Ocasio-Cortez Says 70% Ultra-Rich Tax Could Pay for Climate Plan • Hacker News Board

Re: Ocasio-Cortez Says 70% Ultra-Rich Tax Could Pay for Climate Plan

#41

Post by gkoberger » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 9:05 PM UTC

weberc2 wrote: post #15

I applaud ambitious efforts and I'm open to raising taxes for the very rich (albeit easy for me to say down here in the middle class), but AOC doesn't strike be as competent in the slightest (although as her supporters are so fond of rationalizing, she's not the least competent public official). She has charisma, which is an important leadership quality, but not much else as far as I can tell. Certainly not the perso…

Why do you believe she's not competent? She seems to be competent.

Secondly, isn't empathy, vision, ambition and an ability to rally people incredibly important for a politician? Politicians aren't supposed to know everything, but rather work with appropriate experts and aides.

Re: Ocasio-Cortez Says 70% Ultra-Rich Tax Could Pay for Climate Plan

#42

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #20

She cites Lincoln and FDR as evidence that radical ideas can be good ones. But "there have been radical ideas that have been good" does not imply " this radical idea is a good one". Her idea may in fact be good, but on this point, her logic does not work. As for the idea itself: IIRC, there seem to be significant second-order effects that keep the federal government's income at 18-22% of GDP, no matter what the tax r…

> She cites Lincoln and FDR as evidence that radical ideas can be good ones. But "there have been radical ideas that have been good" does not imply "this radical idea is a good one".

But it does rebut the common line of argument that it is preemptively deployed against, which is “Radical ideas should be rejected as bad merely because they are radical.”

> As for the idea itself: IIRC, there seem to be significant second-order effects that keep the federal government's income at 18-22% of GDP, no matter what the tax rates are. So raising the rates like this may provide significantly less new income than she expects.

To the extent that revenue seems relatively stable with apparently large changes in rates, I don't think those are “second order effects”, I think that they are coordinated changes to tax policy other than rates. The US doesn't have some kind fof special sui generis immunity to policy changing effective rate of total taxation.

Also, US federal tax revenues were 27.1% of GDP in 2017 [0], so the 18-22% range is not only not immutable, but also not what is recently observed.

[0] https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-united-states.pd...

Re: Ocasio-Cortez Says 70% Ultra-Rich Tax Could Pay for Climate Plan

#43

Post by AnimalMuppet » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

bigfartchili wrote: post #14

I openly admit I am a republican but I have never understood why there are not more tax brackets. A person making 100k per year is not even close to the same as a person making 100m per year but are taxed at the same rate.

Hmm. Maybe use a log scale? Every factor of 10 in income, the incremental tax rate goes up a percent or three. If 35% is the top now, and starts at $100K (numbers made up because I refuse to grovel through the IRS code in order to make an HN post), and if the delta is 3% per factor of 10, then we get 38% at $1M, 41% at $10M, 44% at $100M, 47% at $1B (income, per year). I'll stop there, because I'm not sure anyone has ever reported $10B income in one year ever in history.

If you made the delta 9%, that would get you 44% at $1M, 53% at 10M, 62% at $100M, and 71% at $1B. This gets you in the neighborhood of Ocasio-Cortez's idea, but without one big step to get you there. (I suspect that it would also raise considerably less money than her plan...)

Re: Ocasio-Cortez Says 70% Ultra-Rich Tax Could Pay for Climate Plan

#44

Post by pmdulaney » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 9:08 PM UTC

What if we were to have an amendment to the Constitution such that income taxes for each income group would have to be approved by a plebiscite of those actually IN that income group? I wouldn't feel nearly so uneasy about taxing the ultra-rich at 70% if the majority of them were in favor of it.

Re: Ocasio-Cortez Says 70% Ultra-Rich Tax Could Pay for Climate Plan

#45

Post by sp332 » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 9:08 PM UTC

nonbel wrote: post #35

I look at these "tax the super-rich" ideas like this: >"Added together, the total net worth for 2018's billionaires was US$9.1 trillion" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires Meanwhile, the US federal government spends ~$4 trillion per year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/... So even confiscating all the wealth of the top couple thousand richest people in the world (not…

The US GDP was $17.5 trillion last year. I don't think you're looking at the right numbers. This isn't about seizing wealth, it's just an increase in the top bracket of income taxes.

Anyway the climate plan is more about moving money around than just taking it and throwing it in a hole. Ideally, more wealth would be generated from people actually spending the money for useful things than would be made from the passive investments favored by the ultra-rich.

Re: Ocasio-Cortez Says 70% Ultra-Rich Tax Could Pay for Climate Plan

#46

Post by kansface » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 9:09 PM UTC

kenforthewin wrote: post #36

kansface wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> income tax rates under Eisenhower were as high as 90 percent. Climate change is not WWII.

