the powerful do not like things like that, she should go slow on this, the powerful don't have too much compassion when people try to get their money, money is their god and they won't part from it very easily. Worst is the fact that some of them got where they are by the suffering or disappearance of others.

I would like AOC to be around for a long time, she needs to slow down a bit, and I don't mean stop doing the things you want to do, just be more subtle about it because those affected will send all their minions from the republican party after her, and who knows who else.

I am sure that announcement of 60 to 70 % tax made a lot of people spill their coffee this morning when they read it, and phone calls started going all over the place.

while the rich have looted and pillaged the country and the treasury. Enough. And btw her constituents sent her to Congress to do exactly this so I don't think she will have a problem staying around for a long time.

It was 70% or higher from 1935 until 1980.

She throws down the gauntlet, essentially saying "we're coming for you, you greedy s.o.b.s"

The hike won't happen unless/until the Progressives take control of the Senate as well as the House, but it is now on the table and the message us clear: You rich people have been skating for years on the government they purchased. As soon as the Progressives get back control, things (by which I mean wealth) are going to change, and you will still be rich, just not filthily so, not aristocratically so, not kleptocratically so.

And Betsy Ponzi Devos may have to do with one, somewhat middle-sized, yacht, instead of the dozen or so the greedy, immoral, unfeeling lady currently has. (May she be reduced to a leaky dingy without a paddle!)

(Passing thought: Trumpists love the orange man who plants kisses on the bum of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin; but those same dolts will doubtlessly condemn Alexandra as a communist for this tax proposal. Truly, there is no cure for stupid.)

Almost no rich person paid the marginal tax rate!

No British Virgin Islands? No Caymans? I’ll save my tears, thanks.

And yes, many tax loopholes have been removed from the tax code.
There is a limit now on SALT (state and local taxes such as property taxes).
And there are now restriction on interest deductions based on income.
And municipal bond interest has been federal tax exempt for eons.
So if you were in 90% tax bracket, you would most all your money in Muni's.
If today top bracket is 40%, there are competing taxable bonds with Muni's.

that it tended to keep a lid on the top salaries, and better wages went to the rank and file, especially in the 1950s. In recent years the lower earners simply don't get raises despite the fact they are more productive than ever. The financial benefits go almost entirely to those who are already making more money than they need.

92% in 1952 and 1953. FDR at one time, proposed a 100% tax on incomes over $25,000, but it never received traction.

It's interesting that just prior to the great depression, republicon administrations lowered tax rates as they have been doing for the past few decades in the modern day. Hmmm, a tell tale sign of things to come?

<snip>Development of the modern income tax

Historical federal marginal tax rates for income for the lowest and highest income earners in the US.[30]

Congress re-adopted the income tax in 1913, levying a 1% tax on net personal incomes above $3,000, with a 6% surtax on incomes above $500,000. By 1918, the top rate of the income tax was increased to 77% (on income over $1,000,000) to finance World War I. The top marginal tax rate was reduced to 58% in 1922, to 25% in 1925, and finally to 24% in 1929. In 1932 the top marginal tax rate was increased to 63% during the Great Depression and steadily increased.

During World War II, Congress introduced payroll withholding and quarterly tax payments. In pursuit of equality (rather than revenue) President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a 100% tax on all incomes over $25,000.[31][32] When Congress did not enact that proposal, Roosevelt issued an executive order attempting to achieve a similar result through a salary cap on certain salaries in connection with contracts between the private sector and the federal government.[33][34][35] For tax years 1944 through 1951, the highest marginal tax rate for individuals was 91%, increasing to 92% for 1952 and 1953, and reverting to 91% for tax years 1954 through 1963.<snip>


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_United_States

to buy/bribe Congressmen and Senators...

Also, now that corporate taxes have been so low for the past 25 or 30 years, corporations have enough cash after paying dividends to investors that they can afford to fund PACS and buy/bribe Congressmen and Senators - WE NEED TO ALSO TAX CORPORATIONS AT A RATE SO THAT THEY CAN NO LONGER EASILY AFFORD TO LOBBY OR OTHERWISE INFLUENCE LEGISLATION OR ELECTIONS!

