Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants a 70% top federal tax rate on the rich (which wouldn’t raise much money). Think of how much the rich would have left over to invest after they paid the 70% along with all their other taxes. In Ocasio-Cortez’s home state the top tax rate is 8.82% and New York City has a top rate of 3.86%. You can see that at the links here.

But don't try to tell them that. Their solutions always focus on making the greedy government richer and more powerful. For them, it is always about taking away from the private sector, instead of expanding it.

New York City collects its own income taxes in addition to those collected by the state. The city's tax rates range from 3.078% of taxable income to 3.876% for top earners.

After the ‘rich” pay up to 82.68% in income taxes under the Ocasio-Cortez plan, they could pay their property taxes, carbon taxes, payroll taxes, motor fuel taxes, and all the other government taxes and fees. Then with the leftover money they could invest and create jobs. What a wonderful economy we would have.

And the ignorant Ocasio-Cortez is not the only one with such bad ideas. The very rich Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposes a wealth tax that, of course, would not hit her. Maybe someday people could tell Warren and others that most of the richest 1%, 5% and 10% in the United States today were not that rich so long ago, so the statement that the rich are getting richer is completely misleading. The true statement is that the economy is getting richer which allows people to move up the economic ladder. For example twenty years ago Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerburg and the owners of Google, including their workers, were not rich, but now they are. Capitalism is a wonderful thing.

Now that we are on the topic, come to think of it, other people who are very rich today and who were not that rich twenty years ago include the Obamas, the Clintons and Harry Reid. I would not mind a wealth tax or high-income tax on politicians who got rich because they were powerful politicians.

The policies Democrats espouse would certainly make the areas around Washington D.C. richer, perhaps. Here's the data:

Census Bureau: 5 Richest Counties Are D.C. Suburbs The five richest counties in the United States when measured by median household income are all suburbs of Washington, D.C., according to the American Community Survey data released today by the Census Bureau.

Yet the fact remains that essentially, they produce nothing except rules, regulations and taxes for the rest of us. Politicians have already made five counties around D.C. the richest counties in America. Now here come the Democrats, who explicitly want to expand that particular wealth gap.

There is one sure way to reduce the wealth gap in the United States and Democrat policies would almost surely make that happen. The solution would be to have the economy collapse. Real estate, stocks, and commodities would decline rapidly in price and that would certainly make the richest people poorer. But I fail to see how that would help the poor and the middle class, whom Democrats all pretend they want to help.

A great example of an economy collapsing is Venezuela where socialist policies and a powerful government have caused pure misery. Why would we want to emulate socialist policies? In Cuba, the Castros became billionaires, but the powerful government, free health care, and free education has certainly not helped the people move up the economic ladder.

President Obama’s eight years of government continually taking away power and money from the people gave us the slowest economic recovery in seventy years. Why do journalists support policies that gave us slow growth despite almost zero interest rates that punished savers?

Why is the media bragging about House speaker Nancy Pelosi schooling President Trump while holding federal workers hostage, all because she refuses to give a small amount of money for a border barrier that she supported not so long ago? It appears that these Democrats want the economy to slow.

A piece of great news came out yesterday. Unemployment claims were down to 199,000 which is a fifty-year low despite the shutdown. The jobs picture is phenomenal and to put the unemployment claims in perspective, the labor force was less than half the size in 1969 as it is today.

Instead of focusing on the good economic news, which includes the record-low unemployment (especially for minorities and less-educated workers), or holiday sales, or nominal wages going up faster than any time during Obama’s eight years, or continued low inflation, or rising exports or low oil prices because of increased production, journalists, in collusion with Democrats, are trying to talk the economy down because that is how they would get Democrats elected in 2020.

The goal of journalists along with other Democrats is to win at all costs. They would rather have more people dependent on government than give them the chance to move up the economic ladder. Those are disastrous goals for our long term freedom and health, especially for the poor and middle class.