Chad Vigorous @PrettyBadLefty The ease at which Alexandria Ocasio Cortez basic answers fluster reporters and dictates the terms of the public discourse on policies should show you just how little the Democrats have tried over the past 4 decades. It should also show you how conditioned the rank and file liberal has become to symbolic, theoretically moral victories instead of actual victories and material solutions This might be a hottake, and I do like AOC, but she is not some preternatural political genius, she is just a normal person with good politics based in her experience with material deprivation. The fact that the Democratic party could not do this is at best gross incompetence and at worst enabling. No wonder they hate her, she is an constant reminder to the population that despite their mastery of the language of symbolic resistance they simply weren't trying to make things better. Dumb reporter: "How are we going to pay for [insert basic human right]" AOC: "How do we pay for anything?" Exactly. EXACTLY.
"How do we pay for your policy that will cost 4 trillion dollars a year which is how much the government currently spends per year?" "How do we pay for anything?" For some reason, there are actually people who thought that was a clever answer.....wow.
Why are you obsessed with a freshman Congresswoman but ambivalent about the lying, racist, piece of filth acting as President? Give me 12 articles on that, stat. AOC, yet another person held to a higher standard than the President.
another day, another AOC-obsessed news cycle https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/ocasio-cortez-socialism-norway-sweden-venezuela/ Socialist Rep. Ocasio-Cortez Accidentally Endorses Social Security Privatization, Minimum Wage Repeal, Corporate Tax Cuts 1/07/2019 Socialism: Newly minted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she isn't modeling her brand of socialism on socialist basket cases like Venezuela, but on successes like Sweden, Norway and Finland. Apparently, she hasn't bothered to look at just what sorts of economic policies those "socialist" countries have been pursuing lately. During an interview on "60 Minutes," Anderson Cooper put this question to Ocasio-Cortez: "When people hear the word socialism, they think Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela. Is that what you have in mind?" Her response: "Of course not. What we have in mind — and what of my — and my policies most closely resemble what we see in the U.K., in Norway, in Finland, in Sweden." If that were true, then Ocasio-Cortez would have to abandon almost her entire economic agenda and embrace free-market economic policies. Because that's what those countries have been doing. Here's a rundown: Privatize Social Security Ocasio-Cortez says she wants to expand Social Security benefits. There's no question that she's unalterably opposed to privatizing the federal pension program. But two of the countries she cites as role models have partially privatized their social security programs to save taxpayer money and provide better retirements for their citizens. Sweden partially privatized its social security program in the mid-1990s. Britain began partially privatizing its public pension program in the late 1950s. In both countries, workers can invest a portion of their payroll taxes in individual, private accounts. Eliminate the Minimum Wage Ocasio-Cortez also wants to impose a $15 federal minimum wage and create a "federal jobs guarantee." She is apparently unaware that neither Sweden nor Norway have any minimum wage laws at all. Or that Finland's is 83% lower than the current U.S. minimum. The UK's minimum wage is higher than the U.S., but nowhere near the $15 minimum she and other leftist Democrats are pushing And none of these countries would dream of something as radical as a "federal jobs guarantee." Finland, in fact, just abandoned its experiment in a related idea called "universal basic income" because of its costs and its adverse economic impacts. Cut The Corporate Tax Rate Ocasio-Cortez also wants to hike the federal corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%. But wait a minute. The corporate income tax rate in the UK is only 19%. In Finland, it's 20%. The rate is 22% in Sweden and 23% in Norway. When you count state corporate income taxes, the average tax on corporate profits in the U.S. is currently 25.7%, according to the Tax Foundation. So instead of calling for a hike, Ocasio-Cortez should be calling for further cuts in the corporate tax rate to bring them in line with her "socialist" role models. Ditch 'Medicare for all' How about health care? Ocasio-Cortez backs the "Medicare for all" plan, which would have the government pay 100% of the cost for health care, including doctor visits, hospitals, prescription drugs, dental and vision care. In short, "Medicare for all" would outlaw private insurance and virtually eliminate all out-of-pocket spending. (The only thing that the government wouldn't cover is cosmetic surgery.) This, too, would be a radical departure from the countries she claims as role models. While those countries "guarantee" health care, most still rely on some form of private insurance or out-of-pocket spending to a significant portion of the bills. In fact, in Finland, private payers cover 20% of the nation's health costs, in Norway it's 15% and in Sweden, 16%. In the UK, it's 21%, according to data from the OECD. What's more, in every country but Sweden, the share of health costs paid by the government has been declining in recent years. Embrace Free Markets Nor does Ocasio-Cortez seem to realize that while she wants to shove the U.S. toward big-government socialism, the countries she cites have been largely moving in the opposite direction — cutting taxes, reining in government benefits and freeing up their economies. In fact, all those countries have become more economically free over the years, according to the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom. The Heritage index measures things like taxes, business freedom, government spending, property rights, and labor and trade policies. As a result, the UK and Sweden now rank higher than the U.S. on the Heritage index, while Finland and Norway are just a nose behind. Less Diversity, More School Choice Some more inconvenient facts about these so-called socialist paradises that Ocasio-Cortez would never endorse: Sweden, Norway and Finland are among the least diverse nations in the world. Out of a list of 159 countries ranked by ethnic and cultural diversity, Sweden, Norway and Finland rank in the bottom fifth. The U.S. ranks 85. Sweden also has a school choice program, in effect since 1992, that lets parents take vouchers to public or private schools. She also ignores the fact that each of those countries spends a fraction of what the U.S. spends on defense as a share of their economies. That frees up vast sums of money to finance their welfare states. If Ocasio-Cortez wants to deregulate the economy, privatize Social Security, eliminate the minimum wage, and start cutting taxes, we're all for it. If not, then she's misleading the public about what kind of country she and her fellow leftists envision the U.S. becoming.
