“As you climb up this [income] ladder, you should be contributing more.”
It’s not yet a policy proposal, but Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is taking to 60 Minutes to float a change to marginal tax rates to help offset the costs of Green New Deal programs.
She points to progressive tax rates in the 1960’s and ’70’s as the model for her proposal, which would put the very highest earners in a tax rate of 70 percent for any income above $10 million.
President Ronald Reagan slashed tax rates for the wealth ih the 1980s, and in the decades that followed, median income-earners saw their wealth stagnate, while the highest earners pooled a gargantuan share of the country’s wealth. Currently, 90 percent of America’s wealth is concentrated in just 160,000 households.
Few rookie members of Congress have put such bold ideas on the national agenda and stirred up as much controversy as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who supports a #GreenNewDeal and says, “only radicals have changed this country.” https://t.co/2EBVY5OWLh pic.twitter.com/KihXYpC6eS
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) 4 January 2019
A marginal tax rate of 70 percent, as Ocasio-Cortez says, would impact a small number of ultra-high earners — not all taxpayers currently in the highest brackets.
