> Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently suggested raising the top tax rate to 70 percent in order to raise money to fund climate change investments. Conservatives w

> Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently suggested raising the top tax rate to 70 percent in order to raise money to fund climate change investments. Conservatives were dismayed by the proposal while liberals and leftists generally defended the proposal by pointing to the fact that top tax rates in the US were once 91 percent and by pointing to tax scholarship that says rates that high (or even higher) are optimal. Income != Wealth We should just tax wealth directly. We already do it for real estate (ie property taxes). Modern technology and finance makes taxing the average daily balance of bank accounts and stock/ETF/mutual fund holdings doable. If you tax the entity that is holding those assets across the board, you don’t even have to worry about tax shelters or pass through corps. They’ll have no choice but to pass on their hit upstream. It’s the ultimate progressive tax as the destitute have nothing and pay nothing.