CATO: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is making headlines calling for raising the top individual income tax rate to 70 percent to fund a Green New Deal. Sympathetic commentators are saying that such a high rate on the wealthy is no big deal because the top tax rate used to be 70 percent and above. Noah Smith at Bloomberg says the congresswomen’s plan would be “a return to the 20th century norm.”
The problem is that globalization has dramatically changed the economy over recent decades. High tax rates were not a good idea back then, but they would be disastrous now.
Before the 1980s, capital controls under fixed currency exchange rate regimes kept money bottled up within countries, keeping taxpayers in national economic prisons. That regime broke down, and today trillions of dollars flows over borders under flexible exchange rate systems, while industries and entrepreneurs have become highly mobile. Tax bases are far too movable these days for governments to sustain yesteryear’s excessive tax rates, as I discuss in Global Tax Revolution.
Every industrial country has figured that out, and their policy decisions refute the soak-the-rich tax dreaming of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez. Top income rates have plunged around the world since 1980 under governments of both the political left and right.
Congress hasn’t been convened but a few days and already I’m tired of this ignorant bitch.
AOC is a few days in office, is 1/435th of Congress and everybody dislikes her. She will achieve absolutely nothing other than being a lightning rod of stupidity.
It’s hard to ignore her because she’s a leftist media darling. But I won’t waste another keystroke on her.
She’s just an unremarkable failure of our education system. Another purpose built Moron.
People said the same thing about Bernie and he almost became president. Ignore at your own peril. She needs to be squashed. Didn’t she fail to report enormous campaign contributions. DOJ? Hello! Fed Election Commission? Anybody there?
“High Tax Rates Won’t Work in Today’s Economy”
…they “work” if you’re objective is to destroy the economy of the United States, and I suspect that IS the REAL plan, because that’s how Democrats roll…
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the youngest woman ever elected to Congress — she still can’t afford an apartment in D.C. .
OK, you go first and pay 70% taxes.
Let’s see 2020, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, this child, Bernie, Hillary or Pedo Joe.
The future’s so bright I gotta’ wear shades,,,
Ocasio-Cortez is a brain-dead new Congresswoman elected by apparently brain dead voters in one district. She isn’t my Congressional representative, I think her policies and political agenda are absolute bullshit, she doesn’t reflect my views, and she doesn’t represent me or basically anyone I know. I don’t have an opportunity to vote against her, and I resent having hyper-progressive assholes from a district over a 1000 miles away pretend that they elected someone to speak for me.
I don’t care if she wants to screw up the lives of her constituents – they deserve it. There are no particular qualifications for being elected to Congress other than one needs to get more votes that the other person. But she needs to stay in her lane – which is the slow lane designed for people with no common sense or experience. Some talking head needs to have her on a show, let her speak, and then call her out for being an idiot instead of pretending otherwise.
Sure… let’s drag everybody down to the lowest common level of Suck.
Me: I never worked for a poor man.
AOC: I never worked.
She might be on to something. For the next two years, let us tax every demicretin in Congress and their Republicretin allies at the 70% level.
Get back to us with a report at the end of the period, we will re-evaluate at the end of the period.
I was reading an article about this mythical 70% rate either here or another site and basically it was bullshit. Nobody ever paid it or even close to it as the government had put in hundreds of loopholes and tax breaks in order to shelter your income and bring your tax down to a manageable rate. For Cortex to get the money she wants all these tax breaks, every one from high income to low income would have to be eliminated and her Dem/Prog handlers would never let that happen.
Rich people are so stupid. You raise their taxes and they just pay them.
It’s not like they hire Accountants to claim every deduction, structure companies or trusts to protect themselves and reduce every liability possible.
So stupid.
I heard this is being walked back as a tax on income over $10 million.
So that’s supposed to make it alright.
So why bother to earn it in the first place? Because then someone else gets to ‘earn’ it? I don’t think so.
Beginning to think the DNC orchestrated her success to take attention off Biden.
I have a better idea, let’s cut ALL elected officials pay by 70% and that’s just a start. That little commie bitch would crawl back under her rock then!
Yeah, that’s never been tried before.
Sometimes I wonder if some people don’t become politicians for the primary reason of effecting punishment on those that have more than they do.
Wait till this nutcase finds out how much in taxes she will pay on the million dollar windfall Soros paid her.