revenue.
So you are suggesting that they must sell the companies an other assets that their wealth resides?
You are aware that the wealth isn’t a bunch of gold bars in a vault.
Although they may very well indeed have a bunch of gold bars in a vault.
If their assets are all sold off for the govt, thousands would lose their jobs.
If AOC and her ilk can’t get what they want through legislation, the Marxists of the past have always resorted to just taking it by force.
How about the many trust fund babies out there that have billions but generate no or little income? Many come from influential families that squash her like a bug.
Also you still need conventional energy and technology to build so called “green” energy generation facilities.
Eric, you are assuming that the rich won’t do anything to reduce their tax exposure.
Beyond that, envy is evil, desiring to steal from others just because they have more than you do will rot what little is left of your black little heart.
Eric Lerner,
how old are you?
15, or 16?
Tax wealth?
Every year?
5%?
Hahahaha…you must be crazy.
The wealth of those rich people whose tidy sum you want to want to get your greedy little paws on is almost 100% in such things as stocks and real estate holdings, and how do you take 5% of someone’s real estate every year?
Do you have any knowledge of financial markets, and what would happen to the price of stocks if people like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg, etc, were forced to sell 5% of their stock every year? For these people, nearly all of their wealth is in the stock of their companies, and is not part of the actively traded “float”. For them to sell 5% of it would crash the stock price. But they would not do it…they would leave the country rather than pay billions per year in a wealth tax so you and your ilk could spend their “tidy sum(s)” on giveaways for the indolent do-nothings who sit around fantasizing about how they would like to spend the money of the people who create wealth and jobs and profitable enterprises.
Fusion?
When did she say anything about fusion?
Newsflash to Eric…there is no such thing as fusion power, it is at least decades off, and may in fact never, ever, be a reality.
She is advocating for the most expensive power sources we know how to create, and they are intermittent and completely unsuitable for base load power, so must be 100% backed up by fossil fuel generation on permanent standby.
Do you ever read anything factual?
If you tax the wealth (not income) of the richest 1% at a rate of 5% per annum (about what many ordinary folk pay on their houses) you generate over half a trillion per year– a tidy sum
spoken like someone who has no clue about economics or human nature. Where exactly do you think the richest 1% keep their wealth? It’s not in their mattress or even in a bank account just waiting to be withdrawn. It’s invested in companies, real estate, and other investments. As others pointed out, forcing them to withdraw their investments will destroy companies (putting people out of work) & tank stock prices (meaning your “tidy sum” rapidly shrinks as the value of their wealth rapidly drops alongside the stock prices. But it’s not that bad (for the wealthy, even worse for the government that tries your disastrous idea) , the wealthy will just up stakes and move out of the country the second your tax is passed (they’ll have started preparations for the move the second it’s proposed) so as to avoid the tax, ooops there goes your “tidy sum” out the door. Now, not only don’t you have their wealth to tax, you also aren’t getting their income tax that you previously did thus causing government revenues to dramatically decrease. Only you still have the same government expenditures to support meaning you either have to raise taxes on the middle and lower classes (who can’t just move as easily as the wealthy can) to make up for it or increase the debt substantially or else cut spending greatly.
If your green energy source is fusion, you will be paying less for energy.
AOC is not advocating for fusion. Nuclear of any kind is verboten and not considered green where she is concerned. What she does advocate in the way of green energy is wind and solar. the worst forms of energy generation (as far as efficiency and reliability is concerned).
AOC’s green energy plan includes lots of new housing, hospitals and other infrastructure the US badly needs.
Then propose an infrastructure bill. She could get Trump on board (he advocated for infrastructure spending on the campaign trail) as well as a number of other Republicans along side the Dems. It could be an opportunity for bi-partisanship. But not if you tie it to green nonsense.
Eric Lerner
Which would mean, you as a lefty, don’t condone government subsidies.
Welcome to the right wing.
Microsoft employs 131,000 people, UK auto 600,000 people, British Airways 60,000, Apple directly employs 115,000 and indirectly 627,000 Amazon employs 566,000 worldwide.
Your contribution is?
Its a free world unless 1984 becomes a reality because of the boneheaded ramblings of knuckleheads like Cortez. No one insists you buy Beyonce records or Taylor Swifts attempts at vocality. So seeing as your money can stay in your pocket until you choose to spend I am at a loss to understand the relevence of your comment. Please enlighten me?
The middle class pays all taxes, Eric; whether directly or through increased costs of goods and services.
Technically that is incorrect unless they are self employed.
The middle class are more likely to be employed by a corporation that provides income above their take home pay to cover taxes. The customer who buys product either generated that wealth through transformation of materials (business owner) or was employed by another.
Ultimately, it is the business owner that actually pays the taxes.
It is only the business owner who must pay their employees extra so they can pay income taxes.
All money one earns is derived from the success of a business owner.
The same is true for State/Federal employees.
If they were exempted from income taxes they would not see a difference in pay and there would be no change to State/Federal revenue. Gov’t employees paying income taxes does allow the Gov’t to increase taxes that they ultimately give back to themselves. Pretty clever in my opinion.
Without the sixteenth amendment, the Federal Government would not be able to collect income taxes.
By the way, I am not a business owner, but have served as a manufacturing engineer for many years now.
Actually, it is the customers that pay the taxes, through higher prices. As for government employees paying taxes, everyone should pay some tax. If you vote, you should pay taxes. All of a sudden a vote for a spend-and-tax-and-spend D takes some thought, doesn’t it!
Interesting you use the term “should”. I’m interested why you think anyone “should” have the product of their labor stolen from them.
Tax is theft. It can be nothing else, as it is not voluntary. If it was voluntary, it would not be tax. Tax takes from makers, via violence (illegitimate initiation of force), then redistributes it to benefit mostly the takers and to some degree us makers. It matters not how much, if any, good you do with stolen money, it remains stolen money that was confiscated through violence or coercion.
Anyone who is not in possession of 100% of the product of their labor is by definition, a slave. Whether there are varying degrees of slavery is irrelevant. You either own yourself (and by extension the production of your thoughts, emotions, actions, words) or someone else lays claim to said production. It is a zero-sum game. It is either/or. Anything that lies in between the extremes necessitates slavery.
You can dress it up and make all the justifications, excuses, and mental gymnastics you need to comfort yourself, but those terms are correct and there is no other explanation that is an accurate appraisal of taxation.
So in light of reality, why do you believe it is acceptable to steal from your fellow citizen to provide for services that benefit you and others, or to provide for things that you think are in the best interest of everyone?
I think I misused zero-sum. whatever. It is either or.
also, for those who think our nation wouldn’t exist because no one would pay, look at the gofundme for the wall, or Christian services that feed the poor, or any other of the myriad of ways people spend their excess money when they care about something.
People spend their money on what they care about. Think about how much money would be available to spend on Defense rather than offense, if the government wasn’t giving away our stolen money to foreign nations, the UN, etc..
But, after 100 or so years of state indoctrination via stolen property tax money, even the most staunch conservatives seem to think taxation is acceptable. Imagine that.
Matthew, as long as there is government, there are going to be taxes. Unless you are advocating anarchy, taxes will always be a fact of life.
As long as there have to be taxes they should be as broad based as possible. Demanding that one subsection of society bear all the cost of government is just another form of slavery.
@MatthewDRobnick January 5, 2019 at 6:31 pm
I agree with you, taxation is always coercive. I couldn’t make it all the way through the rest of your boring manifesto, but I will tell you this. I would be an anarchist if I thought everyone would/could behave, I know I can 😉 , but not everyone will so there must be some government, and that government must be compensated in some way, so therefore there must also be taxes. Always. I’m merely pointing out that there must be some feedback mechanism. A person who pays no taxes to any representative government will find it very easy to vote for representation who promises to confiscate 100% of the income of everyone who pays taxes. Easy choice. I include even the welfare queens(kings) who have always leeched off the government yet are still allowed to vote (I like the idea that a citizen must be a property-holder to vote, that used to be in the Constitution, what happened to it?), if there is a tax increase even they should see a result in their own spending power, no matter where that money comes from.
@Red.
Do the customers actually pay the taxes?
Imagine if a state employee comes and buys one of my widgets.
Where did the money come from for that purchase?
They did not generate that wealth, it came from someone else.
All wealth begins with the transformation of materials. Be it animal vegetable or mineral. Business owners transform those materials until you get the final product.
This is why a negative trade imbalance is so harmful.
The wealth generated is spent in another country, not at home to support local citizens.
Remittances from foreign guest workers has the same result.
Money is removed from the local economy and the velocity of money decreases.
This is what makes it so curious why our politicians hate tariffs so much.
Unfortunately because we have had so low tariffs for so long, raising them any amount will create pain.
@jim G January 6, 2019 at 9:50 am
Yes, the customer always pays the taxes, in higher prices, it doesn’t matter where their money comes from, that’s the wrong side of the ledger anyway. That’s why I said every voter should pay taxes, it doesn’t matter where their money comes from, so that a tax increase/decrease will cause a proportional decrease/increase in their buying power… they can get the LTE with the bun-warmers car if the tax declines, or they have to stick with the LE model instead with manually adjusting mirrors if the tax increases. There should be some consequences of their vote, in other words.
