Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

IMO: don’t make dramatic populist moves based on unprovable assumptions when your current position is actually very strong. Public opinion may be that everything is on fire anyway, but this is unequivocally untrue

Encourage states to experiment. Propose modest tax hikes/reductions where they appear to be appropriate. Be extremely *extremely* skeptical of anyone who claims that extreme moves are necessary & guaranteed to produce positive effects

With you on experimentation. @AOC's proposal won't prevail but her making it is probably a good step in shaping the debate and discussion. Blindly being against tax increases is no better than blindly being for increased govt spending.

IMO: there will be reasonable proposals for tax hikes *and* cuts in the coming years, but extreme populist pitches do not improve the quality of the discussion.

Your original comment appeared critical of the notion of a 70% top marginal tax rate... but maybe I misunderstood. I pushed back noting that there's decent evidence supporting this as a reasonable mechanism for raising revenue. 1/

If your beef with @aoc is that she's making an extreme populist pitch, cool. If it's that $ isn't the current rate limiter in dealing with climate change, cool too. But if you're asserting that a high top marginal tax rate won't work, then let's talk evidence for & against. 2/2

I think the first claim is pretty self-evident. I'm fairly confident in the second. I'm least confident in the third, and suspicious of *anyone* with high confidence in their ability to model the systems relevant to making that sort of claim.

And back to original tweets, I still think leaving friends and family, finding a new country, gaining citizenship and renouncing US citizenship is a pretty big barrier to talent exodus.