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.”
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I guess we can no longer say Ocasio-Cortez has not thought about how to fund her new green deal.
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.
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“Why should someone be forced to pay more, just because they have more?”
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The answer is they are not. If a multi-billionaire earns no INCOME the pay no income tax.
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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? “
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Easy
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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.