Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, newly elected to Congress, had something to say about the fact the U.S. houses both, billionaires and, well, poor people. She has recently proposed a 70% marginal tax rate on people who earn over $10 million a year. Tuesday morning, February 5th, Fox News displayed a graphic that showed the public was “increasingly onboard with raising taxes on the rich.”
A Small Tax Increase
“A system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong.” [1] Said Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in an interview with journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates during a video that honored Martin Luther King Jr.
Ocasio-Cortez continued with her thought by saying “At what level are we really just living in excess?” she said. “And what kind of society do we want to live in? And do we want to live in a city where billionaires have their own personal Uber helipads when people are working 80-hour weeks and can’t feed their kids?”
Ocasio-Cortez and other Democratic members have been working on a new deal. A “Green New Deal” to be exact (a plan that will eliminate fossil fuels and carbon emissions within the next 12 years). And to help fund their new deal plans they’ve been playing around with an idea for a 70% tax rate on the richest Americans. [2]
Ocasio-Cortez suggested that any tax paying American that makes more than $10 million a year would be taxed at 70%. That’s approximately 16,000 people and that would nearly double the current tax rate for people in this tax bracket.
Fox News
Fox News ran a graphic on Tuesday morning that showed what the public thought of the idea of raising taxes (on the rich).
The Fox News hosts were surprised by the results of the poll. Charles Payne, from “Making Money,” spoke up saying: “The idea of fairness has been promoted in our schools for a long time, and we’re starting to see kids who grew up with this notion of fairness above all. Now, they’re becoming voting age, and they’re bringing this ideology with them.” [3]
Fox, apoplectic over its own polling showing wide public support for @AOC and @ewarren‘s wealth tax proposals, literally blames the fact that schools teach kids to be fair:
“The idea of fairness has been promoted in our schools for a long time.” pic.twitter.com/GowAZWYWpZ
— Steve Morris (@stevemorris__) February 5, 2019
Notes:
- ^Langlois, Shawn. “Ocasio-Cortez: It’s ‘immoral’ for a system to allow billionaires amid such poverty.” MarketWatch, 5 Feb. 2019, www.marketwatch.com/story/ocasio-cortez-its-immoral-for-a-system-to-allow-billionaires-amid-such-poverty-2019-01-22. (go back ↩)
- ^“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s tax proposal could raise $720 billion over the next 10 years – NationofChange.” NationofChange, 7 Jan. 2019, www.nationofchange.org/2019/01/07/alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-tax-proposal-could-raise-720-billion-over-the-next-10-years. (go back ↩)
- ^Langlois, Shawn. “Higher taxes on the rich polling well? Fox News host blames ‘the idea of fairness’.” MarketWatch, 5 Feb. 2019, www.marketwatch.com/story/rasing-taxes-on-the-rich-fox-news-host-blames-the-idea-of-fairness-2019-02-05. (go back ↩)