The company that makes the widgit will have to show some profit or they won’t stay in business, and that profit will have to meet some minimum threshold to convince investors that is the place to invest, otherwise they can take their money and go elsewhere. Pretty much the company HAS to pass that cost (increased taxes) on to their customers, or else the company goes broke and closes its doors and you the consumer cannot buy that widgit anymore, at least not from that manufacturer.
I’m not sure where that stuff about tariffs and foreign guest workers came from, neither has anything to do with who pays the tax.
Another way to look at the trade imbalance is…they send us stuff, we send them paper.
Dollars that are sent overseas have to come back to the US, because the US is the only country that accepts greenbacks as legal currency.
[snip – Mr. Keating, STOP IT – final warning -Anthony]
Jim G, the customer always pays the taxes, in higher prices.
you are flat out wrong when you said “They did not generate that wealth, it came from someone else.” There is no wealth without work/labor being used to generate it.
All wealth begins with the transformation of materials.
And that transformation of materials does not happen without the application of labor. so the answer to your question “Where did the money come from for that purchase?” is “the customer’s work/labor was compensated for with this stuff we call money”, so ultimately it’s the customer’s work/labor that is paying the higher prices that are the result of taxation.
neither Gates, Jobs or Buffet ever stole a dime from you … don’t be an idiot … you sound like AOC …
I’d have all the money in the world, if it wasn’t for those meddling Other People stealing it all!
Who would you rather spend Bill Gates money. Him or the Government?
Bill Clinton once gave a speech in which he stated that he wanted to give the people a tax cut, but that he was afraid the people wouldn’t spend the money responsibly and that would hurt the economy.
Most liberals are convinced that government can do everything better than the average man could.
Class hatred is strong in the economic illiterates.
So does that also include the UAW that was bailed out as part of the GM bankruptcy? Let me guess, that’s different because reasons.
For those who have made, and continue to make, $billions solely from government handouts, subsidies, bailouts, etc., may the fleas of a thousand camels infest their armpits. At the same time, if it’s available and somebody is gonna get it, and they have the ability/capability of scooping it up (legally), they’d be foolish not to, wouldn’t they? For that matter, why didn’t you? If you lack the ambition to pick up a quarter off the sidewalk, don’t be hatin’ on the person who did.
While there are Bernie Madoffs in the world they are a minority even of the wealthy. You may hate Bill Gates, and have thousands of logical reasons why you should and I can’t refute a one of them, but he did build a company that has delivered a product, and continues to deliver a product. Why didn’t you? Likewise with Jeff Bezos, he saw the opportunity in direct-sales, and built an amazing delivery system and a phenomenal website to take in the orders, so he built it, you didn’t. Why didn’t you? Want me to go on?
Oh my! Pity the poor billionaires forced to pay back some of what they have stolen from us
No, they didn’t steal it from us. They came up with products and services that we eagerly bought. They also employed us, giving us money in exchange for our labor making it easier to buy those products and services (back in the old days you’d have to trade a chicken a few pigs to get a new wagon or plow, lots easier to trade a few scraps of paper with presidents portraits on them). Well I say “employed us” but I have my doubts that you’ve ever been employed based on the naïve socialist nonsense that you post.
Great plan. Can’t wait to see endorsements from Soros & Steyer, not to mention Bloomberg.
Oh these guys are prog philanthropists, buying elections is tax deductible. I’ve hoped to no avail that Trump would shut down this political machinery as not charitable as defined. He may yet do. Bloomberg, Soros, Steyer, Rockefeller Brothers and a bunch more owe the government a few 100B in taxes tgat should not have been foregone with their lawless dodges and traitorous subversion of the US gov. Hillary should cough up 75% of her family enrichment activities billed as a charity.
Gary, you may enjoy this particular podcast. Brett does fantastic research.
The entire series is great but this one focuses on the Rockefeller/Carnegie/Rhodes overthrow of the school system, from trivium based to memorization.
https://schoolsucksproject.com/226-how-the-truth-becomes-illegal-part-2-barometer/
Political contributions are not tax deductible.
She is not old enough to know better.
I’ve proposed increasing the age requirements for federal elective office to 35 for the House, 45 for the Senate and 65 for the President.
That is really dumb MarkW. You can enlist/get drafted at 18 and die in combat right? Most 16 year olds with any kind of job pay taxes right?
No one can get drafted, since there has not been a draft in the US since 1973, which according to some calculations was something like a very long time ago.
You can enlist, but not get drafted at 18. At 18 you have to enroll. During the Viet Nam War, those whose draft status was 1A and aged 18 1/2 to 25 would be drafted oldest first until that Draft Board’s quota was filled. Very few 18 year olds were drafted, if any.
Since the implementation of the Draft Lottery and elimination of most deferrals, you would be eligible for the draft at age 20 or the first year after your deferral ended (usually the current semester of college, or senior year). Each succeeding year your chances of being drafted decline. I still remember my draft lottery number.
Sounds to me like MarkW is afraid Ocasio-Cortez could defeat Donald in 2020.
Tell me, are you this clueless in real life?
First off, she can’t run in 2020, she’s too young. Perhaps that’s why you are so upset about the age limitations of the constitution, it’s preventing your idol from running for president.
If you think she could win, you are even more delusional than your posts make you seem. She can win in NYC, that’s it. I would love to see her run for higher office. The more people see her the more she hurts the Democrats.
Any socialist running in 2020 will be massively defeated unless the ballot counting is corrupted.
Sounds to me like MarkW is afraid Ocasio-Cortez could defeat Donald in 2020.
Sounds to me like Steve Heins is clueless about what the US constitution says about the age of elective office holders. Section 1 of Article Two of the United States Constitution sets forth the eligibility requirements for serving as president of the United States thusly:
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States
AOC won’t be 35 until 2024. She is ineligible to run for President in 2020. So even if she was to run for president once she’s eligible, she wouldn’t be running against Trump (who would either be finishing his second term and thus would no longer be eligible to run again, or would have been out of office for 4 years and, at age 78, would unlikely be considering another run).
As usual, Steve substitutes hatred for thinking.
Are you actually arguing that anyone who pays taxes should be able to run for president?
Or are you just lashing out because your shortcomings have been exposed for all to see, again.
If MarkW had his way, and made it a requirement that one must be 65 to be president, then George Washintington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, John Quicy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William H. Harrison, John Tyler, James Polk, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, Abe Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, William Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calin Cooledge, Herbert Hover, Franklin D Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Bush the father, Bush the son, and Barack Obama would not qualify to hold office.
…
Funny thing is both Trump and Reagan would be disqualified.
Ooops…. that last line should read: “Funny thing is both Trump and Reagan would be qualified”
So some want the age limits reduced or eliminated, and some want them increased.
That is the starting point in the negotiations.
As a middle ground, and since there is no chance that a constitutional amendment would be voted on and ratified to do either of these, I suggest we compromise and keep it like it is and drop the subject.
I’m guessing that SteveH isn’t bright enough to notice what has happened to life expectancy over the last 200 years.
Then again, SteveH isn’t bright enough to notice when he’s in a hole.
SteveH, Reagan was easily the greatest president of the last century, and Trump while imperfect, is head and shoulders above most of his recent successors.
MarkW
A maximum age limit of 65 would be better. All those dinosaurs at the top of the parties disgust me.
They are no longer doing what is best for the people. They are only trying to keep their nemesis’ from scoring points, by all means necessary! And they will not live to see the (un)intended consequences of their actions.
RLu, the problem is that they have been in politics since they graduated from college.
A higher minimum age would require most of them to spend some time in the real world prior to entering politics.
That is also a good argument for term-limits. 8 years and go back to doing something useful.
But the blighters will never vote to put themselves out of a job.
The two combined would be pretty close to perfect.
I’ve proposed increasing the age requirements for federal elective office to 35 for the House, 45 for the Senate and 65 for the President.
The current bracket is 25 house, 30 Senate, 35 President. At 25, you can have spent young entire life in school and never spent a day earning a living in a real job, paying rent/mortgage, and putting food on your table for the efforts of your labor. So while I don’t know about your stated age brackets, I do agree that our elected officials do need some real world experience under their belts before running for office. I think I’d bump those up to be 30, 35 senate and 40 president. old enough to have some experience but no so old as to not give a damn.
and her plan only affects about 1100 or so people in US so would not fund anything really. suddenly that 10M figure would drop to 1M then to 500K just to try to pay for everything she wants to give away.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-how-many-people-make-more-than-50-million-per-year-in-wages-2018-10-18
The original income tax was set at 3% and only affected about 100 people, mostly in NY and CA.
I have not clicked on your link, but I notice the title includes “…In Wages…” There are many types of income other than wages, particularly for someone who is wealthy. I think I heard somewhere that Bill Gates has effectively “retired” and thus his wages become $0, he would not appear on that list (if it’s true that he retired from Microsoft), yet his income last year, just off the return on his investments, was undoubtedly huge! Can you find a list of total income? Most likely not, returns on many investments, for example an ownership in a privately held company, are not public information.
“Once you get to, like, the tippy tops …”.
