Michael Linden

@MichaelSLinden

Econ wonk. Aspires to be Leslie Knope (would settle for Ben Wyatt). Fellow at Roosevelt Inst., Policy & Research Director at the Hub Project. Personal account.

Washington, DC
Joined September 2010

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  1. Pinned Tweet
    3 Feb 2018

    The scandal of Paul Ryan's $1.50 tweet isn't that he thinks $1.50 a week is a lot of money. It's that Ryan's tax law further rigged the economy in favor of the super rich and giant corporations and now he wants working people to thank him for it.

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  2. 10 hours ago

    My almost-6-year-old son is really into magical and mythical creatures right now, and he just asked me, “What are those little guys who live in that world where a bad guy lives in a tall building with a lava eye on it?” Hobbits. He’s thinking of hobbits.

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  3. Retweeted
    11 hours ago

    We need an economics training course for members of the media and elected officials. Most of their conventional wisdom on taxes (and regulation) is empirically and historically wrong

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  4. Retweeted

    SAT| 's & 's discuss the state of the U.S. economy & the economic impact of the government shutdown Tune in at 8am!

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  5. 13 hours ago

    "a million doesn't mean much these days" is a thing that someone said to me just now. But yes, please tell me again how liberals are out of touch with real America.

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  6. 13 hours ago

    This is how I'm going to respond to every future "taxation is theft" comment. Genius and correct.

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  7. 13 hours ago

    "taxation is theft" = instamute. Almost no better way to say, "I am not worth engaging with" than telling me taxation is theft.

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  8. 14 hours ago

    Not only is it ok for rich people to pay proportionately more, it is economically, fiscally, and morally imperative that they do so. 10% from someone making $40,000 leaves them with $36,000. 10% from someone making $40 million leaves them with $36 million.

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  9. 14 hours ago

    This is a myth. I've seen absolutely no polling or focus group evidence to support this notion. Don't get me wrong, it's a very popular myth (I hear it all the time), but it's not true that everyday middle-class people actually think this.

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  10. Retweeted
    15 hours ago

    Ocasio-Cortez’s views on top marginal tax rates are much more mainstream than Susan Collins’s.

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  11. 16 hours ago

    Hmm, seems like there is some confusion about how marginal tax rates work. To help clear things up:

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  12. 17 hours ago

    This is a common response from trickle-downers. But it's wrong. A huge portion of the money flowing to the super-rich is not "earnings" in any meaningful sense. It's what we'd call "rents," unearned income extracted from others though imbalance of power or other market failure.

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  13. 17 hours ago

    Tax flight is a myth. Of course, you can always find one or two examples, but overall, not a real thing. Rich people want to live and work here for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with their marginal tax rates.

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  14. 17 hours ago

    The rich moved their accounts and "their" companies with a top rate of 35. The rich will always try to engage in tax avoidance. That's only a small part of the issue here. Better tax enforcement would solve a lot of that.

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  15. 19 hours ago

    Great example of the beltway-insider having no idea what actual people think. Higher taxes on the super rich is super popular.

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  16. 19 hours ago

    Here is an example of someone dismissing 's call for a top rate of 60 or 70 as "ridiculous." It's not. Around 70 is what the best research suggests as the revenue-maximizing rate.

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  17. 19 hours ago

    Last note: There will be many on the right & in the media who will mock for calling for tax rates at 60 or 70, but they're the ones who are economically illiterate. They're basing their view on an outdated and ideological understanding of taxation, not on the best research.

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  18. 19 hours ago

    But when you factor in that the revenue will be used to both combat climate change (which will have enormous, painful consequences if left unaddressed) and create new jobs and higher wages now, then it's a very clear slam dunk.

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  19. 19 hours ago

    The answer here is self-evidently yes. Lower tax rates on the super-rich, as discussed above, are bad for the economy, so the higher taxes themselves are already better for the economy.

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  20. 19 hours ago

    Finally, let's talk about the economic impact of using the revenue from a much higher top tax rate to finance something like a Green New Deal. The basic question we should ask: Will the investment financed by the higher tax rates generate more good than the lower rate would?

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  21. 19 hours ago

    So it's not just that higher top rates raise us more money which we can use better, but they actually make the PRE-tax distribution better. In other words, raising top tax rates will mean more money in more pockets, even before we account for the revenue effects.

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