The Rich Pay More with Lower Tax Rates

[pjohns]

The OP deliberately conflates "the share of" taxes that are paid by the richest people with the actual share of their income that they pay at lower tax rates.

Use your common sense, people: If rich people paid more taxes when rates were lower, they'd advocate for higher tax rates so they could save money rather than railing against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's "socialist" proposal of a 70% top marginal rate.

Lower tax rates may prompt many people to work more--and therefore pay more total taxes.

Increasing the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent, however, is surely bad for those in the top tier--and bad for the country in general. (Here is where someone, surely, will pull out that old, shopworn phrase, "trickle-down economics"--as though that would automatically win the argument, and shut down all discussion.)

And AOC is a socialist--she describes herself as such--albeit of the democratic variety. (Presumably, some people on this forum believe that democratic socialism is a good thing,)