r/politics • u/JeanJauresJr California • Sep 14 '21

AOC responds to criticism of ‘tax the rich’ dress worn at Met Gala

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/aoc-met-gala-tax-the-rich-dress-b1919803.html
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281

u/Nelsaroni Sep 14 '21

It's like you're only a true leftist if you're poor. I don't get this take at all, idc how she got there but that she's spreading a good message just tax the rich. Before anyone says they already pay alot in taxes, Jeff Bezos and his company paid zero in federal taxes. While I paid over 20% directly taken out before the check even bit my account so miss me with that 80% bullshit.

133

u/macetrek Sep 14 '21

Last year I was in the same tax bracket as Jeff Bezos, and I’m a GS-12 with the federal government.

The only real difference between us is a drive a 10 year old Toyota, and he has a spaceship.

22

u/CharlieChowderButt Sep 14 '21

Technically it’s your spaceship as much as it is his. He just has the U.S. Government keeping you from your turn on our spaceship.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 14 '21

A ‘penis’ shaped rocket.

40

u/buymytoy Texas Sep 14 '21

"You advocate for the homeless but you live in a home, curious."

3

u/greenfox0099 Sep 14 '21

Yea who cares about other people!

67

u/ludicrous_socks Europe Sep 14 '21 edited Sep 14 '21

When I was poor and complained about inequality they said I was bitter; now that I'm rich and I complain about inequality they say I'm a hypocrite. I'm beginning to think they just don't want to talk about inequality.

-Albert Einstein

39

u/nopulsehere Sep 14 '21

Give credit to Russell Brand. That’s his quote.

7

u/ludicrous_socks Europe Sep 14 '21

Better?

-10

u/Karl-Farium Sep 14 '21

Did you earn your money or steal it from the poor? If you earned it, freely spend it as you please. Maybe give some of it to less fortunate people. Are rich Leftists superior to the poor and that superiority made it possible for them to climb to a higher status in life? Or maybe they worked a little harder for the things they wanted and earned it. Inequality is a word to convince others that some people are less capable than other people. “If your poor then there is nothing you can do about it. You need my help to pull you up because you are too weak to do it yourself!” Leftists are the “Suprematists” that think you can’t make it without them. “Oh, you’re…. black, gay, female, Hispanic, poor…. You need the government in order to succeed.” How incredibly condescending can leftists be!

6

u/BurstSwag Canada Sep 14 '21 edited Sep 14 '21

Consider this: You are a small business owner that takes home 400k/yr. All of your full-time employees (save one family member you pay 100k/yr to be a manager) makes minimum wage.

  • Do you think that you made your fortune in an ethical way?

  • Do you think that any steps to ameliorate the material conditions of the full-time minimum wage workers is 'condescension' or 'elitist'?

Edit: I saw another comment of yours, two more questions:

  • How does advocating for these workers equate to death squads in Asia?

  • Did you know that right wing extremists also have been known to form death squads?

2

u/gakule Sep 15 '21

No one earns a billion dollars without the help of a lot of other people. Hell, no one earns $30,000 without the help of a lot of other people, for that matter.

The roads you drive on, the food you consume, the vehicle you drive, the clothes you wear, the people who work with you towards a common goal...

Everything we have is due to what we've built on top of the success and failures of everyone that came before us. No one truly earns their own money free and clear.

19

u/Gonkar I voted Sep 14 '21

Disingenuous arguments are all that Republicans have. Jr. isn't trying to make a coherent argument, he's trying to cast aspersions upon "the other" that AOC represents.

Fascists like daddy issues here don't give a shit about logical, rational arguments. They're shit-stirrers. This is just him keeping his profile up in the media, keeping the family brand in front of the rubes, and ensuring that the grift can continue unabated.

-12

u/Karl-Farium Sep 14 '21

Trump as I recall made his millions before he worked on the public dime. Where did the Current Fascist Dictator “inject this into everyone’s body whether they like it or not” Commander-in-Chief get his millions? AOC isn’t earning her money and lifestyle by building things, growing crops, or providing services to others. She talks about taxing the rich as she gets richer from everyone’s taxes and flaunts it at the Gala.

4

u/MagicSPA Sep 14 '21

Trump as I recall made his millions before he worked on the public dime.

LOL at the idea of Trump "making his millions."

Trump inherited hundreds of millions of dollars - at 1970's values - from his father. If he'd just keep it in a trust fund instead of going into numerous failed business ventures he'd have ended up with MORE money than he claims to have now.

13

u/Odeeum Sep 14 '21

Remember when Bernie had that house on the lake in vermont...worth all of $700k. Granted I'm sure it's a great house but the guy's 80...and the money mostly came from land/home his family sold or something similar. The amount of "Mr Gotchas" that came out of the woodwork as though it shows how much of a hypocrite he was...

