America shouldn't be dependent on the kindness of strangers. We should have a progressive tax policy. They should do what they can to make as much profits as possible and return return um gains to their shareholders. And we need to tax these companies at a progressive rate similar to what we did in the ' 80s, 90s, and throughout history.
Interest payments now eat up a record 18.5% of everything the federal government collects. In some almost one in five that you're paying in taxes goes to paying interest on the debt of money we borrowed because we weren't taxing people enough and we were spending too much.
If you look at where the Democrats are right now, from those you would call the more moderate ones to the progressive ones, they still are extraordinarily centrist to the point that most of them are to the right of Dwight Eisenhower, who was a Republican, of course. And what I'm referring to especially there is with Eisenhower's upper tax bracket at 91 or 92% with his call for universal health care, with all these things that coming out of World War II were absolutely centrist positions.
You don't have to choose between billionaires and universal healthcare. You can have a society with both. You know, these societies have high tax rates and produce incredible companies that go on to make billions of dollars and trillion dollar market caps and they have billionaires. The two are not mutually exclusive in America.
I think we now need alternative minimum taxes of 60 or 70% on anything over a billion dollars for an individual because these individuals are under the impression that they are not subject to the standards of Western society, decency or any or the law.
If you do not want everything to be owned by a tiny elite, you have to aggressively tax extremely high levels of wealth. Because otherwise, if you're Jeff Bezos, what is he worth? $300 billion, right? Even if he makes 5% a year, he's making $15 billion a year, right? And it's just going to grow, right? It's going to grow unbelievably quickly.
Do you want everything to be owned by the tiny elite or not? If you do not want everything to be owned by a tiny elite, you have to aggressively tax extremely high levels of wealth.