You're right - the stakes are much higher with climate change.

Sure, but they are not imminent (what is the pearl harbor of climate change?). Further, climate change is highly politicized whereas WWII mobilized the entire country in purpose.

Re: Ocasio-Cortez Says 70% Ultra-Rich Tax Could Pay for Climate Plan

#47

Post by AnimalMuppet » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 9:10 PM UTC

thinkingkong wrote: post #23

In federal accounting how does one allocate tax revenue to a project? Is it not just a big fungible resource that then gets allocated? To me the funding doesnt seem to be the problem in so much as making tackling climate change and allocating actual dollars.

Congress at least nominally operates under pay-as-you-go rules. If you're going to propose a new program, you have to propose where the money's going to come from.

(I say "at least nominally" because I'm not sure that this actually works as advertised. If it did, the deficit shouldn't increase from one year to another, except perhaps in an economic downturn.)

Re: Ocasio-Cortez Says 70% Ultra-Rich Tax Could Pay for Climate Plan

#48

Post by zozbot123 » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 9:10 PM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #40

weberc2 wrote: post #15

I applaud ambitious efforts and I'm open to raising taxes for the very rich (albeit easy for me to say down here in the middle class), but AOC doesn't strike be as competent in the slightest (although as her supporters are so fond of rationalizing, she's not the least competent public official). She has charisma, which is an important leadership quality, but not much else as far as I can tell. Certainly not the perso…

How relevant is this actually? Legislators make the law but it's the bureaucrats, who are the real specialists in crafting the details of legislation that are actually relevant. Competent politicians aren't competent because they're knowledgeable in every possible topic, but because they surround themselves with subject matter experts.

> Competent politicians aren't ... they surround themselves with subject matter experts.

¿Por qué no los dos? Is Ocasio-Cortez surrounding herself with subject-matter experts?

Re: Ocasio-Cortez Says 70% Ultra-Rich Tax Could Pay for Climate Plan

#49

Post by L_Rahman » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 9:11 PM UTC

CWuestefeld wrote: post #24

Not a word about the logistics of making such a huge change in such a short amount of time? Surely AOC realizes that money isn't the only obstacle, but also replacing an enormous amount of infrastructure. When you think about how ubiquitous our usage of gasoline, home heating oil, CNG for heating and cooking, and on and on, it quickly becomes clear that while finances would be very difficult, that's dwarfed by the am…

I'll leave the tax plan aside to respond to this. As slow and creaky as the world is, when a government as powerful as the United States aggressively puts forth a vision for the world the systems of the world bend to make it work.

Remember also that the vast majority of logistical challenges with climate change aren't developing new products, but handling coordination problems around deploying existing ones.

Things that might happen if America decided to commit seriously to a Green New Deal: - automotive roadmap overhaul to 80% electric drivetrain for all deliveries in the United States by 2030 - tectonic shift in land use around the country to higher density zoning, mass transit, HSR - hundreds of billions of dollars of research to public and private institutions to map all the carbon in our system and the most effective ways to remove it

But these are all giant changes. Here are simple ones that are straight up applications of government power: - switch all major urban areas to Tokyo style zoning with property taxes tied to mass transit investment - steep cliff on ICE vehicles delivered in the United States hitting some x00% in 2030 - end all fossil fuel subsidies - move all energy supply to a Texas style market

Emergent properties of human behavior responding to incentives would take care of the rest.

Re: Ocasio-Cortez Says 70% Ultra-Rich Tax Could Pay for Climate Plan

#50

Post by cleansy » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 9:14 PM UTC

johnny313 wrote: post #26

cleansy wrote: post #17

> Income tax hikes are dead on arrival while Republicans control the Senate and White House. Such a steep increase also isn’t likely to find much support among many congressional Democrats. And rightfully so. When pretty much everyone benefited from lax climate controls and externalities that are not directly included in the price of a product or service, why should only on special group pay for it? If there were a g…

> When pretty much everyone benefited from lax climate controls and externalities that are not directly included in the price of a product or service I think the argument would be that the ultra-wealthy benefited more from a carbon-based economy than the average worker, in the form of their accumulated fortune.

I think that argument is not valid. The "ultra rich" would benefit from any kind of capitalistic economy, they are "ultra rich" because they have more capital than 99.9% ( or whatever) of the population. And most of this fortune stems from having shares in businesses.

However, IF we would have taxed the greenhouse gas emissions into every product, maybe not even the middle class would have been able to afford it. But since gas was cheap, a lot of people were able to afford having a car, building houses, getting to their jobs without moving their homes and were able to improve their lives.

I do see the point in your argument, I just think it would be a fairer solution to tax everyone for the climate change linear to their consumption.