Economy "Radical" Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

[uppercutbus]

I’m sure.. you and the rest of em. Gotta have an enemy huh?

Seems you're mad people are talking about her.

 

[zebby23]

Seems you're mad people are talking about her.

Didn’t watch because clearly nonsense. The right starting talking about her the moment she started coming on cable news. That’s when the fear started. Ever notice how Dems don’t talk about freshman republican congressman and women. Can anyone even name one of those white men?

 

[uppercutbus]

Didn’t watch because clearly nonsense. The right starting talking about her the moment she started coming on cable news. That’s when the fear started. Ever notice how Dems don’t talk about freshman republican congressman and women. Can anyone even name one of those white men?

So there is a nefarious unwarrented campaign to give her attention? She points to the progressive tax rates of the 1960s. She doesn't realize (or never learned in her economics classes) that there were far more tax deductions in those days that effectively reduced the tax burden of people in that bracket to approximately 1/8th of what they are paying today.

 

[DIDM]

Why would companies flee a rate of 70% on individual income over $10m?

The move to lower the corporate rate was fairly bipartisan.

The GOP locked out the Dems because they knew they wouldn't agree to what they they were doing to individuals.

How many executives make over $10M a year? Are they leaving the US?

Are they more productive and worth more than all the employees making under $10M who won't leave the US?

Because the company owner wouldn’t want to pay 80%+ on their income

 

[zebby23]

So there is a nefarious unwarrented campaign to give her attention? She points to the progressive tax rates of the 1960s. She doesn't realize (or never learned in her economics classes) that there were far more tax deductions in those days that effectively reduced the tax burden of people in that bracket to approximately 1/8th of what they are paying today.

She is also 27... trump proved you need not know shit to be elected to office. She at least reads and has a willingness to learn unlike bible thumping republicans

 

[PolishHeadlock]

Didn’t watch because clearly nonsense. The right starting talking about her the moment she started coming on cable news. That’s when the fear started. Ever notice how Dems don’t talk about freshman republican congressman and women. Can anyone even name one of those white men?

They don't talk about Louie Gohmert who's a complete clown and been in office for 14 years and is a complete clown

 

[uppercutbus]

She is also 27... trump proved you need not know shit to be elected to office. She at least reads and has a willingness to learn unlike bible thumping republicans

You don't sound very confident in her new green deal policy. An income tax rate as high as 60 to 70 percent on the highest-earning Americans to combat carbon emissions. Heart in the right place and new blood "shaking things up", I guess, but do you see it working?

 

[PolishHeadlock]

Because the company owner wouldn’t want to pay 80%+ on their income

How many individuals that privately own their own companies make over $10M?

How feasible is it for them to move their company out of the country?

The US has the best Universities in the world which attracts and produces the best talent in the world

And if the US raised their top marginal tax rate do you think the rest of the Western World would sit put at 50-60%?

Mhm

 

[xcvbn]

Krugman is all in with her



"I have no idea how well Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will perform as a member of Congress. But her election is already serving a valuable purpose. You see, the mere thought of having a young, articulate, telegenic nonwhite woman serve is driving many on the right mad — and in their madness they’re inadvertently revealing their true selves.

Some of the revelations are cultural: The hysteria over a video of AOC dancing in college says volumes, not about her, but about the hysterics. But in some ways the more important revelations are intellectual: The right’s denunciation of AOC’s “insane” policy ideas serves as a very good reminder of who is actually insane.

The controversy of the moment involves AOC’s advocacy of a tax rate of 70-80 percent on very high incomes, which is obviously crazy, right? I mean, who thinks that makes sense? Only ignorant people like … um, Peter Diamond, Nobel laureate in economics and arguably the world’s leading expert on public finance (although Republicans blocked him from an appointment to the Federal Reserve Board with claims that he was unqualified. Really.) And it’s a policy nobody has every implemented, aside from … the United States, for 35 years after World War II — including the most successful period of economic growth in our history.

To be more specific, Diamond, in work with Emmanuel Saez — one of our leading experts on inequality — estimated the optimal top tax rate to be 73 percent. Some put it higher: Christina Romer, top macroeconomist and former head of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, estimates it at more than 80 percent.

Where do these numbers come from? Underlying the Diamond-Saez analysis are two propositions: Diminishing marginal utility and competitive markets.

Diminishing marginal utility is the common-sense notion that an extra dollar is worth a lot less in satisfaction to people with very high incomes than to those with low incomes. Give a family with an annual income of $20,000 an extra $1,000 and it will make a big difference to their lives. Give a guy who makes $1 million an extra thousand and he’ll barely notice it.

What this implies for economic policy is that we shouldn’t care what a policy does to the incomes of the very rich. A policy that makes the rich a bit poorer will affect only a handful of people, and will barely affect their life satisfaction, since they will still be able to buy whatever they want.

So why not tax them at 100 percent? The answer is that this would eliminate any incentive to do whatever it is they do to earn that much money, which would hurt the economy. In other words, tax policy toward the rich should have nothing to do with the interests of the rich, per se, but should only be concerned with how incentive effects change the behavior of the rich, and how this affects the rest of the population.

But here’s where competitive markets come in. In a perfectly competitive economy, with no monopoly power or other distortions — which is the kind of economy conservatives want us to believe we have — everyone gets paid his or her marginal product. That is, if you get paid $1000 an hour, it’s because each extra hour you work adds $1000 worth to the economy’s output.

