Freshman New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposed 70 percent tax on the rich was met with skepticism Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, according to reports.
The 29-year-old Democrat, who represents parts of Queens and the Bronx, suggested this month that the tax could fund a climate change plan dubbed the “Green New Deal” that she’s pushing.
According to last week’s Hill-HarrisX poll, 59 percent of US voters support raising the top rate to 70 percent, which she said would be applied to income above the first $10 million taxpayers earn.
Even 45 percent of Republicans liked it.
But the elite financiers attending the forum expressed concerns Wednesday about the proposal by the ultra-left-wing pol, who wasn’t at the Swiss ski resort of Davos.
When Michael Dell, the billionaire founder of Dell computers, was asked if he’d support Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal, the audience for a panel about tech and global inequality burst out laughing, according to the Washington Post.
Dell first responded by saying he trusts his private foundation more than the US government to spend money wisely.
“No, I am not supportive of that, and I don’t think it would help the growth of the US economy,” Dell then said.
When he was asked to explain why he believes that, he said: “Name a country where that’s worked — ever.”
MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson, a co-panelist, jumped in to provide an answer: “the United States.”
He then said he didn’t have a “strong opinion on that proposal.”
“The devil is in the details,” said Brynjolfsson, chief of MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy. “But there is actually a lot of economics that suggests that it’s not necessarily going to hurt growth, and I think we have to examine it more closely.”
Forum attendees also argued that Ocasio-Cortez’s plan is misguided and would adversely affect investment and innovation.
“Seventy percent taxes definitely bothers me,” said Scott Minerd, chief investment officer of the $265 billion Guggenheim Partners, the paper reported.
“It affects the people that have the most money and they will start allocating capital in a way that is less efficient and will bring down productivity,” he added.
The financiers acknowledged that populist sentiment is spreading and is likely to be a big factor in the 2020 presidential campaign.
“If you think about where we were in 2015 and the ideas that were being floated by then candidate Trump, they seemed pretty far out there. Now we’re living them,” Minerd said. “I think by the time we get to the election, modern monetary theory and 70 percent tax rates will be on the table.”
Democratic Party donor Glenn Hutchins, chairman of North Island, called Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal political posturing that would likely not make it through Congress.
“The important thing in my view is not to try to score political points with having a 70 percent, very high tax rate. The important thing is to try to figure out a tax system that is both fair and efficient,” Hutchins said, CNBC reported.
“You got to get something like that through the House, then you have to get it through the Senate, and then you have to get the president of the United States to sign it.”
On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez said she believes a system that allows people to become billionaires is “immoral.”
“I do think that 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,” she said before clarifying that billionaires themselves are not morally compromised.