=============================================
Does she think two-year-olds vote or is she assuming it is typical mental age of her constituency?
The moment is using her. There’s nothing upstairs. She’s eye candy.
If it’s a “movemen” then the term “bowel” should become before it… Truth in advertising.
icisil January 5, 2019 at 3:09 pm
“The moment is using her. There’s nothing upstairs. She’s eye candy.”
I beg to differ about EYE candy. There is certainly something about those eyes- pure insanity. I want to puke. If I had the opportunity and was single, I’d still pass. And trust me, I’m a total pig. She also looks like skeletor with that jaw line
She’s cute enough, but I prefer women with a brain.
Co2isnotevil, you must be one of the guys that likes to stick his dick in between a girl’s ears.
Give him his due, Skeletor has been doing some adverts recently for Money SuperMarket.
They’re totally epic.
E.g.
The moment is using her. There’s nothing upstairs. She’s eye crazy.
fixed that for you 🙂
Is there a difference between “tippy tops” and ‘tippy toes’?
Now I’m going to tickle you if you don’t cover up, Ocasio. I’ll tuck you in. And, I’ll keep the boogeyman away. He can’t walk on his tippy toes. He almost makes as much noise as you.
In the golden years of capitalism the max income tax rate was 90%. Nobody wanted income, they wanted capital gains so kept money in their company and expanded in the US. No point in huge CEO bonuses that would be taxed 90% , but might as well pay workers a decent wage to keep them happy and productive rather than pay a higher corporate tax by squeezing them
Before his death JFK was looking to tax capital outflows to keep jobs in the US in exchange for a lower income tax rate. After his death only the income tax rate dropped and capital could still be exported with jobs at no cost
Now corporate managers can fleece the company and shareholders (esp those registered in Deleware where most have a PO box head office ) with sky high salaries and bonuses. They can move production outside the US to pay workers less and only pay an 11% corporate tax (half what they pay in US) and not even that if they pay an equivalent amount of tax to the host country (meaning they pay 0 US tax)
Now I dont buy into a green economy but this neoliberal experiment is working only for the 1 percent and those countries who receive the 1% ers tax savings in investments into their own economy
The 90% or so tax rate began in WWII under FDR. IIRC, it was applied to the top 5 – 10% of wage earners. Granted, there was a real problem being addressed right the Axis powers and helping real allies.
Mickey Mantle, the New York Yankee great, was the first $100,000 baseball player. He was in the 90% bracket so only realized $10,000. How horrible was that.
“He was in the 90% bracket so only realized $10,000. ”
I don’t think it worked like that. The 90% rate was only applied to the upper tranches or slices of one’s income, not to all of it.
Exactly right.
Those are marginal tax rates.
So what if they pay only 11%? That money is reinvested in their companies and generates economic growth. It’s not like they are Scrooge McDuck swimming in swimming pools of gold.
You’d be amazed how many leftists actually believe that Scrooge McDuck is a documentary.
LOL…I know…seriously.
Everyone knows gold is too dense to swim in…it would break your hands if you even try.
they sunbath while lying on top of it.
Duh!
With all of the deductions available at the time, the only people who paid 90% were those who’s accountants made a mistake.
BTW, I just love it when economic know nothings declare that other people are being over paid. As if they know anything about how to run a business.
It’s just your classic class hatred towards anyone who dares to be more successful than they are.
We tried 98% tax in the UK around the 1960’s.
It bombed. Commonly referred to as the brain drain where everyone with an ounce of intelligence and earning potential fled the country.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Fortunately people of my vintage have that gift because we have seen all this before.
socialism doesn’t work. No if’s, but’s or however’s, it simply doesn’t work. Not in developing countries, not in developed countries. It’s a failure wherever it has been tried and it only takes a little hindsight to understand that.
“If five percent appears too small, be thankful I don’t take all, ’cause I’m the taxman”
Taxman – The Beatles
The problem with taxing the rich is that their investments are what provide jobs – they can live anywhere – tax them too heavily and they up stakes, typically relocating their investments to where they can better keep and eye on them or generate a better return.
The laws of economics are as inexorable as physics – but socialists continue to believe they can defy economic gravity.
Britain practically went broke with that socialist experiment.
Practically?
Look where they are now.
It seems to me they have never recovered, and that period was a particularly steep part of the slide down from where they were to where they are.
Cos that had worked so well in the past…
This was in response to a 95% top bracket tax in the UK.
Did mega-earners like the beatles, rolling stones, sean connery pay up or leave the UK? Most just left.
In reality, most nega-earners can afford accountants to prevent taxes anyway. This would hit the nearly rich and make them not bother, or leave the country.
The Beatles, after being the most popular group of musicians in the history of the world, were so broke that they never even were able or willing to buy back the rights to their own music catalog, which they had signed away early in their career.
And in 1985 Michael Jackson bought the entire Beatles catalogue, and thousands of others totaling more than 4000 songs, for 47.5 million dollars.
In a few short years he licensed songs such as Revolution (to Nike for $500,000 and not an exclusive license either) for millions of dollars, and ten years later Sony paid Jackson $95,000,000 for a 50% stake in that 4000 song catalogue (which did not include any of Jackson’s own songs), plus gave him a 50% interest in the entire Sony music catalogue! By 2005 that catalogue, which Jackson owed half of, after getting paid back twice his original investment, not counting all the millions he had already made from licensing deals on Beatles songs alone, was an astounding 200,000 songs! By 2012, the ANNUAL income from those songs was over $1,250,000,000! Just from licensing and royalties…and they still owned the songs!
The entire shebang that Jackson had parlayed for, while earning gigantic profits on his original investment totaling many hundreds of percent in returns, is by some estimates worth over $5 billion and that was 5 years ago. With a net income exceeding well over half a billion per year, that seems very much like a crazy low estimate. Who would sell property, grossing 1.25 billion/year, for 5 billion?
That is what high taxes does to people, makes them so broke they have nothing to invest, and so other people who do have money to invest, do so, and make huge profits, which BTW wind up providing far more tax dollars in the end.
None of those taxes went to the UK BTW…except for the amounts that Paul got and paid taxes on, assuming he still lives in the UK (Paul and Lennon’s estate got 25% each, Jackson 50%).
That catalogue created gigantic wealth and generated huge tax revenue for the US though.
Maybe just as well…the dumb asses like Paul McCartney would never have stooped so low as to license their songs for mere money.
In balance, it must be noted they were perhaps the least savvy business people ever born.
Paul and Yoko were several times and on separate occasions given first right of refusal to the catalogue before Jackson snapped it up. Either of them could have had it for 40 million or less, even as little as a year before Jackson wound up getting the catalogue.
But that did not stop Paul from going ape-shit with rage when the person who did buy the songs, licensed them to make some money on them. And whining about could he please just get back the rights to some ones he really wanted.
Finally, although he owned 100% of the rights to his own songs and 50% of the Sony catalogue of 200,000 songs which included nearly the entire Beatles catalogue and all of their big hits, Jackson was such an incredible waster of money he died with over 500 million in debts on loans he had taken out using the catalogue as collateral. But after he died in 2009, the people managing his estate paid off those debts and by 2014 had brought in an additional $600 million in revenue. So his estate continues to be worth billions, and much (most?) of it is due to his savvy purchase, and subsequent licensing, of the Beatles catalogue which to get it he also bought those other 3500 plus songs.
And as a final bit, one might wonder how it came to be that Jackson was so clued in to the profits to be gained by buying rights to songs? Simples…a few years previous to his purchase:
“In 1982, while recording the song “Say, Say, Say” together in London, Michael briefly lived with Paul and Linda McCartney. After dinner one night, Paul retrieved a thick leather book from a shelf. The book, Paul explained, listed every song right that he had purchased in the previous decade. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, Paul bragged that in the last year alone, he had made over $40 million in royalties ($96 million in 2013 dollars) from his song rights. When Paul was done speaking, Michael looked at him and said: “Some day I’m gonna own your songs.” Paul laughed, and responded: “Great, good joke!”
The best argument against socialism is that it has been tried.
It is better to live in a society where the bread waits on you, hence no food lines. Rather than you wait on the bread, hence Venezuela and the former USSR.
For some reason, that puts me in mind of Bizarro World where doing something correctly is a capital offense.
I met a man who had recently moved to the US from Romania.
This was around the mid 90’s.
He shared that he went to the grocery store and was stunned by the displays of butter.
He spent about 10-15 minutes just staring because there were so many choices.
In Romania, you simply had butter.
No difficult choices.
It could be that The Donald has cleverly forced the Democrats into taking more leftist positions that will be very unpopular in Middle America. link I know it won’t happen but I hope OC will run for President. LOL
If they aren’t really clever, the Democrat party could be in for a long time in the political wilderness. They threw working Americans under the bus and I’m feeling vengeful.
Oh yes, she is obviously Democratic Presidential Candidate material, please, please, run this train wreck!!! The debates would be priceless. So hey Democrats, pedal to the metal, lets make this dumpster fire hot!!
Don’t you have to be 35 or 40 to hold the title of POTUS? She is 29 or maybe 30 now, very immature and kinda wet behind the ears to even be in Congress. Another Climate Barby in the making. But she is a good dancer.