In that case, however, why do we care how hard the rich work? If a rich man works an extra hour, adding $1000 to the economy, but gets paid $1000 for his efforts, the combined income of everyone else doesn’t change, does it? Ah, but it does — because he pays taxes on that extra $1000. So the social benefit from getting high-income individuals to work a bit harder is the tax revenue generated by that extra effort — and conversely the cost of their working less is the reduction in the taxes they pay.

Or to put it a bit more succinctly, when taxing the rich, all we should care about is how much revenue we raise. The optimal tax rate on people with very high incomes is the rate that raises the maximum possible revenue.

And that’s something we can estimate, given evidence on how responsive the pre-tax income of the wealthy actually is to tax rates. As I said, Diamond and Saez put the optimal rate at 73 percent, Romer at over 80 percent — which is consistent with what AOC said.

An aside: What if we take into account the reality that markets aren’t perfectly competitive, that there’s a lot of monopoly power out there? The answer is that this almost surely makes the case for even higher tax rates, since high-income people presumably get a lot of those monopoly rents.

So AOC, far from showing her craziness, is fully in line with serious economic research. (I hear that she’s been talking to some very good economists.) Her critics, on the other hand, do indeed have crazy policy ideas — and tax policy is at the heart of the crazy.

You see, Republicans almost universally advocate low taxes on the wealthy, based on the claim that tax cuts at the top will have huge beneficial effects on the economy. This claim rests on research by … well, nobody. There isn’t any body of serious work supporting G.O.P. tax ideas, because the evidence is overwhelmingly against those ideas.

Look at the history of top marginal income tax rates (left) versus growth in real GDP per capita (right, measured over 10 years, to smooth out short-run fluctuations.):


Top tax rates and growthCreditTax Policy Center, BEA

Image

Top tax rates and growthCreditTax Policy Center, BEA
What we see is that America used to have very high tax rates on the rich — higher even than those AOC is proposing — and did just fine. Since then tax rates have come way down, and if anything the economy has done less well.

Why do Republicans adhere to a tax theory that has no support from nonpartisan economists and is refuted by all available data? Well, ask who benefits from low taxes on the rich, and it’s obvious.

And because the party’s coffers demand adherence to nonsense economics, the party prefers “economists” who are obvious frauds and can’t even fake their numbers effectively.

Which brings me back to AOC, and the constant effort to portray her as flaky and ignorant. Well, on the tax issue she’s just saying what good economists say; and she definitely knows more economics than almost everyone in the G.O.P. caucus, not least because she doesn’t “know” things that aren’t true."

Guess he's off the Clinton's payroll now.

Whatever the case, it's good he's speaking up and being honest here.

 

[DIDM]

How many individuals that privately own their own companies make over $10M?

How feasible is it for them to move their company out of the country?

The US has the best Universities in the world which attracts and produces the best talent in the world

And if the US raised their top marginal tax rate do you think the rest of the Western World would sit put at 50-60%?

Mhm

Why do you think the economy is booming? Because business owners brought their companies back to the US. If you want to live in a socialist society, they exist already, vacation there.

 

[PolishHeadlock]

Guess he's off the Clinton's payroll now.

Whatever the case, it's good he's speaking up and being honest here.

Did you vote for Jill Stein last time?

 

[zebby23]

You don't sound very confident in her new green deal policy. An income tax rate as high as 60 to 70 percent on the highest-earning Americans to combat carbon emissions. Heart in the right place and new blood "shaking things up", I guess, but do you see it working?

Well it won’t happen likely and sure it could work. Why not tax billionaires a little more on any income over a particular amount. Or go back to the previous corporate tax rate and raise revenue that way.

 

[PolishHeadlock]

Why do you think the economy is booming? Because business owners brought their companies back to the US. If you want to live in a socialist society, they exist already, vacation there.

Socialism is when you seize the means of production and partake in central planning while abandoning markets. A high top marginal rate doesn't do that.

Eisenhower wasn't a Socialist with a top tax rate of 92%. JFK and Nixon weren't at 70%.

Any jobs coming back to the US are because of productivity gains

 

[xcvbn]

Did you vote for Jill Stein last time?

Did you expect me to vote for Hillary or Trump?

 

[PolishHeadlock]

Did you expect me to vote for Hillary or Trump?

Lol

 

[xcvbn]

Socialism is when you seize the means of production and partake in central planning while abandoning markets. A high top marginal rate doesn't do that.

Eisenhower wasn't a Socialist with a top tax rate of 92%. JFK and Nixon weren't at 70%.

Any jobs coming back to the US are because of productivity gains

To be more precise, communism is when the state seizes the means of production while socialism is when the workers do.

Your point still stands.

 

[lifelessheap]

100% fossil fuel removal is full retard. Plenty of power equipment is required in our society that requires fossil fuel. And not every american can go out and buy a tesla.

Tesla can't keep up with demand as it is.

 

[Kframe]

So there is a nefarious unwarrented campaign to give her attention? She points to the progressive tax rates of the 1960s. She doesn't realize (or never learned in her economics classes) that there were far more tax deductions in those days that effectively reduced the tax burden of people in that bracket to approximately 1/8th of what they are paying today.

Those deductions should be eliminated if they return to the high tax rate.

 

[Greoric]

To be more precise, communism is when the state seizes the means of production while socialism is when the workers do.

Your point still stands.

You're confusing syndicalism with socialism. Socialism is the state ownership over the means of production, and communism is the proposed stateless society on the other end of that after you've genocided all the undesirable people or thrown them into gulags and worked them to death.

 

[Greoric]

Eisenhower wasn't a Socialist with a top tax rate of 92%. JFK and Nixon weren't at 70%.

No one paid those rates back then.