[MCN] Ocasio-Cortez's 70% tax plan? Even Warren Buffett says rich should pay more

[Lance Olsen]

CNBC 5:33 PM ET Mon, 7 Jan 2019
Ocasio-Cortez's 70% tax plan gets fierce response, but even Warren Buffett says rich should pay more
Catherine Clifford <https://www.cnbc.com/cat-clifford/> 
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/07/ocasio-cortezs-70percent-tax-even-warren-buffett-says-rich-should-pay-more.html <https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/07/ocasio-cortezs-70percent-tax-even-warren-buffett-says-rich-should-pay-more.html>

Excerpt
Sunday, she got a new surge of attention calling for a tax rate as high as 70 percent for the rich on the CBS's "60 Minutes" in an interview with Anderson Cooper.
While some see Ocasio-Cortez's plan as outrageous, or "a terrible idea <https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/07/alan-greenspan-thinks-the-ocasio-cortez-70percent-tax-plan-is-a-terrible-idea.html>," as former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan <https://www.cnbc.com/alan-greenspan/> called it, <https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/07/alan-greenspan-thinks-the-ocasio-cortez-70percent-tax-plan-is-a-terrible-idea.html> she is not alone in calling for the wealthy to pay higher taxes. There is one very notable and wealthy financier who is an unabashed advocate of raising taxes on the wealthy: billionaire Warren Buffett <https://www.cnbc.com/warren-buffett/>. 
In a 2011 piece Buffett penned in the New York Times titled "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich <https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html>," he called for a raise on taxes for everyone making more than $1 million. He called for an even more severe tax hike on those making more than $10 million or more. (Buffett did not provide specific tax rates.)
"I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn't mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering," Buffett wrote in the Times <https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html>. "My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It's time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice."
Also, Buffett says he has not seen higher tax rates discourage investment. "People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off," Buffett writes in the Times.

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"The big challenge is still to deliver emissions reductions at the pace and scale needed, especially in a world where economies are driven by consumption.”

Sonja van Renssen.The inconvenient truth of failed climate policies. Nature Climate Change  MAY 2018

Published online: 27 April 2018 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0155-4 

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