{"id":43935,"date":"2019-01-07T07:52:05","date_gmt":"2019-01-07T07:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=43935"},"modified":"2019-01-07T09:49:50","modified_gmt":"2019-01-07T09:49:50","slug":"if-only-our-politicians-had-the-courage-of-alexandria-ocasio-cortez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2019\/01\/07\/if-only-our-politicians-had-the-courage-of-alexandria-ocasio-cortez\/","title":{"rendered":"If only our politicians had the courage of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Krugman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/01\/05\/opinion\/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-tax-policy-dance.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">wrote a New York Times<\/a> piece at the weekend praising the thinking of\u00a0Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.<\/p>\n<p>What thinking, precisely?<\/p>\n<p>Her support for highest income tax rates of up to 80%, to be exact.<\/p>\n<p>Because, as he pointed out, there is plenty of economic theory to suggest that such rates make sense.<\/p>\n<p>And plenty of economic data to show that they do no harm.<\/p>\n<p>Whereas the opposite demand, for low rates, has no evidential support at all.<\/p>\n<p>So Krugman praised her use of evidence.<\/p>\n<p>I would go further. I praise her courage to embrace an important issue, to state her case even if it outrages some, and to show she has conviction to back the evidence.<\/p>\n<p>If only we could see some of that in the UK.<\/p>\n<p>We could have a Green New Eeal.<\/p>\n<p>And the associated necessary tax reforms to match it, in association with up to date macroeconomic understanding of money.<\/p>\n<p>Instead we have politicians on the left who discuss incomprehensible Brexit policy and rail nationalisation.<\/p>\n<p>If only.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Krugman wrote a New York Times piece at the weekend praising the thinking of\u00a0Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. What thinking, precisely? Her support for highest income tax<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2019\/01\/07\/if-only-our-politicians-had-the-courage-of-alexandria-ocasio-cortez\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}