Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

[Elixir]

Yeah OAC Derangement Syndrome is hard to see from the inside.

Explaining why her "Jesus fled to Egypt so we must open our borders to everybody who wants to come in" analogy does not hold water is not "derangement syndrome".

Guess I missed the "we must open our borders to everybody who wants to come in" bit. I assume that you are paraphrasing to the best of your meager ability?
I am likewise ignorant of any cure for your OACDS, but I do wish you luck.

 

[Derec]

Guess I missed the "we must open our borders to everybody who wants to come in" bit. I assume that you are paraphrasing to the best of your meager ability?

I am analyzing, and my ability is far from "meager". But then again, other than cheap insults, you have nothing.

AOC opposes deporting illegals, wants to abolish ICE and supports "sanctuary cities" where illegals are shielded from deportation even when they, like Jose Zarate, have committed crimes.
She supports abuse of the asylum process to facilitate mass illegal migration into US.

I am likewise ignorant of any cure for your OACDS, but I do wish you luck.

Again, no derangement syndrome here. Just a lack of infatuation with what I hope will be just a flash in the pan.

 

[PyramidHead]

I disagree. I don't think that those who avidly support AOC's 70% marginal tax rate understand it as a 70% marginal tax rate with enough exemptions added to make the actual marginal tax rate 42%. My impression of the arguments from those avid supporters is "we need to get those bastards".

Even if that is your impression, an effective marginal rate of 42% would be "getting those bastards" when compared to current effective marginal rates.

Any proposal of a tax system aimed at "getting those bastards" should be ignored or rejected outright. Tax policy should be only based on financing the government, even if this is best accomplished by benefiting "those bastards". Whether any tax proposal best accomplishes financing the government is, of course, open to debate but should never be based on punishing any sector.

Profits have soared compared to wages over the past 30-40 years, yes? Take your pick from any chart that shows this. So, empirically, it is possible to sustain an economy in America where profits are much lower than they are today, whether by taxation or elimination of loopholes or whatever, so that the end result is a distribution of profits and wages similar to what existed in prior decades, regardless of what the effective marginal rate may have been. A goal of our economic policy should be to tip the scales back in that direction, so that the workers actually get a bigger piece of the prosperity they create instead of it all concentrating in corporate CEO bank accounts while wages stagnate (or decline!). Progressive taxation is just one route to getting there, but the mechanism isn't important. What's important is lower profits and higher wages.

 

[lpetrich]

Ocasio-Cortez is lone Democrat to vote against bill to reopen government because it funded ICE -- the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which she wants to abolish.

 

[ZiprHead]

Ocasio-Cortez is lone Democrat to vote against bill to reopen government because it funded ICE -- the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which she wants to abolish.

I've seen enough of their gestapo like tactics to agree with her.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Nobody sane considers it an option because it brings progress to a screeching halt. If you can't profit by making a business people won't make businesses. The population is growing, we need more businesses to provide more jobs. Businesses from time to time fail, we need replacements.



If you assume anything from Oxfam is propaganda you'll rarely be wrong. You realize that most recent college graduates have negative net worth? And that "poorest 50%" is a clear case of lying with statistics--they're counting the negative net worth to get that number. One college graduate with $100k in student loans, 8 people with $10k each, one retiree with $100k. By their reasoning the top 10% has as much wealth as the bottom 90%.

We can talk about being polite to rich people so as not to frighten them away, but I'm in favor of taking back our stuff and getting on with the business of helping each other survive and thrive. Return the commons to the commoners, expropriate the profits that have been stolen from workers, shut down the financial sector entirely, and allow the majority of people to survive without being rented by rich people, which itself is only a slight improvement over being owned by them.

I am in favor of continuing to live. I think that would be unlikely in your world.

First of all, Loren, if you had been keeping up even a tiny bit, you would realize that the US population growth has slowed dramatically. This would be one reason we should welcome all those fertile ready to reproduce brown people into our country.

I'm not saying we need population growth. I'm saying we need to be able to grow the productive infrastructure to keep up with population and technological growth. If you make investing in business uneconomic the supply of new jobs dries up.

If you had been paying any attention at all you would realize that income disparity has reached horrific and dangerous levels in this country.

1) We don't know--data from the past is extremely poor.

2) I was responding to a proposal that would devastate future growth of our economy.

