Pelosi 2, Ocasio-Cortez 0

Dakota Tebaldi

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I was getting excited for a jello fight between Myf and Free, then you guys had to go back to a silly, boring talk about taxes...
Fer real, I was started to get all interested in politics again!
 

CronoCloud Creeggan

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That's not what I'm saying - but a 70% tax is a non starter. There are other ways to find funding without picking one segment and taxing them at an exorbitant rate.
70 percent exorbitant? During the Eisenhower administration the top marginal rate was even HIGHER, over 90 percent! Really! Even Lefty me thinks that was probably a bit too high. Kennedy dropped it to the high 60's IIRC. 70 percent is about where it SHOULD be. IIRC it was also high under Roosevelt and Truman, that's why the Upper Class WASP establishment called Roosevelt a "traitor to his class"
 

Cristiano

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70 percent exorbitant? During the Eisenhower administration the top marginal rate was even HIGHER, over 90 percent! Really! Even Lefty me thinks that was probably a bit too high. Kennedy dropped it to the high 60's IIRC. 70 percent is about where it SHOULD be. IIRC it was also high under Roosevelt and Truman, that's why the Upper Class WASP establishment called Roosevelt a "traitor to his class"
On taxes, Ocasio-Cortez has the right impulse but the wrong remedy
 

Cristiano

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She made a suggestion...and it's 70% on income above $10 million. Which I think everyone knows, but most of the comments in this thread could be construed as discussing a flat 70% tax rate.
As the article I posted above about her having the right impulse but wrong approach states, a lot has changed since we had those tax rates. The larger issue is how much stuff is not taxable as income. Focusing on making more things taxable instead of the rate will accomplish more without the political anchor of a 70% tax rate, progressive or not.
 
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Agree. However, several other countries (Albania, Iceland, Paraguay, Sweden, Finland and Norway) already draw the majority of their energy sources from non-fossil sources. Granted, some of that is from hydro or geothermal but even Germany has moved to getting 78% of its energy needs met with solar. The US is trailing the pack, largely because of the political power of our fossil fuel companies.
I like positive news but I also like real statistics. The article does not say that about Germany. It says that on one (probably sunny) day they reached 78% of their energy needs with solar but on average their solar input is 38%. "Moving" is meaningless. The US is "Moving" towards 100%. Of course that likely won't happen anytime soon. Also you mention Albania. The article you referenced does not. I haven't checked the other countries you mentioned. It is certainly the case that the US is trailing other countries badly due to it's allegiance to the fossil fuel companies.
 
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Cristiano

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Cristalle you may roll your eyes about that opinion piece on Alexandria, but it's a fair article. She has a responsibility to get her facts right, and to correct them immediately when she hasn't, not double down with an excuse on why her being wrong is fine. We are already bombarded daily with flat out lies - truth and facts have never been more important.
 
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Cristalle

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One of the last people she needs a lecture from is Chris Cilizza. Her point in the interview is that she's not out and out lying to people like Trump is, or how Scalise later did about the taxation rate. She doesn't undervalue actual facts, but if she makes a mistake, she will own it and move on. I am not saying she does not have an obligation to be correct, she does, and she acknowledged that she does. She is not trying to skate off.
 

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One of the last people she needs a lecture from is Chris Cilizza. Her point in the interview is that she's not out and out lying to people like Trump is, or how Scalise later did about the taxation rate. She doesn't undervalue actual facts, but if she makes a mistake, she will own it and move on. I am not saying she does not have an obligation to be correct, she does, and she acknowledged that she does. She is not trying to skate off.
See, I didn't take this response of hers as being ownership of her mistake:

If people want to really blow up one figure here or one word there, I would argue that they're missing the forest for the trees. I think that there's a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right
It was not a semantic word game - her statement was flat out wrong, and waving it off as being "morally right" is silly. Morality and being correct aren't mutually exclusive.
 

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It was not a semantic word game - her statement was flat out wrong, and waving it off as being "morally right" is silly. Morality and being correct aren't mutually exclusive.
There is a constant media narrative to portray her as some ditz in the vein of Sarah Palin. Even Sarah Palin had the nerve to try it. She is far from it; she may make a few mistakes but she is not going to run from them or elide the facts to spin things. She will reiterate her moral point: we spend too much on the military, so much so that they can do it with little consequence for mismanagement of funds. When she talks about blowing up one word here or there, that is more of a reference to the three chambers of government gaffe. Do you really think she doesn't know how government works? Do you think that Obama really thought we had 57 states?

Again, she has acknowledged that she ought to be right. But she is going to make mistakes, everyone does. An honest mistake is not the same as something like Scalise's tweet or the Reichstag Fire that is going on air tonight, that I am not going to watch.
 

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Dwight D. Eisenhower on tax cuts and a balanced budget (Forbes, Feb. 28, 2013)


With some bumps along the way, this is the economy that the Baby Boom generation grew up in, a much more egalitarian economy than exists now. We grew up knowing that with a high school education and hard work, we could get a job that would lead to owning our own home, kids in college, etc. Since the tax cuts of Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, Bush II, and now, Trump, things have steadily worsened. We are far from egalitarian and the old American Dream.

The lowered tax rates have had a lot to do with that, fostering as they do, increased income inequality and concomitant reduction in class mobility (people moving up and down in income). AOC is right, as was Bernie Sanders: we need to increase the tax rates on wealth and high incomes.
Exactly. Which is why anyone from Gen X forward cringes when a boomer unwittingly relies on the economic situation they grew up in when talking about something today .... it simply is not the economic reality now and that affects a lot. Yes, it should be, but that is not the point. For example, when I was unemployed for a stretch my dad simply could not understand why I did not walk up to some random company and demand that they hire me.

Quite a few things have been affected, like the fact that now people who are not money managers have 401k/403b accounts rather than pensions. The former were originally designed as a supplement, they were NEVER intended to replace that system but it was cheeper so guess what happened?