25 House
30 Senate
35 President
I do not know about good dancer. Compared to most guys…yeah, that she is.
Compared to other young women?
Nope, not even decent.
She did, at least in those days, have a great pair of…um…feet.
Yeah, feet.
And an interestingly large mouth.
But those Mr Ed sized choppers are rather worrisome…
You must be 35, she won’t be until 2024, so it’ll be a wait before she can run.
OC can run for Pres, maybe in 6 years….when she’s 35, if she gets re-elected.
Given her district, getting re-elected is a given. Especially if she keeps talking about seizing other people’s money so it can be spent on her constituents.
Of the people elected President of the US, only James Garfield in 1880 was elected having only being a member of the House of Representatives as prior experience.
17 were previously governors, 16 were senators, 14 were vice presidents, 8 were holding no office for at least a year when elected, 8 had been cabinet secretaries, and 5 had never been elected to any public office before being elected President (Zachary Taylor, 1848, career military man, major general, war hero; U.S. Grant, who was elected because his initials were US :-); Herbert Hoover, an engineer and businessman,who had been Sec of Commerce; Dwight Eisenhower, who was elected because it was anticipated he would give the best and yet least heeded farewell address in history…and Donald J. Trump).
I would give Ocrazio Cortez, and being very generous here, zero percent chance of being elected President in 6 years. Mainly because the electorate of the US is not, collectively speaking, a pack of silly jackasses.
BTW Garfield was a major general who served with Union army and fought in the historic battles at Middle Creek, Shiloh, and Chickamauga.
He was a war hero.
He had been elected to the Ohio state senate, and held several leadership positions in the US H. of R. including Chairing of the Financial Services committee, Appropriations committee, Military Affairs committee, and he served as his parties leader in the House.
And he was also an ordained minister.
Although it must be said that Ocrazio Cortez, despite seemingly being an economic illiterate, does have a business degree, and put it to work during a grueling run as a bartender immediately before running for office.
I think she is confusing earnings versus wealth.
I’ll pick on Jeff Bezos as an example. Through stock Grant’s, investments, and other means, he is worth a lot of money. However, until he sells his stocks and other investments, he hasn’t made nearly as much money. Taxing on earnings and income is how the government gets money from us, not on our value.
It’s a different story in Spain, where there’s the ‘patrimonio’, a wealth tax.
There are hefty allowances, so a single person wouldn’t pay until their assets reach about a million euros. But the rate goes up steadily to 2.5% on taxable wealth over 10.6 m euros.
Not nice at all.
That must be why Spain is such a hotbed of wealth creation, and has so many rich people sticking around and creating jobs and additional wealth with their money.
Redistributive change.
Climate Change meet Socialism. Best friends for life, albeit a short one. This kind of talk should put both to bed quickly.
Occasional-Cortex demands all manner of things which Occasional-Cortex does not have the faintest idea what those things entail.
AOC = Hugo Chavez en una falda.
Old Popeye wouldn’t have a clue about economics.
How can someone so thick get voted in.
Her opponent in the primary had that idea … didn’t bother showing up to debate …
now we’re stuck with her … or rather , the Dems are .
Only 4% of eligible voters voted for her. 94% didn’t care enough to vote.
94% couldn’t read the ballot, in English or Spanish.
I had to check this because it seemed very low, and even then, it is still terribly low at ~11.5%, just not quite 4%. The real takeaway should be that this district is ~46% hispanic. So these are low information voters who likely voted because of name recognition. Another very poignant example of how critical this wall is:
If you leave your crap country to come to here for opportunity, but you don’t leave your worldview that created that crap in the first place, you will turn the greatness into the same crap you left.
This shouldn’t even be a political debate, but rather one of logic and cultural protection. Aye, my parents would likely have voted for this numbskull.
https://nypost.com/2018/06/28/most-voters-stayed-home-for-stunning-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-win/
46% is the percentage of total people in the district, not voters and not people who voted.
There are also 18.4% white, 16.2% Asian, 11.4% Black, and 4.2% native and “other”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York%27s_14th_congressional_district
Interestingly, there are somewhat more foreign born people in the district than people born in the US, although if you add in people born in US territories and islands and people born abroad to US citizen parents, that tips the scale slightly towards natives, as the are collectively referred to in census data.
In any case, trying to make the case that one can determine the amount of information people have by their ethnicity sounds beyond the pale to me. Maybe stick to less ethnically prejudicial statements like pointing out that most people I the US have less info than they ought to have before voting for who will run the country.
https://www.census.gov/mycd/?st=36&cd=14
Each congressional district should represent about 703,103 people.
That is the population of the US divided by the number of house seats, or 318.9 million divided by 435.
The actual number of people in the district is listed as 691,813 as of current US census dept data:
https://www.census.gov/mycd/?st=36&cd=14
This is people, not voters, and not people of voting age, and not registered voters.
According to Real Clear Politics current data, some 141,122 votes were tallied for the four candidates on the ballot.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/live_results/2018/state/ny/house/
Of these, Ocrazio Cortez got 110,318.
According to http://www.elections.ny.gov/EnrollmentCD.html, there are 222,403 active democrats registered in NY 14th congressional district, another 19,000+ inactive reg dems, and 364,062 active registered total voters in the district.
So just under half of democrats that are active and registered in that district voted for her, and only about 30% of the active registered voters voted for her.
So, at minimum, if you count all of the people who are in the district, over 15% voted for her.
Of those registered and active, over 3 in 10 did so.
Those are the actual numbers computed from reliable sources.
I’ve followed politics for 60 years and I’ve never seen a freshman in Congress suck the air out of coverage like her. I think she is a whack job, but I’m fascinated by how much attention the media is giving her. The MSM quote her because they adore her and share her ideology. She will be quotable machine Duce for the next 2 years.
With all that will be going on, it will be a 24/7 circus in DC.
Seems unlikely to be boring.
Tedious, infuriating, eyeball rolling, nausea inducing, stomach churning, downright sickening…maybe.
But not boring.
Her soundbites are like watching the Dallas wide receiver getting injured today.
You know you do not really want to see it, but cannot just look away or turn it off before the clip plays.
ICYMI:
https://youtu.be/Rgch1TRmERw
The real election in that district was the primary, the general election doesn’t count in all democrat districts like that. AOC won the primary with about 15,000 votes which is about 4% of eligible voters in the district
BTW…regarding voter turnout…if even 90% of all the registered voters who are NOT democrats in that district had voted, and voted against her…she would have lost by tens of thousands of votes.
When you do not vote, you are electing to let a bunch of morons and assorted socialist cretins, and all the rest, who may be total jackasses, decide who will be representing you in congress and elsewhere in our government.
As usual, the number of people who decide to let others decide for them are the majority.
Rather than alienating her citizens she should try GOOGLE for size and clip its wings.
GOOGLE should be all in favour of saving the planet and she can show them how.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/googles-dutch-sandwich-shielded-245-billion-from-tax-in-2016-20180103-h0cq2g.html
Just a tip,its washed through Delaware, USA.
‘Alphabet’s Google moved 15.9 billion euros ($24.5 billion) to a Bermuda shell company in 2016, regulatory filings in the Netherlands show – saving the company billions of dollars in taxes that year.’
70% of $24.5 Billion, now when will Trump start thinking of that.
It could build a wall or startup nuke with Bill Gates, to solve the ‘climate change’ wars.
Time to send in the Feds.
2.74 As noted earlier, the above investigations are conducted by TIGTA’s OI whose
staff are Federal law enforcement officers and possess both the capability and the
broad range of powers including the authority to carry firearms, to execute and serve
search warrants, and to make arrests.126 In addition, TIGTA does not need to obtain
permission from the US Department of Justice to commence its investigations.
https://cdn.tspace.gov.au/uploads/sites/16/2018/10/181018_-_IGT_review_-_ATOs_Fraud_Co.pdf
The screen-caps always show her like a deer in the headlights.
She must have said something of substance to get elected, right ?
Substance = Not an absent, clueless old white guy in a majority ethnic district.
Actually, the pic of her at the top of this post allows her to look a little less clueless than most pics of her that I have seen.
She’s actually envious of Nancy Pelosi’s house and wants one just like it. She’s operating on the “squeaky wheel gets the oil” premise and will soon be inundated with lobbyists for particular causes, to whom she will be able to rent out her vote.
As an erstwhile boss if mine used to say at pay rise time, “sometimes the squeaky wheel just gets replaced!”
I always liked Minsc’s (from the “Baldur’s Gate” game) “the squeaky wheel gets the kick”.
I don’t mind the idea of increasing taxes on the uber-wealthy. I don’t care if they pay a disproportionate share of income taxes…they should. And it helps make up for all of the regressive taxes middle and lower-class folks pay, tax loopholes and laws they can take advantage of, etc.
But let’s put it towards something useful, not her stupid ideas.
Even under a flat tax, those who make more will pay more. It should be about what’s fair and progressive tax rates are definitely not fair, while a flat tax is the most fair. Just because someone learned the skills to make more money then others, doesn’t mean that they should be paying disproportionally more taxes.
Why should someone be forced to pay more, just because they have more?