If you had been paying any attention at all you would realize that paying workers too little to be able to live decent lives while the handful of uber wealthy individuals buy whatever they like, including elections and freedom from prosecution and legislation that guarantees their ability to continue to amass wealth greater than their ability to spend or the ability of the next several generations of uberwealthy to spend then you would realize that this is actually one of those conditions that lead to serious and bloody revolution.

You're arguing utopia, not reality.

I would also think that some portion of your lizard brain would realize that having opted not to reproduce, your interest in what is happening is...not very compelling. Your own self interest should be in favor of paying people well enough to help maintain you in your old age home without them feeling compelled or entitled to pilfer from you in order to survive or buy their kids shoes. Or go to college.

Under his proposal, what old age home? The economy would be too trashed for such things.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

WTF? Apparently Loren prefers rationalism over emotionalism.

Exactly. Furthermore, when faced with emotional arguments vs rational arguments it's nearly certain the emotional argument is wrong.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

We have no idea what they were paying. Thus arguments based on their paying more back then are invalid.

There are plenty of studies analyzing effective income tax rates for that era. Joseph Pechman's Federal Tax Policy (now out of print) had excellent analysis. I don't have access to it at this writing, but I will find it tomorrow.

Anyway, this link https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-rich-1950-not-high/ has a graph of the average effective tax rates for the top 1%. Their estimates indicate that the top 1% had an average effective tax rate of 45% in 1945 (the peak) and an average effective tax rate of 36.4% in 2014.

No. You can no doubt find data on what the tax rates were and how much was collected.

What we don't know is how much money never made it to the tax return in the first place. There were a lot of loopholes that reduced income.

 

[laughing dog]

We have no idea what they were paying. Thus arguments based on their paying more back then are invalid.

There are plenty of studies analyzing effective income tax rates for that era. Joseph Pechman's Federal Tax Policy (now out of print) had excellent analysis. I don't have access to it at this writing, but I will find it tomorrow.

Anyway, this link https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-rich-1950-not-high/ has a graph of the average effective tax rates for the top 1%. Their estimates indicate that the top 1% had an average effective tax rate of 45% in 1945 (the peak) and an average effective tax rate of 36.4% in 2014.

No. You can no doubt find data on what the tax rates were and how much was collected.

What we don't know is how much money never made it to the tax return in the first place. There were a lot of loopholes that reduced income.

Which has nothing at all to do with your claim that "We have no idea what they were paying".

 

[PyramidHead]

Ocasio-Cortez is lone Democrat to vote against bill to reopen government because it funded ICE -- the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which she wants to abolish.

I've seen enough of their gestapo like tactics to agree with her.

This is an important moment. When she first started in Congress less than a month ago, she actually voted for a bill that funded ICE (as part of the DHS), and her constituents gave her hell for it. Putting pressure on politicians works.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Ocasio-Cortez is lone Democrat to vote against bill to reopen government because it funded ICE -- the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which she wants to abolish.

I've seen enough of their gestapo like tactics to agree with her.

This is an important moment. When she first started in Congress less than a month ago, she actually voted for a bill that funded ICE (as part of the DHS), and her constituents gave her hell for it. Putting pressure on politicians works.

But dumping ICE is a major change in legislation. While it may or may not be a valid and important thing to do, large changes like that are things which require debate, analysis and consideration. It shouldn't be packaged in with giving people money for the work they've already been doing. Start paying people and THEN work to fund or defund your pet projects. Her position here isn't much better than Trump's with his dumbassed wall.

 

[PyramidHead]

This is an important moment. When she first started in Congress less than a month ago, she actually voted for a bill that funded ICE (as part of the DHS), and her constituents gave her hell for it. Putting pressure on politicians works.

But dumping ICE is a major change in legislation. While it may or may not be a valid and important thing to do, large changes like that are things which require debate, analysis and consideration. It shouldn't be packaged in with giving people money for the work they've already been doing. Start paying people and THEN work to fund or defund your pet projects. Her position here isn't much better than Trump's with his dumbassed wall.

The government is still shut down. But now the issue is in the news and her supporters are enlivened by someone who understands their position on a militarized border. This is how you do politics, not by playing into the hostage mentality that Republicans are pushing to get their unpopular ideas funded.

 

[poster]

Ah, I don't know. I think we already have enough Catholics in this country.

Perhaps we should deport some of the Irish and Italian Catholics to Mexico.

