Editorials & Other Articles

Zorro

(15,740 posts) Mon Jan 7, 2019, 04:25 PM Jan 2019

Memo to conservatives: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez understands federal taxes better than you do

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shocked the political establishment by defeating a machine politician in a New York Democratic primary for Congress last June. Ever since then, Republicans and conservatives have been trying to smear her as a know-nothing socialist ditz unfit to sit in the House chamber with all those gray-bearded sages who have made the House such a model of reasoned and informed debate.

The latest such campaign erupted this weekend. I’m not talking about the unearthing of a dance video from her college years, which backfired spectacularly by making Ocasio-Cortez seem youthful and joyous, but an interview with the newly minted member of Congress broadcast Sunday on “60 Minutes” but released by CBS on Friday.

In the interview, Ocasio-Cortez argues for raising the top federal income tax rate on the richest Americans to as much as 70% from the current 37% and using the money to convert the country to renewable energy.

Conservative heads exploded. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) accused her on Twitter of wanting to “take away 70% of your income and give it to leftist fantasy programs.” Right-wing anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist implied that the “expropriation” of 70% of “your production” was coming uncomfortably close to “slavery.” Pro-Trump commentator Ryan Fournier declared that he was “not going to work my ass off for the rest of my life for 70% of my income to go to the government.”

https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-aoc-taxes-20190107-story.html

2 replies

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Memo to conservatives: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez understands federal taxes better than you do (Original Post) Zorro Jan 2019 OP

Replace "federal taxes" with "everything" and the statement is still true. LonePirate Jan 2019 #1

The idea behind the 73% tax rate is interesting Cicada Jan 2019 #2

LonePirate

(13,417 posts)

1. Replace "federal taxes" with "everything" and the statement is still true.

Reply to Zorro (Original post)

Mon Jan 7, 2019, 04:36 PM

Jan 2019

Cicada

(4,533 posts)

2. The idea behind the 73% tax rate is interesting

Reply to LonePirate (Reply #1)

Mon Jan 7, 2019, 05:19 PM

Jan 2019

Peter Diamond, Nobel winner, and Emmanuel Saez, winner of the even more rare John Bates Clark medal going once every four years to the best economist under 40, proposed 73%. There are two ideas behind that. One is that a thousand dollars has minimal value to a super rich person. It makes no difference to the quality of their life. They get just about zero “utiles” from it. A “utile” is a unit of happiness. But it is worth many utiles to a poor person. Transfer from rich to poor and society has a larger total number of utiles. It’s a societal winner. That is what a utilitarian wants. But at a certain tax rate work declines so there is less tax money, less utiles, to go around. So raise tax until the maximum tax revenue is realized. Then don’t raise tax rate further. That keeps utiles at the highest level. Kinda cool logic.

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