Do you really believe success should be punished?
As to these so called regressive taxes, please name them.
SS and Medicare aren’t regressive, they are a flat tax.
The cap on SS doesn’t matter because what you get back from SS is determined by how much you put in.
Fuel taxes and such are usage taxes, you are taxed based on how much you use, not how much you have, as it should be.
PS: I’m willing to be that in your mind “something useful” works out to, “something I benefit from”.
MarkW shows how little he knows about taxes.
…
“Why should someone be forced to pay more, just because they have more?”
…
The answer is they are not. If a multi-billionaire earns no INCOME the pay no income tax.
…
MarkW is unable to distinguish “income” from “wealth.”
You are the only one fixated on the difference between wealth and income.
No doubt because you know that you don’t have an actual argument, so distraction and screeching is the best you can do.
My argument is that there is a difference between wealth and income. What argument do you have?
Steve’s argument in short:
If a slave does no work, then he’s not really a slave.
Seems reasonable.
Agreed tsk tsk, it’s kind of like, If a wife does not f..k, then she’s not really a wife.
How witty of Steve. He has mastered the schools of marital and economic comedy.
But let’s continue with your “argument” (I’m working on being kind to those less capable this year).
Can you explain how income does not become wealth? Apparently you think that occasional cortex’s plan is A-OK because it focuses on the former. Is there perhaps some special set of laws where you live that prohibit you from spending a dollar earned through capital gains while allowing you to spend one “earned” through what I suspect is your government job? Or perhaps you think that a nominal increase in capital gains is equivalent to a real increase regardless of the rate of inflation.
“Can you explain how income does not become wealth? “
…
Easy
…
Joe Six-Pack has a job. He has a good income. Joe Six-Pack has a lot of expenses. Joe Six-Pack lives paycheck to paycheck. Joe Six-Pack has nothing in his bank account, owns a six year old car, rents his home and has lots of credit card debt.
So Steve, er Joe Six-Pack, can’t manage money and consumes everything he has and therefore should be rewarded. Let’s call him the grasshopper. Meanwhile Tsk Tsk defers his gratification and invests and therefore deserves to be punished. Let’s call him the ant.
See, Mark’s original question asked why someone who has more should be faced to pay more. So let’s continue with your grasshopper defense: As long as I spend every penny I make, then I should have to pay taxes. I mean, that *is* your argument for Joe. Or are you now going to claim that there’s a threshold above which that no longer applies? If you do that, then you have to admit that you completely failed to answer Mark’s original question.
I can’t wait for the witty reply.
should=shouldn’t (obviously)
That sounds of crickets you hear? that’s Steve’s reply.
As far as “fair” goes, possibly the most “fair” way to collect taxes would be to tax it when you spend it (one of our Founding Fathers said all taxes are unfair, but a consumption tax may be the least unfair, but I can’t find the quote now). First a disclaimer, I favor a federal sales tax only if it REPLACES the income tax, do NOT give the government another tax stream to gleefully waste just as congress did in the ’90s when there was a budget surplus! The primary advantage is, the tax can be avoided by simply not purchasing. Secondly, it is more difficult to dodge than an income tax, something that becomes important for those with under-the-table income (yes I mean drug dealers and pimps and the like). Third, nearly every state has a sales-tax collection apparatus (even NH allows local governments to collect sales tax, it wouldn’t be hard to expand that), and it wouldn’t be any harder to collect a 25% sales tax than an 8% sales tax (this is based on several reports that estimate it would take a 17% sales tax rate to generate the same revenue as the current income taxes generate), so the federal government could completely eliminate the IRS and not have to replace it!
The plan I favor the most eliminates ALL withholding (taxes) such as SS, Medicare/Medicaid and etc. I would like to get a paycheck that exactly equals my salary, that would be cool! But if you get your medical insurance through your employer and the employer doesn’t pay 100% of the premium (true of what, 99% of employers who “provide” medical insurance?) there will still be withholding, so…
One other thing I’d like to add to the legislation… the 17% can be decreased by a committee report, but to increase would take a majority of both houses of Congress and the President’s signature; legislation IOW (so the politicians would agree to never lower it because it would be a hassle to raise it again, but maybe there’s a way around that, too… give a range within which it can be adjusted by committee report, but beyond that…? Let’s say ±4%age points? +4, -8?).
This is something we need to talk about, our current system is seriously broken!
If one person= 1 vote is good then there is no moral justification for “progressive” taxes.
Tax carbon to get less of it.
Tax money to get more of it.
Makes sense.
Give her an inch and she thinks she’s a ruler …
“Caesars don’t fear the reaper.”
Couple of different ways you can take that.
The wealthy French know how to deal with tippy-top taxes. Get up and go…
http://www.france24.com/en/20150808-france-wealthy-flee-high-taxes-les-echos-figures
“A total of 3,744 people who earned 100,000 euros per year or more left France in 2013, a 40 percent increase compared to 2012, French financial newspaper Les Echos revealed citing figures from the national tax-collecting office.”
It’s the obvious outcome when you try to use people. Who in a position to be taxed 60% would stick around to be so fleeced?
You’d have to build a wall to keep them in, after confiscating their private jets. That’d go over well, amirite. Silly rabbit, open borders are for Muslims!
Electing sophomoric taqueria waitress to the US House of Rep’s. has consequences … NONE of which are positive or helpful to the American people.
“… Tippy tops …” is a what passes for eloquence in contemporary expression. How quaint that constitutional republic politics has been re-juven-ated.
It’s “… Tipsy tops …” (She was a barmaid.)
What does her chum Maria Chavas think about all this?
“Maria Gabriela Chávez Net Worth: Hugo Chávez’s Daughter Richest Woman in Venezuela, Worth $4.2 Billion”
https://www.latinpost.com/articles/71424/20150812/maria-gabriela-ch%C3%A1vez-net-worth-hugo-ch%C3%A1vezs-daughter-richest-woman-in-venezuela-worth-4-2-billion.htm
“What does her chum Maria Chavas think about all this?”
The phrase that comes to mind is “Let them eat cake”. Shame there’s none left on the shelves….
She is not only the youngest new congress woman/person, but (pardon my non PC) the stupidest congress person to come on the scene. She knows nothing about the data, would like to see her debate Ted Cruz on climate change:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl9-tY1oZNw
I wonder how she would do with his questions, etc. ???
That is why NBC Meet the Press will allow no “deniers”. Imagine what would happen if the likes of this fool had to answer serious questions.
She would have no answers that would make any sense…
How many people want to spend 70 percent of their time working for the government?
Nobody, but most of us do when you consider income tax, sales tax (VAT/GST) and duty on fuel, alcohol and tabacco.
Even if governments could tax you at 100% they would still run out of money.
Government employees spend 100% of their time working for the government. They think that when the tax rate reaches 100% then they’ll be self employed.
Look up the term “low brow” and you’ll find her picture right next to Hank Johnsons.
And they both won by landslide numbers. That should tell us something about at least 2 districts. Perhaps they will jointly introduce a bill to ship millions of rubber duckies to Guam to keep it from tipping over…
Rubberduckist!!!
You must understand how liberals see taxing. It is not how much you pay, it is how much you have left over. They believe that there is a monetary threshold, a tipping point if you will, above which people do not need to have in order to live, so anything over that should to go to the government. This is their sense of “fairness” and they do not see anything wrong with it.
Yep! In their mind, it’s not your money. It’s theirs and they are the ones that should decide how much of their money you should be allowed to keep.
You didn’t build that…..
I had one young liberal tell me that the higher you raise taxes, the harder people will work.
In his mind, everybody had a goal for how well they wanted to live, and if government took half of the money they earned, they would just work twice as hard in order to maintain the same income.
MarkW, if you encounter said young liberal again, please ask him if he’s ever kayaked against rapids. Then ask him if rowing twice as hard against rapids makes a real difference.
If he asks, “Why would you kayak upstream against rapids?” Respond with, “Why should a person work twice as hard to offset the force of a greedy and obese government?”
Followed to it’s logical conclusion, taxes ought just be raised to 99.9%, and everyone would work 1000 times harder to maintain the same income.
After all, if we learned one thing from all of the communist countries in the 20th century, it is that people who having nothing to show for hard work will just work harder so that those who do nothing can take it easy.
Does not sound like somebody who works at all. Working harder is not likely to increase most people’s wages. It is working more hours. Does he believe the average person want to double their work hours.
For all Liberals, and the envious in general, “wealthy” is anyone who makes more than I do.
I really have to wonder if these new democrats want to start a civil war.
Has no one noticed that the author of this article referred to her as a “Progressive” rather than the Socialist she personally admits to being? Why is the press trying to conceal her political beliefs if not to try to sugar-coat the pill as they try to make us swallow it?
Progressives/Socialists are of the same cloth and have co-opted the Democratic party.
I can’t figure out why she’s getting so much press ?
Leftists run media, Occasional-Cortex is a leftist, what part are you not getting?
OK, put it this way, why are the republicans/news media so fixated upon her ?
It seems like it is just click-bait.
“why are the republicans/news media so fixated upon her ?”
