Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's wet dream

In the land of make-believe, where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lives, she believes that enacting a 70% tax rate on America's wealthiest would help offset the phenomenal cost of her Green New Deal, which she claims will turn the country into an oasis with no more carbon emissions. In reality, the congressional freshman has no idea how the simplest mathematics works. There are 540 billionaires who live in America. The combined wealth among them amounts to $2.4 trillion. Even if she were able to fulfill her fantasy and assemble a Stasi force that could seize all of their assets and leave the bourgeois Americans destitute, she wouldn't have enough money to run the government for eight months.

America doesn't have a problem with the wealthy "not paying their fair share" as proponents of her wild tax proposal claim. The top 10% of U.S. taxpayers pay over 70% of all federal taxes. And those at the very top, the "1%" account for the largest share of individual paid taxes, more than the bottom 90% combined. They are already paying their fair share...and then some. Maybe supporters of the Green New Deal could recognize that the U.S. has a spending problem. Sandy O's proposal is to spend more than $700B a year on lowering carbon emissions and renewable energy sources. She's hoping to offset this by taxing billionaires to death and cutting the defense spending in half. Basically, she is willing to compromise the safety and security of every citizen to see her utopian desires made real. She's not just risking American lives, either. Cutting defense spending also cuts America's reach around the world. For example, when the U.S. issues sanctions on other countries, they are punishments for gross behaviors by a sovereign nation, like humanitarian violations or beginning wars without provocation. They are effective only because the U.S. has the world's greatest military capable of enforcing them. Halving our military defense budget would mean that these other countries would be more likely to consider risking the repercussions of ignoring American sanctions because for the first time, they might be able to match U.S. military spending. This balancing of world powers would have devastating effects at home and with American allies. A huge chunk of DoD spending goes toward new technology development, which keeps the United States always ahead of threats from enemies and the enemies of our global partners. If they don't feel secure, they may seek different defense alliances, further weakening America both militarily and economically. Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal also does nothing to address current developing nations that emit carbon in substantial amounts, so, essentially, she just wants to throw huge amounts of our taxpayer cash to be shredded in a windmill. Willing to jeopardize American lives in the pursuit of unproven hypotheticals like lowering carbon emissions is not just naïve for the new politician; it is a total detachment from reality. Government control of energy resources and production has never produced a desirable outcome. Venezuela, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union can all attest to this. Connect Taylor Day on Twitter at @TABYTCHI.