These are problems that they don't have in Europe because taxes for 1%ers and corporations are much higher!

That’s just not true regarding European corporate tax rates. I encourage you to look them up.

Taxes need to be adjusted but you will never be able to tax companies so much that they can’t afford to lobby without taxing them out of existence. I’d doubt any major company spends more than a percent or two of their revenue on political action.

On political activity but you don't KNOW that...

Political activity and lobbying and buying Congressmen/Senators is an investment in future profitability for these companies - why wouldn't they go whole hog into forming/bankrolling PACs?

Yet another distraction from what the Dems campaigned on and their supporters expect. If we want to win in 2020, we must do everything we can to deliver - especially on health care and corruption in Congress.

And it has nothing to do with taxing the rich at 70%.

It's only class warfare if you fight back. We've been f**ked for so many years it is time for the pendulum to swing back.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, there's always tomorrow...

There are more of us than them.

she's sure to be Speaker of the House one day... if she doesn't get elected President first in 2028.

I personally think it's the right thing to do, but politics is the art of the possible. What's the plan?

This Senate is a black hole where any good idea goes to die, and if it weren't rump would take a dump on it rather than give the opposition a win.

First the idea has to be inserted into the conversation. Voting rights, banning gerrymandering, fixing campaign finance, universal health care, tuition-free college, a green New Deal, raising taxes on the rich...none of those things is going to happen during this session. We all know that. But getting them out there, making voters aware of what is possible (and historically VERY effective) is what can both inspire the base and bring in the non-voters.

Democrats need to play the long game, something Rs learned long ago. And when given the opportunity they need to produce.

I'm okay with passing symbolic legislation which is aspirational. But it cannot replace pragmatic efforts to improve things NOW.

Wanns pass Pie in the Sky bills? OKay. But follow it up with something that is more realistic.

For example, I'd settle for a bill that rolls back the ridiculous Trump/GOP tax cuts, and I point to specific damage those cuts caused. I think we can eventually win that fight. Perhaps not THIS Congress, but we can refine the idea enough to pass NEXT Congress.

70% top marginal rate will not pass anytime soon.

I said "insert the idea into the conversation." We need to stop accepting the parameters that Rs (and some Democrats) put on "appropriate" proposals. I think you are kidding yourself if you think Rs/rump will do anything to mitigate the damage and "improve things now." All we can do is throw up roadblocks wherever possible and make known what we would do instead (I have said from the beginning that the only way out of this mess is through). If we do that--given the incompetence and malfeasance of this government and time for the effects to be widely felt--we should end up with a unified progressive WH and Congress, and even supermajorities. It happened once before, in very recent memory. Problem was, we failed to capitalize on it, imo. That led to the debacle of 2010 and all the rest of this.

We have no time for incremental change, for eventually rolling back the recent tax cuts. I for one am not willing to settle for that: I want to repeal Reagonomics. We have to start somewhere.

I mean it. I hope it works.

I applaud her too!!

AOC reasons that the money has to come from the wealthy, who've been given a free ride for decades. Well done.

This is why we have platforms, I'm sick of people acting as if they didn't exist and that we aren't all, basically, on the same page.

What we hope to do, and what we can do, are not always the same thing.

I live in Washington State and one thing that really annoyed me at the 2008 caucus (and I prefer a primary to a caucus, to be clear) was that the first order of business was to endorse planks for the state party platform. Instead of the usual 10-50 people, we had 1000 people in the room, and they had no notion of spending time voting on a platform, so (against the rules) it got skipped!

Then people like AOC come along and insist that Democrats aren't progressive. I'm so tired of this bait and switch. Yes, we are progressive, we've always been progressive, and it's a long and difficult slog to move that forward.

We did alright back then... We could then address healthcare for all, infrastructure, climate. I think it's a great idea! Heck.. The top rate was as high at 90% back then. There were a lot of loopholes, but why not 50% with no loopholes, just straight taxes. LET'S DO IT!!!

