https://www.yahoo.com/news/need-bill...100007745.html
Do we need billionaires? Ocasio-Cortez forces a conversation on the place of the superrich
Shortly after being sworn in earlier this month, the congresswoman who represents parts of Queens and the Bronx suggested a 70 percent top marginal rate on the wealthiest Americans. Many mainstream pundits scoffed at the idea, but it has proven popular, winning support from economists writing in the New York Times and a 59 percent approval from respondents in one survey.
Ocasio-Cortez’s staffers are weighing in. Dan Riffle, her policy director, wrote on Twitter earlier this week, “My goal for this year is to get a moderator to ask ‘Is it morally appropriate for anyone to be a billionaire?’ at one of the Dem primary debates.” (Riffle has changed his Twitter display name to “Every Billionaire Is a Policy Failure.”) Ocasio-Cortez was asked that question on Monday at an event honoring Martin Luther King Jr. and responded that she thought it was immoral that billionaires could co-exist in a country where poor children are still being infected by hookworm.
“At what level are we really just living in excess?” said Ocasio-Cortez. “And what kind of society do we want to live in? And do we want to live in a city where billionaires have their own personal Uber helipads when people are working 80-hour weeks and can’t feed their kids?”