The leftwing news media concentrates on Ocasio-Cortez because she is promoting the socialist policies they prefer, and the Republicans focus on her because she epitomizes the Loony Left and their Loony Ideas. Republicans hope she continues to push for higher taxes, so they can use this against the Democrats in the next campaign..
more specifically, the Globalists puppet masters with all the money and clout, after having amassed their wealth prior to significant government regulations (you know, the regulations they helped pay for as they stole their way to extreme wealth), they HATE competition, which is why they buy government (see collusion) to prevent fair competition and rig the system for themselves. They also despise humanity, so they want global depopulation.
Socialism is the means to their end:
No competition
Almost no humans outside of the necessary amount to keep the machine running
None of this is really new information or hidden. It has been in plain view for at least 2 centuries
At one time, the Socialists were an open and above board political movement and force on the American political scene. The rise of communism started to tarnish them a bit. In response, ca. ~1920-1930 they rebranded themselves as the “progressives” and merged into the mainstream political parties, the Democrats and Republicans. Mostly, they went to the Democrats, of course. Very famously, FDR was a Progressive. A study of the New Deal and his speeches and writings reveal just how socialist he really was.
Interestingly, those who went into the Republican party created that most curious political creature, the “Progressive Republican”. President Nixon was one such example.
She is more like a communist.
“Progressive”, “Socialist”, “Leftist”, “Democrat” it’s all the same thing – bad for the country and bad for your wallet.
Give me your money and we’ll get rid of free market capitalism, decide what jobs get created, and then we’ll create them. Oh yeah, and chicken in every pot.
If you can, vote for AOC. It’s the smartest thing to do. Think long-term. Skeptics need to be smarter when it comes to politics.
Prophecies of end world times, promises of redistributive change, and renewable, laundered green-backs, have an emotional and political appeal.
‘Buffy’ Ocasio Cortez…
Saving The World from the evil of Private Enterprise.
One government freebie at a time.
‘Buffy’ Ocasio Cortez.
Saving the world from the evil of Capitalism.
One government mandated theft at a time.
Go Buffy…take down that evil, ruthless, money hungry Vampire with a progressive stake right thru the heart…
Yay…Buffy Cortez saved the world…Again!
At one point Sweden had a 105% (not a typo) income tax rate that kicked in at 500,000SKr. The assumption was that if you reached that level of taxable income, you would pay a serious accountant/s to minimize your liabilities. It didn’t last, even in uber-socialist Sweden. No really wealthy person would hang around to get taxed heavily: that kind of money gives choices, including where you live. Ms OC would discover that her policy didn’t raise much at all.
And back when the Swedes dominated the tennis world, the players all moved to Monaco.
My gut feeling is that she is going to be around in politics for a very long time. She will probably get re-elected in New York for decades to come. But she just may be the best gift the Republicans ever got. She is the face of the Socialist Democrats, and her demographics don’t vote as much as older white Republicans.
I think she ensures that the tide shifts to Rebublicans once she has served in a Democratic Administration and really ruins the economy with their lunatic policies. A 70% tax rate sends a signal that she is also probably open to a VAT of GST tax. Which will also be unpopular with the voting public, especially the middle classes since they pay that tax on most essentials, just like a carbon tax will also be a crippling tax imbedded in everything that mostly is paid by the vast middle class. The Baby Boomers have to teach their grand kids that wholesale socialism is a recipe for disaster. The Republicans have to become the face of long term stability in the economy, immigration and climate policy departments. If they get this right with effective leadership, I can see the Republicans holding a balance of power for the majority of the long term future, just because Democratic’s are so unorganized in their policy department, and have no apparent leadership candidates to lead them. That may change so it is imperative that Republican’s become the party of stability.
“I think she ensures that the tide shifts to Rebublicans once she has served in a Democratic Administration and really ruins the economy with their lunatic policies.”
Whoa! Our goal should be to prevent these socialists from ever controlling the presidency again.
That was the Democrats goal under President Obama. He hijacked federal government agecies to use as weapons against Trump and the Republicans in order to get his fellow socialist, Hillary Clinton, in power to continue Obama’s socialist legacy.
Republicans need a similar energetic plan to prevent the Democrat socialists from regaining presidential power. But the Republicans should do it legally and not subvert governent agencies to carry out their political bidding like Obama, Hillary and the Demcrats did and are doing (Mueller)..
We should not assume that it is inevitable that socialists will regain the presidency. We should fight that wth all our energy. Socialists in the White House are an existential threat to our personal freedoms. We can’t allow them to run our lives.
While I would agree Tom, history shows the Presidency and Congress/Senate oscillate back and forth generally after 2-3 terms of one or the other. The Dems ruled longer in the 30’s and 40’s, but the Republicans have had a decent run with Reagan, Bush 1 and 2, and now Trump.
My hope is that AOC proves how catastrophic the socialist platform is, and completely guts their chances of remaining in power long. We can probably count on a Democratic presidency, especially if Trump wins a second term. And with a second term will come some stability in a Conservative Supreme Court. This next election is probably the most important election in decades to ensure we don’t get a twisted socialist bent within the Whitehouse. Obama was a disaster in hindsight, as even Democrat’s must now realize as he and Hillary messed up foreign affairs big time. If they drop the socialism angle now, then I would expect they would give the Repulican’s a run for their money. But with this wet behind the ears youngest ever elected congresswoman spouting socialist/Marxist nonsense, she is a great gift to the Republicans.
It is a rare and difficult thing for one party to win the White House for three terms in a row.
Not counting FDR during WWII (which is no longer possible), it has only happened once in the lifetime of anyone here.
“While I would agree Tom, history shows the Presidency and Congress/Senate oscillate back and forth generally after 2-3 terms of one or the other. The Dems ruled longer in the 30’s and 40’s, but the Republicans have had a decent run with Reagan, Bush 1 and 2, and now Trump.”
It does go back and forth, that’s true, but those were different Democrats in the past. They were much more conservative. The Democrats of today are socialist if not radically socialist, and these are the types of people we need to try to prevent from gaining office and power over out lives. I can live with a fairly conservative Democrat, but those are few and far between now..
The Democrats controlled the U.S. House of Representatives for about 40 years up until about 1994, when Newt Gingrich became Speaker.
Fortunately, we do have the system we have and the check and balances have served us well so far, but when criminal, seditious activity is thrown into the mix, then all bets are off, and that’s just what the Obama administration tried to do by criminally and seditiously trying to rig the Nov. 2016 presidential elections and then putting in place a plan to hamper Trump as much as possible during his presidency and diminish his and the Republicans political power while enhancing the Left’s political power.
We have to do something to keep the criminals out of our government. The first step in doing so is to expose what the Obama administration did and the first step in doing that is for President Trump to declassify and release all documents requested from the Executive Branch by the House and Senate. Let the American people see the truth of what happened behind the scenes and how close they came to having a bunch of Leftist Elites stealing the election and perhaps all future elections.
This is serious business.
The US constitution is an amazing realization that allows for all sorts of experimentation in US politics. And it provides a venue, aka Congress, to put on full display both the idiocy of political parties and brilliance of exposing stupid stuff without much danger to the body. As such, Ms O-C is just a gift to conservatives of what the insanity of the Left offers.
Ms O-C is just a vivid demonstration for all of America to see the full-on idiocy what the Democrat Party of today really is.
NOVEL CONCEPT FOLLOWS:
Socialists always want to tax the “rich” to pay for their dreams. They forget that, in the modern world, most everyone willingly paid their hard earned money in exchange for goods or services they wanted or needed. The money they paid made someone rich. The “rich” person actually made people’s lives BETTER. When government makes it harder for someone to get “rich” you are actually stopping people from fulfilling their wants and needs.
You make a very valid point
And you really don’t end up getting much from the rich when you increase taxes because the rich have numerous ways of avoiding those taxes, so the socialists figure out taxing the rich isn’t going to raise the amount of money they need, so their next step is to tax the middle class and everyone else who pays taxes, and of course, they impose taxes such as gasoline taxes which everyone, rich and even the poorest have to pay. So when they say they want to tax the rich, that is just their “foot in the door” and everyone will end up paying more to the government. And the economy will suffer along with individual lives.
There is no reason for AOC to wait for Congress to passes those pesky laws.
You can write a check payable to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, and, in the memo section, notate that it’s a gift to reduce the debt held by the public. Mail your check to:
Attn Dept G
Bureau of the Fiscal Service
P. O. Box 2188
Parkersburg, WV 26106-2188
… or you could just put in Anthony’s PayPal tip jar above. 🙂
Would do a lot more good there !
1) Where does the notion that the more successful you are, the more you are required to give up most of your wealth.
2) I’m willing to be that she’s actually clueless enough to believe that everyone who earns enough to pay this tax won’t change their behavior in order to avoid this tax. When you add in state, local and various payroll taxes, you would be paying 90cents on every dollar you earn. Who would continue to bust their behinds if they are only getting 10% of the reward.
2) reminds me of that USSR Adage…
“They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work” or something to that effect.
It’s a biblical command… Oh wait, it’s not!
It is simply entitlement run amuck. And perhaps a liberal dose of jealousy as well.
I suppose that this ex-barmaid considers anyone who got a $20 tip “ultra rich”.