lol. AOC trying to score an own-goal at home where the one percenters apparently already provide 40% of the state income tax revenue. I can't believe Uncle Andrew C will let her get away with this. https://nypost.com/2019/01/07/ocasio-cortezs-tax-plan-would-be-bad-news-for-new-york/ Ocasio-Cortez’s tax plan would be bad news for New York By E.J. McMahon January 7, 2019 | 6:53pm The prospect of a 70 percent top federal income tax rate, floated by newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on “60 Minutes” over the weekend, struck a nerve across the political spectrum. But Albany Democrats should think twice before cheering her on — because New York, in particular, would have a lot to lose from a return to confiscatory federal taxes on higher earners. Challenged by interviewer Anderson Cooper to explain how she would pay for her expensive “Green New Deal” vision, Ocasio-Cortez hearkened back to “our tax rates in the ’60s . . . a progressive tax-rate system,” in which “once you get to, like, the tippy-tops, on your ten-millionth dollar, sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent.” She added: “That doesn’t mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate, but it means that as you climb up this ladder, you should be contributing more.” The congresswoman never clarified the rates she might have in mind for the lower rungs on the ladder. Judging by journalistic and social media reactions to AOC’s comments, many progressive Democrats are willing to entertain a return to what they see as the good, old days of sky-high federal tax rates, which peaked at 91 percent in the early 1960s before JFK’s tax bill cut the marginal rate to 70 percent in the latter half of the decade. It stayed at 70 percent until Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 and launched his supply-side revolution on the belief, vindicated by subsequent economic history, that lower marginal rates would boost growth, investment and hiring. AOC and her allies dispute this account of the 1980s. Be that as it may, by focusing on tax rates alone, proponents of super-soaking the super-rich ignore big changes in the federal tax structure over the past half-century. The Internal Revenue Code of the 1960s was riddled with loopholes that sharply reduced the effective federal-tax bite on the wealthy. In fact, prior to the revolutionary bipartisan tax reform of 1986, the distribution of the federal income tax burden was less progressive. Effective in 2018, the new federal tax law reduced the top rate to 37 percent from nearly 40 percent, but it also cut taxes on lower earners by much larger percentages. The biggest budgetary “pay-for” in the Republican tax plan was curtailment of the state and local tax, or SALT, deduction, which will more than offset the individual tax cut for most top-bracket filers, especially in New York City, where the combined state and city income tax rate is the second highest in the country. When New York’s combined state and city income tax rates last peaked in the mid-1970s, reaching nearly 20 percent, full SALT deductibility assured the net cost to affected taxpayers was less than 6 percent. But the SALT cap has raised the top state-city rate to its full statutory level of 12.7 percent, which means a 70 percent federal rate would translate into 82.7 percent for high-income New Yorkers. This would pose a huge problem for a state government that relies on the highest-earning 1 percent of New York residents to generate 40 percent of its personal income tax revenue. The SALT cap already is giving those millionaire earners a big added incentive to minimize their exposure to New York state and city taxes. They can accomplish that by moving their main residence practically anywhere else while retaining a pied-à-terre in Manhattan. It’s by no means safe to assume that a future Democratic Congress willing to impose a 60 or 70 percent marginal tax rate also would resurrect the full SALT deduction. A possible harbinger of things to come is the Senate Democrats’ $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill, unveiled last year by their minority leader, New York’s own Sen. Charles Schumer. The Schumer-backed plan would be financed largely by rolling back the portions of the new tax law that disproportionately benefit high-earning New Yorkers — without repealing the SALT cap. There are lots of reasons why a return to a top federal tax rate of 60 to 70 percent would be a bad idea for the country, economically and fiscally. But putting all other objections aside, Albany Democrats should keep in mind that New York is always destined to be a loser in Washington’s income-redistribution games. SALT or no SALT, a sharp increase in marginal tax rates on the highest-earning households would only accelerate the erosion of New York’s wealth-dependent tax base. There will be nowhere to hide from the ultimate consequences on the state and city budget. E.J. McMahon is research director at the Empire Center for Public Policy and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
I'd appreciate it if you kept the updates down to when AOC-related news happened and refrained from posting all this trite "analysis." You're making your own thread unreadable.
You don't actually have to make an extrapolated assumption about something as stupid as "we just print money" in regards to the person currently in charge of the world's largest bureaucracy. In reference to trying to solve the national debt issue, Trump explicitly stated "Just run the presses — print money" to Gary Cohn. https://www.yahoo.com/amphtml/finance/news/trump-told-gary-cohn-apos-180000497.html
Ya that's definitely not the case. Plenty of people genuinely believe him to be intelligent. Most if not all of them are "low iq" as Trump would like to say.
She is an ignorant and inexperienced politician - I am not a fan of hers. But she sits in the House of Representatives and wields little power and is primarily in the spotlight because of nutty or dumb things she says. But she is not president. And the amount of energy focused on one rep with everything else going on is pretty incredible
Typical alleged lack of "stupidity from right wingers and sadly self proclaimed sophisticated is fake outrage about misstatements no matter how minor, that are then freely acknowleged and corrected. Meanwhile no problems that most people in Congress or the media constantly pretend that they do not understand the difference between taxing marginal income over 70% vs all income 70%. They fools at best only themselves.
slow news day for AOC https://www.newsweek.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-twitter-hannity-scalise-fox-1283224