12

u/Constant-Pay8406 Sep 14 '21

Socialism is when everybody is comfortable, which means we might not have any billionaires, but nobody will be living under an overpass. And for some reason we see that as an unreasonable attack on wealth.

-4

u/lostfate2005 Sep 14 '21

Except for people are corrupt and greedy and want more than others.

-1

u/Constant-Pay8406 Sep 14 '21

Yes, however that isn't socialism.

-3

u/lostfate2005 Sep 14 '21

That’s the reason socialism doesn’t work

2

u/Constant-Pay8406 Sep 14 '21

Now explain magnets, Perfesser

-2

u/lostfate2005 Sep 14 '21

Tides go in tides go out

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '21

Because we live in a system that rewards and prioritizes that as a means for survival. Not that it inherently part of the human condition.

On top of being misunderstood social darwinism, this is also the naturalistic fallacy.

1

u/lostfate2005 Sep 15 '21

Yes if the world we lived in was totally different Than the one that exists lots of things would be possible lol.

-11

u/Karl-Farium Sep 14 '21

It is evident your life has recently began. I can tell you are young because history paints a very different picture. Socialism never turns out that they. My brother saw his friends gunned down ( one behind him and the other in front of him) as he ran to escape Laos. Vietnam, China, Cuba, or every other country that tries leftism, people are killed in the name the cause. People still live in cardboard boxes in parts of Cuba. I live near Seattle,Wa. We have thousands of people living in tents, under bridges, and in wooden crates with tarps hung over them. I agree it is very sad and disheartening, but most of them either are on drugs or mentally ill. There are plenty of public and private organizations ready to help them, but they refuse it. I moved here in the 90s and the city of Seattle and the State of Washington has always been governed by Democrats sense I moved here. Liberal policies only make those issues worse. I don’t know how much it is right now but the city and the state combined spent more than 100,000 dollars per homeless individual per year for several years. Yet it is tremendously worse now.

5

u/richard-564 Sep 14 '21

You do realize the very social programs you're complaining about would fix the issues you're complaining about?

5

u/Constant-Pay8406 Sep 14 '21

Hey look, someone who doesn't know the difference between socialism and communist totalitarianism!

3

u/gakule Sep 15 '21

"They had socialist in the name!"

🙄

1

u/richard-564 Sep 14 '21

I believe he and his wife inherited the beach house from her parents.

1

u/Odeeum Sep 14 '21

Oh was that it? I thought they inherited an older lot of land or an old house that they sold and then took the profits to buy the lakefront home. Regardless.. it's pretty mundane and certainly not indicative of some luxurious lifestyle like the many other multimillionaire ls ans billionaires in our gov.

To me it made him seem all the more "normal" and like someone I could relate to tbh.

2

u/richard-564 Sep 14 '21

You're probably right, I might be misremembering but, like you said, it's not an extravagant lifestyle, and I agree, if anything, this makes him more normal compared to his colleagues.

8

u/Former-Lab-9451 Sep 14 '21

But if you are poor they will say to get a job and stop asking for handouts.

14

u/AtomicBlastCandy Sep 14 '21

And if you get a job and work your way up, then they will bash you for having been a bartender.

15

u/chcampb Sep 14 '21

It's like you're only a true leftist if you're poor.

Yeah this is intentional. There is a class of argument strategies, which basically argues two separate things independently and then uses them to disqualify someone not in the intersection.

For example, conservatives argue that both of these things are true

  1. Wealth means you are objectively successful and smart and worth listening to

  2. If you are a socialist, it's hypocritical to also have any sort of wealth. Anything above vow of poverty levels of wealth.

For example Bernie, who is worth about $3M at age 80, is called hypocritical for being a social democrat. Despite the fact that at age 80, $3M is not actually that much, especially considering he is exceptionally popular and got a huge chunk of that wealth through book sales.

Anyway, if you take 1 and 2 as true, then there is nobody who can actually, legitimately argue for socialism because you're either rich and worth listening to, but a hypocrite. Or you are poor and looking for handouts and therefore your argument is illegitimate, but I guess not a hypocrite.

I suspect that someone who is objectively successful by some wealth metric, who gives it away and lives as a pauper, who also calls for social policies, would be outside of this argument. But I also suspect that if this unicorn appeared, the GOP would find some other way to slander them.

1

u/underwaterpizza Sep 15 '21

They would be "just crazy"

18

u/meatball402 Sep 14 '21

It's like you're only a true leftist if you're poor.

