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

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

#91

Post by antisthenes »

gkoberger wrote: post #6

Agree or disagree, there's a few things this article left unclear. First, the US has a progressive tax code. So, you wouldn't be taxed 70% on your entire income, only the money over a certain amount. Plus, due to deductions and other loopholes, nobody will actually pay this full amount. Secondly, this rate isn't a new idea. It was 94% under FDR (democrat) and 91% during the Eisenhower (republican) administration, and…

Did prosperity occur specifically because of the tax rates, or because of unprecedented before scale and use of fossil fuels per capita before the crisis of 1973?

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

#92

Post by InitialLastName »

maccio92 wrote: post #18
umvi wrote: post #11

Diminishing returns sounds like a good idea on paper, because then the richer you get, the more you contribute. But remember that the people who are experiencing the diminishing returns aren't going to like it (besides Warren Buffett) and will probably fight against it. It's a bit of a conundrum. The richer you get, the more power you have (via money). We want to tap into that wealth/power for the greater good. Those…

Because if I'm able to make myself sufficiently wealthy, I should be trusted to handle my money myself, not have it redistributed by some third party that doesn't always operate very efficiently.

I trust you to handle your money to benefit yourself. I don't trust you to handle your money to the appropriate benefit of society and (by extension) your descendants.

Especially if you manage to do enough damage to society through your greed that it necessitates a class war. We can either redistribute peacefully in an attempt to solve problems that largely affect the poor, or we can push them off until the poor get desperate.

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

#93

Post by geezerjay »

dragonwriter wrote: post #81
geezerjay wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taxing the rich isn't about generating revenue to make something. It's a reallocation mechanism for dollars that already exist in the economy to things that we want as a body of people. That simplistic logic fails to account for the fact that pursuing income is an incentive to allocate resources to productive investments that are self-sufficient and pay off tons of taxes directly and indirextly, such as by paying s…

> Once you start to impose communist "reallocation mechanisms" You mean, like a heirarchy of preferential tax rates for different income sources where capital income is favored over general income which in turn is favored over labor income?

Robbing someone of 70% of their income is way more aggravating and profoundly totalitarian than a simple progressive tax. It's one thing to grant a small share of your income to the state in order to keep social institutions running, but it's an entirely different thing if the state robs you off the majority of your total income for no reason at all.

In a free and democratic society, a citizen has the right to the fruit of his labour, not just to a small fraction of what he worked for.

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

#94

Post by dragonwriter »

geezerjay wrote: post #93
dragonwriter wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once you start to impose communist "reallocation mechanisms" You mean, like a heirarchy of preferential tax rates for different income sources where capital income is favored over general income which in turn is favored over labor income?

Robbing someone of 70% of their income is way more aggravating and profoundly totalitarian than a simple progressive tax. It's one thing to grant a small share of your income to the state in order to keep social institutions running, but it's an entirely different thing if the state robs you off the majority of your total income for no reason at all. In a free and democratic society, a citizen has the right to the fr…

You seem to be responding to something other than the post yours is attached to, but:

> Robbing someone of 70% of their income is way more aggravating and profoundly totalitarian than a simple progressive tax.

A 70% top marginal rate isn't taxing (much less “robbing”) 70% of your income, unless your income is literally infinite.

Also, the top marginal rate was at or above 70% for every year from 1936 through 1980, yet for some reason those 44 years aren't usually considered a “profoundly totalitarian” period in US history.

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

#95

Post by goalieca »

tracker1 wrote: post #77
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…

I'm not... I've seen enough government operations that you cannot convince me that additional taxation is necessary vs. reducing excess spending and bureaucracy.

Haha. You will never be convinced the. There’s been ample examples of austerity and cutbacks and government audits at all levels of government in all countries. This libertarian ideal of wasteful spending and government mismanagement is kind of a dumb one. Things are actually pretty well done unless the politicians are corrupt. But if corrupt politicians are the problem then the solution is to fix the corrupt politicians.

Every large organization (public or private) has waste the same way every large computer system has waste. Management is complex and there’s simply no way to optimize all resources in real-time. In software we may lament some of the bloat but we generally accept it as a necessary evil. In places where performance is extra valuable we profile and optimize the path. Well the same thing happens in government and corporations. Government of Ontario spends a good chunk of money on grants to health care system researchers to incrementally make things better and the system is doing really well considering how underfunded parts of it are.

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

#96

Post by british_india »

kansface wrote: post #46
kenforthewin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh yes they are!

The CO2 warming we are seeing today come from CO2 that entered the atmosphere 10 years ago. So, the damage is happening RIGHT NOW.

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

#97

Post by jeffdavis »

The vast majority of wealth is stored in abstract things like stocks and bonds, not possessions stored in a bunker somewhere.

To pay high taxes, that means liquidating those stocks and bonds (or in the case of income taxes, never buying them in the first place). That limits the financing that corporations can get, preventing expansion or causing them to downsize.

In other words, taxing the rich actually takes from corporations. Maybe that's the goal, but it has consequences, like job losses, greater dependence on foreign investment and imports, etc.

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

#98

Post by pmdulaney »

tracker1 wrote: post #85
pmdulaney wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think if we can impose 70% taxes on the ultra-rich, perhaps we should pass a law that Asians have to pay 50% more than other groups; I believe we still can outvote them.

I know you're probably trolling/joking, but I've thought that we should have something like this for non-citizen workers combined with more open borders for migrant workers and H1B floors for pay.

Well, I would say it is neither trolling nor joking, but rather a kind of thought experiment. Isn't soaking the rich (if I'm not rich) very similar to placing exorbitant taxes on the Asians (if I'm not Asian)? It's really just a matter of how far you think we can take the notion of the tyranny of the majority until it becomes morally repugnant.

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

#99

Post by kuhhk »

kansface wrote: post #32
jakelazaroff wrote: post #8

To put this in context, a 70% rate on the top marginal income tax bracket is not unprecedented, or even high by historical standards [1]: > Sanders said income tax rates under Eisenhower were as high as 90 percent. > A look through the records shows that top earners in the eight years of Eisenhower’s presidency paid a top income tax rate of 91 percent. It was even a bit higher before he took office. > We rate Sanders…

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

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

The sentence you highlighted has nothing to do with WWII.

Eisenhower was president from 1953 to 1961.

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

#100

Post by dragonwriter »

rhegart wrote: post #51
gkoberger wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

She really isn’t competent. Watch any interview she gives or her discussing anything really. But that doesn’t matter. We don’t need everyone to be competent, if she can get a message out to young people and her following she can raise awareness and tilt voters to policies further to what she wants. She is extremely charismatic and that’s an important skill in itself. It’s like playing with fire because she would make…

> She really isn’t competent. Watch any interview she gives or her discussing anything really.

Not seeing it. I've spent some time working in a (state, not federal) legislative office and have a political science degree (specialized in pragmatics of US politics.) I've seen some of her interviews. I don't see anything that indicates that she would be incompetent as a legislator. Could you explain the basis for your assessment?

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