 

[Elixir]

This is an important moment. When she first started in Congress less than a month ago, she actually voted for a bill that funded ICE (as part of the DHS), and her constituents gave her hell for it. Putting pressure on politicians works.

But dumping ICE is a major change in legislation. While it may or may not be a valid and important thing to do, large changes like that are things which require debate, analysis and consideration. It shouldn't be packaged in with giving people money for the work they've already been doing. Start paying people and THEN work to fund or defund your pet projects. Her position here isn't much better than Trump's with his dumbassed wall.

Dumping ICE is like banning hammers because some high-profile asswipe is using one to commit horrible atrocities.
I have dealt with ICE for years and years. Most of the people are just doing their job as they are being told to, and many don't like what they're being told. The higher ups are more concerned - their image and reputations are being put on the line, for no good reason that they can see, but they are powerless to object. Their mission as they understood it when they joined, is at odds with the orders they are currently receiving.
In fairness to the anti-ICE faction, the people we deal with are in procurement of medical equipment, and may have a more humanitarian bent than would be representative of the Agency as a whole.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

This is an important moment. When she first started in Congress less than a month ago, she actually voted for a bill that funded ICE (as part of the DHS), and her constituents gave her hell for it. Putting pressure on politicians works.

But dumping ICE is a major change in legislation. While it may or may not be a valid and important thing to do, large changes like that are things which require debate, analysis and consideration. It shouldn't be packaged in with giving people money for the work they've already been doing. Start paying people and THEN work to fund or defund your pet projects. Her position here isn't much better than Trump's with his dumbassed wall.

The government is still shut down. But now the issue is in the news and her supporters are enlivened by someone who understands their position on a militarized border. This is how you do politics, not by playing into the hostage mentality that Republicans are pushing to get their unpopular ideas funded.

But the purpose of her vote is saying that they should keep the government shut down and hold all the unpaid workers hostage until ICE is disbanded. I do get that this isn't her "real" position and it's an meaningless and pointless protest vote in order to score political points with her base, but that doesn't change the fact that the rationale behind it is the exact same as Trump's rationale. It's tying all of the payments for those workers into one's pet project as opposed to first doing the main job of giving people their money and then dealing with these sorts of issues while the government is up and running, not stopping the government from being up and running until those negotiations are done.

 

[PyramidHead]

This is an important moment. When she first started in Congress less than a month ago, she actually voted for a bill that funded ICE (as part of the DHS), and her constituents gave her hell for it. Putting pressure on politicians works.

But dumping ICE is a major change in legislation. While it may or may not be a valid and important thing to do, large changes like that are things which require debate, analysis and consideration. It shouldn't be packaged in with giving people money for the work they've already been doing. Start paying people and THEN work to fund or defund your pet projects. Her position here isn't much better than Trump's with his dumbassed wall.

Dumping ICE is like banning hammers because some high-profile asswipe is using one to commit horrible atrocities.
I have dealt with ICE for years and years. Most of the people are just doing their job as they are being told to, and many don't like what they're being told. The higher ups are more concerned - their image and reputations are being put on the line, for no good reason that they can see, but they are powerless to object. Their mission as they understood it when they joined, is at odds with the orders they are currently receiving.
In fairness to the anti-ICE faction, the people we deal with are in procurement of medical equipment, and may have a more humanitarian bent than would be representative of the Agency as a whole.

And there were surely medics in the Praetorian Guard under Mussolini. I'm over it.

 

[PyramidHead]

The government is still shut down. But now the issue is in the news and her supporters are enlivened by someone who understands their position on a militarized border. This is how you do politics, not by playing into the hostage mentality that Republicans are pushing to get their unpopular ideas funded.

But the purpose of her vote is saying that they should keep the government shut down and hold all the unpaid workers hostage until ICE is disbanded. I do get that this isn't her "real" position and it's an meaningless and pointless protest vote in order to score political points with her base, but that doesn't change the fact that the rationale behind it is the exact same as Trump's rationale. It's tying all of the payments for those workers into one's pet project as opposed to first doing the main job of giving people their money and then dealing with these sorts of issues while the government is up and running, not stopping the government from being up and running until those negotiations are done.

I don't know how the funding for ICE was bundled with other provisions this time around. Earlier this month, when she voted differently, it was part of a separate bill that only funded DHS. If that was the case this time as well, I maintain that she was right to oppose it.