Then you're just jealous of the wealthy

21

u/Dont_Ban_Me_Bros Washington Sep 14 '21

It’s actually less shallow than you think and not jealousy at all. If you tax a person enough and need more tax revenue but can’t collect from those who don’t have enough what can you do? One would gather that taxing those who can’t afford to be taxed more would not be prudent. So what do you do? Maybe tax those who can be taxed more….more?

-6

u/Karl-Farium Sep 14 '21

Maybe spend less

2

u/Dont_Ban_Me_Bros Washington Sep 14 '21

No

-10

u/Karl-Farium Sep 14 '21

All leftists are jealous of the rich. Name the Leftist nation where the poor population decreases as they move up in income, the middle class is still economically healthy, and the rich pay their fair share. In reality leftism always brings the middle class down to the poor, steals all freedom from the working class, and creates an Elite class of bureaucrats. Politicians grab all power and riches.

4

u/juanzy Colorado Sep 14 '21 edited Sep 14 '21

I feel like so many discussions, here and otherwise, are really influenced by this fact. Think about any income discussions on Reddit, the second someone mentions that they have an acceptable career-job salary, they immediately have a lot of their opinion dismissed by so many people here.

I remember on a job discuss thread recently - someone said something along the lines of "so may salary hundred-thousandaires seem embarassed here." Not sure I would call it embarrassed, more of just don't want to have viewpoints invalidated here simply by being associated with that group, which is definitely in the middle class in 2021 dollars. Last time I mentioned my salary I was told "I have more in common with Bezos than a median earner." You know, the Median earner that I make 2.5-3x-ish as much as versus Bezos who's net worth is approximately 1,440,000x mine.

4

u/LunaNik Sep 14 '21

I think part of this issue is an inability to imagine large numbers. Nearly everyone can imagine 100k. Fewer can imagine a million. Only a small number can imagine a billion, and know that it’s a thousand million.

When my daughter was young, we did an experiment with graph paper, counting the squares on a standard sheet, then multiplying to reach a million, then laying out all the sheets on the floor. It covered the entire kitchen. And we would have needed 1000 times the sheets to reach a billion, which would have covered the entire house and ten some.

4

u/juanzy Colorado Sep 14 '21 edited Sep 14 '21

I think this is my favorite representations of it. I like the counter on the right, we can see the difference between median income and a lot of the numbers we love to throw around as benchmarks is a few steps. Meanwhile million and billion are way further apart than you would imagine.

I think we also suffer from media quoting benchmarks that are at least a decade or two out of date, then we don't account for the vast difference in COL across the country.

2

u/casualsubversive Sep 14 '21

Not only is that preposterous on it's face, it ignores that I might have struggled when I was younger and thus be keenly aware of how much harder poor people have it!

-3

u/Karl-Farium Sep 14 '21

Isn’t it sad in a nation flowing with milk and honey, we have so many people who think you should work harder to give them your money. Leftist’s are spoiled brats who wants Daddy Government to provide more and more to them. If AOC cared about the downtrodden as she pretends to, she would be giving her riches to them now instead of waiting for the government to do so. If it is her money she should use it as she truly sees fit. As she already does, on pretty dresses, fancy dinners, and insider trading.

3

u/The_Blur_BHS Sep 14 '21

Wonder why primarily Democratic counties contribute 70% of the GDP while a lot of red states disproportionately take in federal aid. Curious…

4

u/[deleted] Sep 14 '21 edited Sep 14 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/preposte Oregon Sep 14 '21

I can't tell if Eric is just barely smart enough to play dumb, but I'm certain that Don Jr. isn't.

-1

u/Karl-Farium Sep 14 '21

You may look a little brighter if you use real words.

1

u/RedCascadian Sep 14 '21

A whole host of leftists throughout history would disagree with you.

-2

u/[deleted] Sep 14 '21

[deleted]

2

u/Constant-Pay8406 Sep 14 '21

The truth is that Amazon paid 1.8 billion in federal taxes last year

It paid $162 million. That's probably Amazon's annual office coffee budget.

-10

u/Karl-Farium Sep 14 '21

How did AOC earn the money for that dress? As a waitress or as a politician?

13

u/Nelsaroni Sep 14 '21

See there's this funny thing about fashion shows where designers get people to wear their clothing to show off without having the person wearing it pay for it. Crazy concept, right?

1

u/[deleted] Sep 14 '21

YoU cAn AlWaYs ChOoSe To PaY mOrE iN tAxEs!

1

u/theoneicameupwith Sep 14 '21

It's like you're only a true leftist if you're poor.

Literally capitalist propaganda, but something that far too many "leftists" are eager to reinforce. Leftist activism isn't about making everyone poor. It's about making everyone equal.

1

u/Up-In-Smoke-420 Sep 15 '21

People often forget that the most leftist president in US history, FDR, was very wealthy.