.

and take advantage of tax haven countries? Due to technological advances it's a lot easier to do that in the 2010s. In the 1950s the economy in Europe and much of the free world were still recovering from World War II. In addition, some of those countries were viewed as being vulnerable during the Cold War while keeping money in this country was considered the safest bet.

The world has changed a lot since the 1950s. The policies that worked then won't work now because there are more opportunities to make money elsewhere and keep money out of the US, just like Apple and Google have done at the corporate level.

We should tax wealth, not income.

The wealthiest don't actually earn an income, so this wouldn't hit them at all.

so when they make their trades to short our 401ks and IRAs they get taxed...

Hell,even Bush.IDIOT wanted that rate at zero percent. In 2019 traders who file jointly can make up to $78,750 and not pay a fucking PENNY in taxes. If your a big time trader and do well you can make nearly $500,000 from stock trades in 2019 and pay a total of 15%.


And people wonder how the hell Trump can be exploding the National Debt?? This kind of shit is adding TRILLIONS to the ND with absolutely nothing to show for it.

The orange thing once said it was a good idea, years ago. Their is just too many ways to avoid paying income tax. It's not a new idea and has been around and used by some countries for a long time. The other essential reform is ending the exclusion on Social Security for upper incomes. Even Milton Friedman thought this was wrong.

They amass wealth without paying taxes.

It's not even double taxation.

Start at 5 million.

Kennedy couldn't get it passed. He actually wanted to lower the top income tax rate from 91% to 65% and a reduce the corporate tax rate from 52% to 47%. The first attempt at passing the tax cuts was rejected by Congress in 1963.

Conservatives revolted at giving Kennedy a key legislative victory before the election of 1964. If Kennedy wouldn't have been tragically killed the Republicans would have rejected the legislation just like they did when he was alive.

If you are going to publish statistics it helps to know the actual context of what those statistics mean.

Apparently you were under the impression that "The Kennedy Tax Cuts" had an impact on the revenue collected during the Kennedy administration.

This is not true.

The Kennedy Tax cuts were not approved until 1964 and not implemented until 1965. It takes a year or two for policy to have an impact

Your figures clearly show that from 1966 Revenues which were based on Kennedy's tax cuts showed significant increases in revenue, especially compared to the stagnation under Eisenhower.

By the year 1969 total revenues had doubled over the 1961/2 levels.

Tax revenues doubled between 1950 and 1960 as well. Then they doubled again between 1960 and 1970. The economy grew in both decades (as it usually does over time), so of course revenues were higher. As a percentage of GDP, there was little change (that's the reason I linked to two charts). So again, it's just not true to say that revenue skyrocketed following (or because of) the Kennedy tax cuts.

Thanks for adding your other comments, though. I don't think we have any irreconcilable differences about fiscal policy.

A person who owns lots of stuff could get wealthier without ever selling any of it due to appreciation.

I'm all in favor of raising capital gains, dividends, interest, estate/inheritance, and other taxes on wealth, not wages.

Old folks live in a house that goes up in value every year.

Who's going to volunteer to toss them out?

Like a person's primary residence only could be exempt from the extra taxation.

An elderly couple who owned their home pre-gentrification wouldn't have to pay extra.

But a guy who owns 5 condos in different states...

I pay my taxes but use less local services than others. There's no winning this one. I don't know the answer.

Should people in NY, CA, get taxed for a home that's worth a million, when the same house would be 200k in St Louis?

That's about the same as the top tax bracket when he was president.

It will lead to a better democracy...

you can't breath or drink money.

transferred a heck of a lot of wealth from the bottom up. How about we address one of the biggest problems in our country; income inequality.

As I understand it, she is proposing this 70% rate as the highest MARGINAL tax rate.
Pretty damn big difference. But all the ignorant and the greedy will pick up on is 70% TAX RATE ON WEALTHY!