PS Has she gotten a call from Soros, Steyer, Gates, Gore, The Clintons, Bloomberg, …etc, yet?
I’ve heard of a few bars where they set up a communal tip jar. All tips went into the jar, and all the waitresses shared from it equally. These things rarely lasted long as the hard working waitresses got the same benefit as the lazy ones. The hard working ones would threaten to quit unless the communal jar was discontinued.
I’m wouldn’t be surprised to find out that AOC would be one of the waitresses who liked the communal tip jar.
Please have a look at the highest tax bracket in the period of presidencies of F.F.Roosvelt and J. Carter. The highest tax bracket was well above 70% (during FDR it was 91% for the income above 2 mln USD).
JFK dropped the top rate from 91% to about 70%. Revenue from income taxes increased, opposite the predictions of the so called experts.
The wealth of the Kennedy family was largely derived from alcohol runs during the prohibition years. In other words corruption!
Fred gave Donald most of the money he has. He most certain didn’t earn it.
Fred who? (For those outside the USA). Evidence?
Fred is Donald’s father.
..
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/02/new-york-state-tax-department-reviewing-fraud-allegations-involving-trump-in-nyt-article.html
So Steve, please do tell us…how many books have you written that have been on the best sellers list for over 4 decades?
And how many high rise buildings and hotels have you built from the ground up?
And how many different things have you done in your life that have sperately and on their own made you multimillions and billions of dollars?
How many times have you starred in one of the most popular shows in the entire world?
And how many times have you been elected to national office on a shoestring budget, having never ran for any elective office before, and did it while being vigorously opposed by the entire broadcast and print media, the leadership of both political parties, and did it while drawing historically huge crowds at rallies from coast to coast for night after night for well over a year and a half, and did so while simultaneously ending the political future of the two most dominant political dynasties in the history of the United States, and did so after being nearly universally declared not only out of the running but the cause of the ruination of the entire political party whose nomination you won, but instead led that party to the strongest political position in nearly a century and possibly ever?
Huh?
If you think Trump only has any money cause his father left him an inheritance, you may be an ignorant jackass.
Like most haters, SteveH has no idea what he’s talking about.
Poor Steve, seems to come by both his hate and ignorance do naturally.
Sorry for the redundancy, but:
‘If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.’
A lot depends on whether that 25 year old is still in college.
Precocious youths have a different time frame. Liberal up to 15, conservative by 16.
SR
Eric Worrall says: “from past efforts to confiscate wealth, “
.
.
Worrall doesn’t know the difference between taxing income and taxing wealth.
Is that really the best you can do?
If you have a point to make, please make it.
I did. I’m not surprised that you missed it.
Round 2: If you have a point to make, please make it.
“Eric Worrall says: “from past efforts to confiscate wealth, “
.
.
Worrall doesn’t know the difference between taxing income and taxing wealth.”
Steve Heins does not know the difference between what people think and crap he makes up inside his own head, and thinks that his random musings are facts.
Round 2: He did. It’s still no surprise that you missed it.
Taxing income is easy these days, as it is mostly electronic. Ever wonder why cash is king?
Taxing wealth, however you want to measure that, is a completely different beast. For the wealthy, “wealth” can be hidden. And they do so.
For the “working poor” (Middle class) in electronic records, we can’t hide from the “tax engine”…that sucks “wealth” from the ecconnomy.
Here is a classic on confiscatory taxes written by by Iowa Hawk.
The link was posted here on WUWT. I wish I could remember who found it and posted it here. I bookmarked it back in 2011. I’m betting a few others here bookmarked it as well.
https://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/feed-your-family-on-10-billion-a-day.html
(I can imagine Ocasio-Cortez reading this and saying, “So? What’s your point?”)
It’s the rich that are able to high most of their wealth in tax havens, so the tax burden will fall on the usual suspects; The middle class and the poor.
I say pass the 70 pct tax. Make sure it goes into effect immediately. Let the economy collapse and let the people learn.
The media would blame the rich for sabotaging the economy by hiding their money in tax dodges and overseas tax havens.
And the usual myrmidons will nod their heads in thoughtless agreement.
Well bless her heart.
I’m pretty sure Ocasio-Cortez’s noble motive behind the 70% tax is to tax the U.S. into prosperity.
Of course that’s never worked before, but that’s only because it wasn’t done right.
Everybody fasten your seatbelts for the ride into Utopia.
*sigh*
For once, I am in agreement with her. Let’s just take 70% of all wealth from all those who are worth more than say $1 million and also voted for a liberal, and use the money to build sea-walls around all threatened cities…(you know, those that would benefit from having a sea wall to keep out hurricane tidal surges).
I think this would serve two purposes – better prepare cities for severe weather events and teach some voters a lesson.
Indeed. I think the IRS should compile a list of all those who would fall within the prevue of such a tax (based on the most recent years tax returns) and then those people should be publicly asked if they support such a tax. Then pass a tax bill that taxes all those that favored it that level of tax (thus getting the tax rate that they claim to support) and all those who didn’t can stay at the current rate.
You know, there is no law saying a person cannot pay MORE taxes than required. I would suggest that those who think they wouldn’t mind paying more should do so voluntarily.
Indeed, whenever someone proposes increasing taxes, they should be asked how much they are currently paying and why they are not already voluntarily paying the greater amount that they are proposing and insist that they should lead by example and start voluntarily paying the greater amount that they are proposing.
I think it might be very helpful and instructive to have anyone who publicly goes on record on the subject, be required to pay the amount they are advocating should be paid by others.
If by saying this, she automatically signed herself up for the rates she is suggesting, my guess is most such people would instantly become very quiet on the subject.
Well, if AOC paid 70% of her $174,000 congressional salary in taxes that would still leave her at $52,200, or probably about twice what she made before as a bar tender, so she might be dense enough to go for it… for a while. But as a wanna be Maduro, that wouldn’t last long.
70? Might as well be 80%! Why not?? I’d ask the young Congresswoman how countries with higher taxes than the US, say, like Greece, do with collection. The entire Greek culture is built around avoiding paying taxes or fees. No? Mexico is same. Most of latin America same. Normal folks go to extraordinary lengths to avoid paying taxes. Entire economies are under the table.
She lived in NYC. I’d ask her, … you were a bartender…. did you claim and pay income tax on all of your tips? Honestly?
Cortez behaves and thinks like a character straight out of the film “Idiocracy”
From my observations, rich people are very mobile and have business interests in a variety of places.
While no one in the trade can recall being ever chartered by ordinary low income families relocating to tax-safe destinations.
It boils down to the projection that, once the rich are gone, only the poor remain.
The question to ask, as usual, is:
What effect will the proposals have on global temperatures, assuming the underlying theory is correct?
It is at least consistent and principled to argue for a 70% tax rate and conversion to renewables by 2030 if that will, according to the theory, materially reduce global emissions and consequently, in the theory, global warming.
But actually what is being advocated is too small to deliver any direct reduction in global emissions, and there is no evidence, not even any argument offered, that it will prompt the other large emitters to reduce by force of example.
So the question is, why advocate doing it?
We see this all the time with the green movement. There was, for instance, the mania about turning off standby appliances. Useless. There is the wind turbine mania, also useless – and may even increase emissions. There were the proposals to disinvest from fossil fuel companies. No arguments given as to why this would help at all. We had the EU mania for substituting diesel for gasoline cars. Again, no evidence that increased mpg actually translated into lower fuel consumption and hence lower emissions.
The essential feature of the movement is that it demands we do things which, if its own arguments are correct, are useless, and it also refuses to advocate doing things, which, if its own arguments are correct, are both effective and essential.
Any thorough analysis of the phenomenon must start by asking why this is.
The biggest impact will come from the sizeable drop in economic activity caused by the 70% tax rate.
And yet people vote for her.
A lot of people believe in free lunches.
The saying, Panem et circenses (bread and circuses) dates back around 2000 years. Amazing how little has changed.
The lunches are always free – when it’s other people’s money paying for it.
TANSTAAFL. Look it up-“The moon is a harsh mistress” by Robert Heinlein.
You mean TINSTAAFL (Ain’t ain’t a word, as they say. It’s not considered a proper word, so using it in an acronym is equally not proper besides which “ain’t no” is a double negative and thus reverses the meaning of the expression which is properly expresses as “is no”). Which rather suggests you didn’t catch the point of the post you are replying to. Read it again:
“The lunches are always free – when it’s other people’s money paying for it”
notice the last 6 words.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it’s bad English. Technically it’s saying that there IS such a thing as a free lunch. But the point is that SOMEONE always pays. There is no such thing as a free lunch. **Everything** costs someone something. But I’m starting to get into philosophy, so I will cease and desist.
If I were to create a phony politician to discredit progressives by getting them to support an absolutely idiotic policy, I would have created Ocasio-Cortez. She could be the Sokal Hoax of politics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
Based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models one can conclude that the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind including our federal government has no control. So collecting huge sums of money to be used to try to do something that mankind does not have the power to do is a total waste and will devastate the economy. But even if we could somehow stop the Earth’s climate from changing, extreme weather events and sea level rise would continue because they are part of the current climate so there is nothing to be gained from stopping the climate from changing even if we could. We do not know what the optimum climate for the Earth is so even if we could change the Earth’s climate we do not what to change it to.
Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. So even if we could eliminate all CO2 from the Earth’s atmosphere, extinguishing all life as we know it in the process, the effort would have no effect on the Earth’s changing climate. Rather than trying to make the global economy work as inefficiently as possible we should be trying to make it run as efficiently as possible.
There are many good reasons to be conserving on the use of fossil fuels but climate change is not one of them. Those that think that the use of fossil fuels is bad are free to stop making use of all goods and services that in some way make use of fossil fuels. After all it is their money that keeps the fossil fuel companies in business. Come up with a truly better alternative than fossil fuels and market pressures will quickly insure that the better alternative takes over the market place and poorer alternative gets phased out. No government intervention or new taxes are required.
Progressive Socialist believes anybody with a job is rich. Here what she dosen’t understand. Social justice and social freedom is an illusion without individual justice and individual freedom. That is why socialism, communism and totalitarianism only works at the barrel end of a gun.
Eat the rich!
I came across this years ago.
Excellent !
Sorry, GD, hadn’t spotted that you had posted this when I did the same further down.
No problem.
It needs repeating.
PS When I found it, the commenter added this to the Dr’s quote:
She’s appealing to the next generation. It’s no wonder she got voted in…
Free education, Free Health, Housing, Jobs… and to pay for it, tax the rich because they can afford it and that money can fix climate change. It all sounds simple and wonderful for the nuffers who believe it.
Problem is taxing the rich won’t get half of it, they will need to tax the upper and middle class too and then you have no incentive for people get ahead, so you might as well live off the Government and see unemployment go up, businesses leave turn the country in to a second rate country.
She really needs to understand what fossil fuels actually make, because wind and solar aren’t going to keep the steel and concrete industries going. It’s actually impossible for a developed country to go 100% renewable. It’s all pie in the sky stuff and they need to be held accountable for such ridiculous comments.
Socialism = Rape
Capitalism = Consent
Reanne , I think that, whilst I agree with all your comments , most of us may be underestimating this young lady’s political acumen. You mention that her position is based on eg:
…. tax the rich because they can afford it….
and
….taxing the rich won’t get half of it, they will need to tax the upper and middle class too ….
I believe that this program would work , because consider some the richest cities and states of the US and Canada :
Vancouver, Seattle, California , Washington DC, New York.
In all of these the impression that I get from the media and from sites such as this is that those voters have decided that taxes , income , wealth or carbon , are needed and acceptable , and should be applied immediately to halt climate change.
These are the wealthiest populations in N America and the most vocal for taxation. This young politician has noticed that and responded quite, IMO, rationally. Perhaps she is right.
No one outside of Democrat Party and leftist colleges is ” vocal for taxation”. Or are you trying to be sarcastic?
No 2h I was not being sarcastic , but realistic. Assuming that my knowledge of US politics as acquired from this site is reasonably accurate the Democrats have become the party not necessarily OF , but , FOR , the rich liberal/ left elite . These congregate in the cities and states mentioned, dominate politics there and are in favour of all that AOC demands .
I wonder whether she might have as great , and certainly more permanent, influence on the Democrats as Sarah Palin had with the Republicans.
OK, you embrace socialism. Got it. You are severely mentally ill. I suggest you seek some form of help for that. The kind that removes you, permanently, from any electoral process is the one I would recommend.
mike, you are conflating group decision making with the opinion of everyone in the group.
Those who are the most vocal for higher taxation are not the ones who will paying those taxes.
A socialist who wants to tax “the rich.” How unoriginal. What happens when the wealthy move to a low tax country?
That’s when the government starts building walls. To keep the productive in.
If I wanted America to Fail: a modern economic homage to Paul Harvey
LOL those are income tax tariffs that even the Dutch deemed too high and destructive.
Must be an occasional joke.
Perhaps they will add another 70% for free healthcare, another 70% for free education/indoctrination, another 70% for income equality, and another 70% to cover the shortfalls of each. Plus 70% to make up for the death of economic activity. Yeah, that’ll work. Hopefully with enough left over to get her a comfy suite in D.C.
In order to understand Ocasio-Cortez’s (or any Socialist’s) ideas on tax the following parable is worthy of repeat:
“Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to £100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay £1.
The sixth would pay £3.
The seventh would pay £7.
The eighth would pay £12.
The ninth would pay £18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay £59.
So, that’s what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the
arrangement, until one day, the owner bowled them a wrong ‘un.
“Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by £20.”
Drinks for the ten now cost just £80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.
So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men? The paying customers? How could they divide the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?’
They realized that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the landlord suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings)
The sixth now paid £2 instead of £3 (33% savings).
The seventh now pay £5 instead of £7 (28% savings).
The eighth now paid £9 instead of £12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid £14 instead of £18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid £49 instead of £59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
“I only got a pound out of the £20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, ” but he got £10!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a pound, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I do!”
“That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get £10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and professors of economics, this is how the tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking elsewhere where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
For those who did understand, no explanation is needed. For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.”
For those who did understand, no explanation is needed. For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.
truer words were never spoken.
She is coming to a cross road.
She is likely to self destruct.
Her ignorant policy ideas and kleptocrat tendencies are inherently unstable.
But calling her names and using sex humor may save her from the self destruction.
Pointing out her internal inconsistencies, her ignorance of facts and history are fair game.
It appears her ego will be her ultimate downfall, unless someone saves her from the jaws of defeat by enabling her phony victimhood pose.
The more interesting story would be to find out who or what is behind AOC. They plucked a rather nice looking, very young and uneducated (even though she supposedly has an Economics degree) bartender out of her place of employment, gave her a world class makeover – makeup, hair, and clothing, put together a political campaign for her and got her elected. Now that she is elected, they continue to fund and back her. My guess is that she is not the only one supported in this way. Might be interesting to look into, similar to the elevation of Beto O’Rourke in Texas. Cheers –
+10✔️
I like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her heart is in the right place.
She is in politics to do something good. She has not been corrupted by the process, yet.
She has the vest, charm, and left-wing support to get something good done.
The problem is her plan would destroy the country.
It is a fact that ‘Green’ energy has been ridiculously super over hyped.
Green energy has significant limitations which there is no solution for. It is not the cure for the Left’s creation, CAGW.
We need a plan that works, that stops the Left from attacking our countries.
Either this comment is a failed attempt at comedy or sarcasm. Please clearly denote which it is.
It doesn’t matter how worthy your goal. If you choose evil methods to get there, you are evil.
Prior to her taking office, AOC said that members of Congress should get paid during a government shutdown. A few days ago a reporter asked her about this. She said, “Gotta run,” and ran away.
Yes, she’s gone “green”.
When a polician talks about adjusting tax rates, any journalist worthy of the name should ask how much it raises and does that amount cover what is required for the stated purpose. The answer here is that it will not even get remotely close to amount required for Cortez’s Green New Deal. It will be no surprise if our corrupt journalists fail to ask the question.
Why stop at 70%, how about 100%. 110%, 150% or 200%? Why only tax the rich? Middle class and poor people have money too! (All for the greater good! sarc)
If you have no concept of math, what difference does it make?
It appears she has put about 30 seconds of thought into her plan – her fairy tale will be as real as global warming when they shut off her heat in mid-winter.
Overtax the rich and you drive them away to other countries.
I think anyone named Ocasio-Cortez should be taxed at 110%.
Now, now. I don’t think her name is worthy of taxation. However, I think any government that espouses socialist beliefs (such as she does) should pay socialist level taxes – ie in socialist societies all the wealth belongs to the state, so they should be taxed at 100%.
that should have read: ” I think any government official that espouses socialist beliefs…”
I hate when I skip important words in my typing. Where’s that edit button when you need it?
Washington is a franchise with the primary purpose to screw the tax payers . It is designed not to work .
The founding fathers had so little faith in human nature they constructed an almost endless loop cluster fuck .
It simply doesn’t work and people like Cortez , a commie virtue signaler, will be selling their book by next Christmas to make sure they get their piece of the pie just like leaker James Comey and the other assholes caught trying to take out a President because their sure bet choked .
When the shrinking middle class is gone we will be back to the rich and slaves ,with the slaves been given just enough to service the rich . The democrats are comfortable with slavery . Always have been .
Washington is a franchise with the primary purpose to screw the tax payers . It is designed not to work .
The founding fathers had so little faith in human nature they constructed an almost endless loop cluster fuck .
It simply doesn’t work and people like Cortez , a commie virtue signaler, will be selling their book by next Christmas to make sure they get their piece of the pie just like leaker James Comey and the other assholes caught trying to take out a President because their sure bet choked .
When the shrinking middle class is gone we will be back to the rich and slaves ,with the slaves been given just enough to service the rich . The democrats are comfortable with slavery . Always have been .
Ocasio-Cortez will have a lot in common with Canada’s Prime Minister Mr. Dress Up . Loves the communist ways , open borders and thinks humans can set the earths temperature by manipulating a trace gas favorable to plant growth .
Complete wack jobs pushing a globalist agenda like Macron and other virtue signalers .