Give Us AOC’s 70% Tax Rates — But Save the 1950s Nostalgia
Pining for the high marginal tax rates of the 1950s doesn't do us any good. The rich still avoided paying taxes in those days — and the taxes they did pay went to funding Cold War militarism, not domestic spending.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is interviewed for TV June 27, 2019 at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Alex Wong / Getty Images
When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed hiking marginal tax rates on multimillionaires to 70 percent earlier this year, the expected conservative outrage filled the airwaves. Fox News warned of the coming apocalypse, and invocations of Venezuela abounded.
Many liberals (and even Bernie Sanders) responded by citing the steep marginal tax rates of the 1950s. How could a 70 percent levy be radical, they retorted, when Dwight Eisenhower presided over a 91 percent rate?
It’s a cute line to troll the Right, but it’s fundamentally ahistorical.
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