Plus-- plus I didn't see THIS info below anywhere in that article - which really is the humdinger...
I even remember that !!!!

"The top marginal tax rate in 1960 was 91%, which applied to income over $200,000 (for single filers) or $400,000 (for married filers) – thresholds which correspond to approximately $1.5 million and $3 million, respectively, in today’s dollars. Approximately 0.00235% of households had income taxed at the top rate."

THIS is what should be broadcast everywhere. AOC's proposal is modest compared to what was in force then.

https://taxfoundation.org/some-historical-tax-stats/

ON EDIT:

It's only fair.

I didn;t say they shouldn't.

"In 1960, the top 1% of households earned 9% of all income, and paid 13% of all taxes. (In 2008, the top 1% earned 20% of all income, and paid 38% of all taxes.)

Seems like their % share of the tax burden has actually gone up above and beyond their income gains since 1960 when rates were much higher. Maybe tax rates do need to be increased, but this data doesn't seem to show that.

brackets associated with income bands( 0-x, x-y,m y-z, z-aa, etc.). The highest bracket like every other bracket beside the first one is a marginal tax rate (tax on the amount of income above X (whatever the lower income figure is set at in the highest bracket, e.g., the $200k/$400k single/married in 1961.

Once you start saying it over and over then people get used to that number and 50% then sounds reasonable.

There is almost NO constituency for 70% marginal tax rates. Ocasio-Cortez is living in a fantasy land if she thinks there is. And if democrats start proposing marginal tax rates that high, we will become a permanent minority party. Hell, we won't even become a minority party, we'll be a fringe party.

During WW2 it was 94%.

And don't forget, not ALL income was taxed at those rates, only that portion of income above some very high threshold (the WW2 rate applied only to income above $2.5 MILLION in today's dollars).

It's amazing how few people know about this

Right.

the point is that we are in a completely different world than in 1950's America. We need new approaches, not old approaches made for a world long gone.

before capitalism destroys all of humanity and much of the rest of the planet. But that's not likely, so let's start by taxing the fucking rich.

This notion is doing us no good and certainly gives Fox News something to work with.

But if O-C is serious about this, then get to work and write the bill, and learn something about the legislative process. Mainly that it takes an incredible amount of labor, persistence, and dedication.

Of course, any chance of passage is a fantasy, but at least she would learn how Congress works.

fantasy land, etc.

While I'm at it, stop using fear as a reason to not stand openly for something that makes good common sense and is not radical. As long as we are afraid of how the right will react and their messaging, they will always come out on top. Fear is self-fulfilling as FDR said in so many words.

Stop presenting your view as "almost NO constituency". That's a falsehood. There's a huge constituency that already supports AOC's, Bernie's, Warren's and others views regarding income inequality and solutions for it. The more it gets talked about, the more the constituency grows.

Now the poles are melting, the coral reefs are dying, Australia is baking and California is on fire 9 months of the year.

We are staring a global mass extinction event of a scale not seen in tens of millions of years right in the eye, and we are the cause of it.

The only crazy talk is from people not proposing we do everything humanly possible to stop or slow it. And given that we will need TRILLIONS of dollars in capital for decades to come to stop this catastrophe, the only logical step left to do is tax the mega-rich to finance those efforts. The scale of the problem is so vast, there is literally no other option.

On everybody. Internalize the externalities.

Positive incentives for investing in new technologies and new industries -- which you don't do by taxing away the profits of emerging new industries.

The idea that taxing the rich is the only way forward is very short-sighted.

You also have to incentivize the wealthy to invest in socially productive things. Unless you want a planned economy in which all economic decisions are left to the government.

But I just watched it on C-Span and it looked to me -- and please don't tell me if I'm wrong because it's too cool a response to be debunked -- that she said "Suck it!" to them, smiling all the while.

Polls and news media should be shouting about it every day.

AOC is tapping into a very large voter base.

You want to raise taxes on the super wealthy you need to reform the corporate tax code and raise cap gains tax.