You keep saying that the main job of the government here should be to give its workers money, and implying that the problem with Trump's strategy is that he's using the government shutdown to push through a policy he favors. It isn't. The problem is the policy in question, the border wall, is a bad policy that makes no sense. We SHOULD be treating government funding as something more important than a secure paycheck for every federal employee, and times like these are exactly the right ones to raise awareness about what exactly the money is being spent on in the first place. If funding the government involves funding unacceptable abuses of power, it should go unfunded on those grounds, to the extent that the effects of the abuses are worse than the effects on the livelihoods of the workers.

There is no "dealing with these sorts of issues while the government is up and running". Nothing is ever dealt with unless there is a crisis moment and all eyes are on the legislators. When things are running smoothly again, they will just quietly pass bills to give ICE more weaponry and expand the scope of its raids on immigrant homes. AOC will go on record in opposition to it but nobody will care, because there will be some other crisis of the week to distract everybody's attention, like Trump accidentally mumbling "women shouldn't be allowed to wear long pants" in his sleep.

 

[Elixir]

Dumping ICE is like banning hammers because some high-profile asswipe is using one to commit horrible atrocities.
I have dealt with ICE for years and years. Most of the people are just doing their job as they are being told to, and many don't like what they're being told. The higher ups are more concerned - their image and reputations are being put on the line, for no good reason that they can see, but they are powerless to object. Their mission as they understood it when they joined, is at odds with the orders they are currently receiving.
In fairness to the anti-ICE faction, the people we deal with are in procurement of medical equipment, and may have a more humanitarian bent than would be representative of the Agency as a whole.

And there were surely medics in the Praetorian Guard under Mussolini. I'm over it.

Yeah, and as long the Shitgibbon is running the show, ICE will be little if any better than the Praetorian Guard. Given an actual president of a Democracy though, I'd expect it to revert to a much better form.

 

[Canard DuJour]

While I don't have a problem with wealthier people paying a higher tax rate, I am really sick of people misrepresenting what the actual percentage that very wealthy people paid in the 1950s was.

https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-rich-1950-not-high/

No one is misrepresenting this. Everyone who talks about this already knows the difference between the marginal tax rate and the effective taxes people actually paid. This is a total non sequitur.

I disagree. I don't think that those who avidly support AOC's 70% marginal tax rate understand it as a 70% marginal tax rate with enough exemptions added to make the actual marginal tax rate 42%.

And they'd be right. The 42% cited above is proportion of income paid as tax by top earners - not top marginal tax rate, which is a different thing. The cited author evidently gets it, while trying to put a rather Conservative gloss on it. What he glosses over is that the vastly increased incomes of the top 1% since then means an awful lot more money, both absolutely and as share of national income. He also fails to mention that effective tax rates for the top 0.1% - the real astronomical winners - were about 20% higher according to the same source he cites (Picketty et al).

The crucial difference is that when the economic pie was growing fastest, they were losing share of it rather than gaining nearly all of it.

My impression of the arguments from those avid supporters is "we need to get those bastards".

My impression is that it has more to do with the fact that "lower inequality in post-tax incomes is robustly correlated with faster and more durable growth", as concluded by a recent IMF multinational study of the same period.

Not that taxation really funds federal govt spending, but that inequality is bad for growth. The "golden goose" would appear to be aggregate demand. Not the rich.

 

[PyramidHead]

It remains striking to me that anybody could convince themselves that it's possible for any individual to deserve millions or billions of dollars, for any reason. To believe somehow all that money rightfully should belong to him because of something he personally did to earn it. As if one person could do anything so important all on his own to be entitled to that much money, when the opportunity cost of retaining all that money is to deprive others of basic necessities.

Of course, I think most people are dimly aware that's all nonsense. According to this view, the ballooning rise in profits since the 1970's is the natural outcome of certain individuals becoming exponentially more worthy of wealth, doing more and more of whatever they had been doing to deserve it before, while the entire working class made no improvements whatsoever to their worthiness. That's the logical implication of thinking all those riches are rightfully, deservedly the property of the few people who have them.

None of that can be defended, obviously, because what really happened is that wealth was generated in the same way it always is under capitalism, through exploitation. So, in a very real sense, there has always been ample justification to "get those bastards", because they never earned most of the money they possess.