Earlier this month, freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, was interviewed by Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes. One brief comment she made about taxes has the billionaire plutocrats of the New Gilded Age clutching their pearls and attacking her as a proxy for attacking progressive tax policy in general:
Anderson Cooper: This would require, though, raising taxes.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: There’s an element where— yeah. There— people are going to have to start paying their fair share in taxes.
Anderson Cooper: Do you have a specific on the tax rate?
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: You know, it— you look at our tax rates back in the ’60s and when you have a progressive tax rate system. Your tax rate, you know, let’s say, from zero to $75,000 may be ten percent or 15 percent, et cetera. But once you get to, like, the tippy tops— on your 10 millionth dollar— sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent. 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.
Anderson Cooper: What you are talking about, just big picture, is a radical agenda — compared to the way politics is done right now.
Really Anderson? High marginal tax rates were the norm in American tax policy for many years, when America still had a progressive tax system that built a vibrant American middle class.