AOC is great at messaging and we have Dems here belly-aching. I don't get it. The only thing I can think is they must be okay with the economy as it is or they are detached from those who aren't.

and make capital gains income, above a certain level, subject to Social Security and Medicare taxes.

Why should a trust fund kid never pay into Social Security or Medicare because they get to live on the dividends on the stock they won in the genetic lottery?

actually consider thinking before speaking.


What she SHOULD say is the taxcode is in severe need of being reformed and we need a blue -ribbon panel of senators and congresspeople to do it. There are way too many special loopholes and ways that incomes are shielded for "fair share" contribution by the upper segments of the economic beneficiaries....to the wellbeing off of country


hopefully she can gain some wisdom

She's appealing to a huge constituency with effective messaging. I think it's great.

Someone needs to. Obviously has zero chance of being seriously considered, and maybe not the most practical thing on its own anyway considering things like capital gains, but Democrats need to do something about the increasing wealth gap. With any problem, as problem gets worse, the more extreme the solution has to be.

One huge problem is that we've totally lost the narrative on taxes. Probably not unintentionally either. Too often, the most basic misconceptions go completely unchallenged.

How about a tax on private charter jets, luxury boats, and limos? And not tax deductible.

It isn't remotely realistic to have gas at $2 per gallon and expect people to only drive electric cars

Of course no politician would campaign on that.

on anyone. I would like to see the Trump tax debacle repealed and sensible tax reform where the rich pay their fair share. But this sort of thing has no chance and just gives the GOP talking points to use against us.

Are you really gonna drag that one out? Lame.

AOC's proposal has no chance of passing, but her tweets bring attention to her. However, that doesn't mean that her tweets will get positive attention or that other people (including Democrats) will think that they are good ideas.

If marginal rates climb to 70%, then people will have to weigh the risk of investing in their business and creating new jobs against the risk that those ventures won't be profitable. If anything, it will motivate the wealthy to take advantage of tax havens and search for opportunities with better rates of return instead. That will result in a negative impact on the economy and possibly less revenue for the government.

We did have higher marginal rates in the past, but that was before technological advances made it easier to send the money to another country.

It's proof that even egghead economists get it wrong occasionally. It relies on the assumption that the tax rates of the 1950s and 1960s will have the same effect in the here and now while disregarding technological advances. The analysis also ignores the issue of capital flight (as you will note it isn't even mentioned in the article). However, it isn't the first time that Krugman's economic analysis has been wrong.

Let me ask you this: If you have $1 million to invest and you have the option to invest that money in a country where the tax rate is 20% or where the tax rates go up to 70%, which country are you going to choose to make that investment? Be honest with your answer and don't add a bunch of stipulations beyond those asked in the question.

Krugman relies too much on economic models, philosophical bias, and pretty prose to pump up his position. While I respect Krugman's body of work, I'm not going to put him on a pedestal when his analysis is full of holes that ignore rational behavior.

Many baseball players make more than that. Just a few years ago, A-Rod was making 30 million a year.

If I had to guess, maybe 3,000 in the US. But that's a total wild guess. Perhaps plenty wasn't the best choice of words, I apologize.

Why would the average person be opposed to raising taxes on this tiny tiny super rich portion of the population?

criticizing one of our (Democrat) elected representatives. Don't we have a rule about that here at DU?

would clarify things for you.

Last edited Fri Jan 4, 2019, 05:29 PM - Edit history (1)

You mean like this one?

Thought so.

https://upload.democraticunderground.com/10142094260#post84

You are the only person here at Du who actually spends time apparently keeping track of, searching and tracking other people’s posts.

Go play your clever games with someone else. And go ahead and alert me or have one of your cohorts do so for describing your exchanges with me games. I don’t care. Bye.

No response. Looking in a mirror is hard sometimes....

Hurts, doesn't it?

That’s always your first move.

Bye again.

Even bigger than "crat."

Here's one for you: "documented history of hatred for Democrats and the Democratic party right here on DU that shows you to be one of those "crats" you say you can't stand."

See ya soon!