Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Schools Former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker On Marginal Tax Rate Tweet


New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has made it clear that she is not afraid to speak up and share her opinions, whether it is in person or online via social media. In fact, “AOC,” as she’s often called, has shown that she has essentially mastered the art of the Twitter clapback. She demonstrated that mastery once again on Tuesday when she pushed back against a tweet from former Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is wasting no time in pushing Congress to consider some of the topics that she considers to be crucially important. The “Green New Deal” is one of those topics, and reinstating a 70 percent top marginal tax rate is another.

The concept of a high marginal tax rate like this quickly generated a lot of buzz, both positive and negative. What quickly became clear is that many people, even many top politicians, seemingly misunderstand the concept. What was also missed in some early discussions is that this tax rate, which AOC proposes be imposed on those with incomes over $10 million a year, is that this structure wouldn’t be brand-new to American taxpayers.

Plenty of people, particularly Republicans, have criticized Ocasio-Cortez for her proposal. Former GOP Governor Scott Walker was perhaps the latest prominent politician to do this, and it did not take long for his tweet to get a lot of pushback.

Walker tweeted about how this type of marginal tax rate could be explained to children, giving an example using chores and a $10 payment. In Walker’s scenario, the child would be left with $3 after the parents took away 70 percent in taxes.

The problem is, that’s not how things would work with what AOC is proposing. With this marginal tax rate proposal, only income over that $10 million threshold would be taxed at the 70 percent high rate. Amounts under that would be taxed at lower percentages, which is exactly what currently happens with the existing structure.

Walker quickly got “ratioed,” meaning that the comments quickly outnumbered the likes on the post. A few hours after the former governor posted the tweet, Ocasio-Cortez weighed in herself.

As Alexandria pointed out on Twitter, the child would get to keep the entire $10 in this scenario, because it is such a low amount that it is not subject to any taxes. However, AOC noted, the billionaire in town would get taxed heavily.

Within just a few hours, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez had her post retweeted more than 18,000 times, she had more than 3,700 comments on it, and it garnered over 80,000 likes. There were some comments criticizing AOC, but the majority of the responses applauded her takedown of Walker.

Walker did reply back to Ocasio-Cortez’s post, but it fell quite flat on Twitter. Since then, he has tweeted several times about socialism and marginal tax rates, but so far, they are getting virtually zero engagement on the social media site.

According to The Hill, a recent survey revealed that a majority of Americans support the 70 percent marginal tax rate plan that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is talking about. The survey noted that at this point, 59 percent of those responding to the poll were in favor of the idea. Of course, given the current political landscape in Washington, D.C., it will take quite a bit more before there is any real possibility that a change like this could get through Congress and be signed by a president.

Share this article: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Schools Former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker On Marginal Tax Rate Tweet
More from Inquisitr