70% tax on the rich? AOC knows her history, and GOPs ignore it

I've seen a lot of talk and uproar over the comments on 60 Minutes by new US Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez about how taxes should be raised on the rich in the future. And I couldn't be happier to see her say it, to have people think and talk about it, and to see right-wingers make idiots of themselves trying to refute her argument.

So here's the clip, where AOC is originally talking about trying to get the country off of fossil fuels, and then to pay for it, she proposes the higher taxes on the rich. AOC mentions that she wants to have a progressive income tax system where the 60-70% income tax kicks in at $10 million, which Anderson Cooper (who is literally a Vanderbilt) calls "radical."


Of course, the actual words AOC said didn't stop cynical right-wingers from lying about what a 70% income tax really would be. Including our own (soon-to-be-ex!) Gov Dropout.

Letting the federal government take $7 out of every $10 earned is what the Democrats’ latest star is pushing. Talk about an incentive for people to move capital to other countries.

— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) January 4, 2019

So much wrong with that tweet.

1. AOC is the Dems' "latest star"? Dude, if you say so. I frankly don't spend my day obsessing over what she says, unlike dumb mediocre white guys like you. But it is fun to watch her respond to dopey right-wingers with responses like this.

You’re the GOP Minority Whip. How do you not know how marginal tax rates work?

Oh that’s right, almost forgot: GOP works for the corporate CEOs showering themselves in multi-million💰bonuses; not the actual working people whose wages + healthcare they’re ripping off for profit. https://t.co/R1YIng2Ok1

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 6, 2019

And let me bounce off of AOC's response to the Number 3 GOP in the House, and head back to Scotty's tweet trying the same line.

2. Hey Scotty. You've been in government for 25 years, and you don't know the difference between average tax rates and marginal (last dollar) tax rates? I now have another installment of my favorite GOP game show: "LYING OR STUPID?"

3. Scott Walker has no personal experience as to why businesses "move capital", or anything else. Because Scott Walker has never held a real job, and the only thing he knows about businesses comes from what his greedhead corporate donors tell him. You know, the same people who organized the trickle-down giveaways that led to Wisconsin being 150,000 jobs behind the US rate during his time in office?

Also- Is a 70% income tax on the super-rich really "radical", when we look at the 100+ years an income tax has been enshrined into law in America? No, and in fact, it was the rule in America from the late '30's through 1980.

Know what else happened around the time we started cutting taxes for the rich? The average worker stopped getting rewarded for his/her increased productivity, as the owner/stockholder class kept more of those gains for themselves.

Scott Walker hasn't worked in a real job since 1993, so no wonder he doesn't have a clue about how the average person is struggling and having their work ethic stolen by CEOs who have plenty of money to spend on themselves and lobbyists and politicians, but don't want to pay the workers that allow them to make and redistribute those big bucks.

All you need to know about how our disproportionate economic system really works came 3 weeks ago in a New York bankruptcy court.

While the executives who presided over the bankruptcy of Sears and Kmart will ring out 2018 with news of $25.3 million in bonuses, laid-off worker Ondrea Patrick will be using her unemployment check to pay for new brakes on her 2000 Dodge Durango.

Patrick, who lost her job when the Kmart she worked at in Rockford, Illinois, closed in October, had been hoping to use the money to buy her kids — ages 1, 2, 3, 7 and 11 — something new for Christmas....

Patrick, who worked part-time for Kmart for nine years, is one of the thousands of workers whose lives were upended in October when Sears Holdings, more than $5 billion in debt and unable to compete with Walmart and Amazon, declared bankruptcy.

“I was making $10.50 an hour when they closed my store,” Patrick said. “I got my pharm tech license and was working at the service desk. All my life we struggled and I finally felt like I was making it.”

On Friday, a U.S. bankruptcy court judge allowed Sears Holdings to hand out the bonuses after the company successfully argued that it would lose its top people if there’s nothing in their stockings this Christmas.

And what did those "top people" lead Sears to? A $1.9 billion loss between January and September of 2018, with a main cause being debts of the past as a result of decisions made by many of the same CEOs.

Maybe if the mega-rich were faced with a 70% tax rate on all golden parachutes beyond $10 million, they'd actually grow their businesses instead of giving themselves more money and gambling with more debt.

And if there wasn't a lower tax rate on capital gains vs income and a lower corporate tax rate to inflate earnings, maybe corporate boards would be less likely to buy back $1 trillion of their own stock, like they did last year. These are actions that only benefit the inner circle and locks out most Americans from the benefits, especially the 46% of people who don't even have enough money to set aside to play in the stock market in the first.

As we see in the case with Sears (but they are far from the only one), these self-enriching moves comes at the price of pensions, jobs and other security that make people extremely vulnerable to the next recession induced by GOP and corporate recklessness. When we've deteriorated to the point that an average wage increase of 3.2% BEFORE inflation is considered cause for celebration, and only happens at the expense of massive budget deficits that will cost us much more in the long run, maybe it's time to stop giving all the benefits to the idle rich and rent-seeking corporates.

And that is the greatest benefit to AOC's "70% income tax"s statement. Not only she factually correct when it comes to history, it can start to move an Overton Window that has gone far to the right on economic issues in the last 40 years, where too many accept trickle-down and "job creator" jibberish when it comes to the economy. We have retracted to a point where Anderson Cooper is calling a return to the tax rates that we had during our country's best prosperity "radical".

Note this quote from a top Dem on Sunday morning, as the reaction comes in to Ocasio-Cortez's interview.

Not getting a ton of attention today, but IMO Julian Castro's answer to a question about @AOC's tax talk was striking.

"George, there was a time in this country where the top marginal tax rate was over 90 percent."

and *woosh* goes the Overton Window. pic.twitter.com/OsTd1T3RAq

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) January 6, 2019

It don't take a weathervane to know which way the wind is blowing.

After the malfeasance and corruption that has been brought to our political system in no small part because of these corporatist policies, it's time we start demanding a shift away from giving these oligarchs everything, and make them pay back a society that they have taken so much from. AOC can easily handle the slings and arrows of dopey white guys as she throws out new ideas, while work gets done in the House to start to put us back on the road to a better and more just society.

The idea of different fiscal priorities is quickly reaching the highest levels.

HARK! Thou shalt tax the income of people who make over 10 million dollars a year at a rate of 70% and use the money to provide everyone with healthcare, education and a clean environment.

Can I get an amen?

— God 🌈 (@TheGoodGodAbove) January 6, 2019