Shocker: AOC's Financially Struggling Mom Moved to Low-Tax State to Make Surviving Easier
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn’t exactly averse to taxes. In fact, if you make over $10 million, the New York Democrat thinks you should be paying a 70 percent marginal tax rate.
And given that her Green New Deal has been estimated by one group to cost up to $730,000 for every American household, we’re going to guess that her love of taxes doesn’t just end with the monocle-wearing set. If the plan ever gets through, in other words, expect to be paying a lot of money to the government.
Her mother, however, isn’t so much a fan of taxes. In fact, she told the U.K. Daily Mail that she moved out of New York state because of the insanely high property taxes.
“I lived in the New York area for most of my life, but I started being unable to afford it,” Blanca Ocasio-Cortez told the Mail during an interview at her Eustis, Florida, home.
“After my husband (Sergio Ocasio) died (of lung cancer in 2008), the family went through tough times. Alexandria was in college, but I still had her little brother (Gabriel Ocasio-Cortez, 26, a real estate agent) who needed to be put through school,” she said.
Sergio Ocasio had no life insurance, and without his money coming in, the family faced foreclosure twice.
“It was scary,” she said. “I had to take medicine I was so scared. I had to stop paying for the mortgage for almost a year. I was expecting someone knocking on the door to kick me out at any time. There were even real estate people coming around to take photos of the house for when it was going to be auctioned. The worst is that I only had $50,000 left to pay on the loan.”
Blanca was able to avoid eviction, but she still had issues affording New York.
“I was cleaning houses in the morning and working as a secretary at a hospital in the afternoon,” she said. “I was working from 6 a.m. until 11 p.m. And I prayed and prayed, and things worked out. After the children graduated from college, I figured it was time for me to move to Florida.”
“I was paying $10,000 a year in real estate taxes up north,” she said. “I’m paying $600 a year in Florida. It’s stress-free down here.”
Indeed it is, Blanca. Unfortunately, your daughter wants to change that.
Yet, according to Blanca Ocasio-Cortez, her daughter’s political career is based on a love of family.
“My daughter works from the heart,” Blanca said. “What you see is what you get. She saw how unfair the system is, and she wants to change that. She saw struggling parents putting their children through school, but also how difficult life was for people in the Bronx compared to Yorktown.
“She saw the difference in education and status between parts of the family, and she just wants everybody to have the same opportunities.”
Yes — the same opportunity to pay the kind of high taxes that forced her mother to move to Florida. Please tell me again how this is about families and not about enriching the government and destroying freedom.
The congresswoman’s mother isn’t alone in fleeing from oppressive taxes. According to CNBC, one study by conservative economists estimated 800,000 people have left New York and California alone over the high taxes in those states. Liberal economist Cristobal Young of Stanford called this “pure nonsense” and said states would gain more revenue through higher taxes than they would lose.
New York officials might begin to disagree with Young. They recently announced a $2.3 billion loss in tax revenue in 2018, and in a rare moment of absolute candor, Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo seemed to grasp at least part of the problem.
“‘Tax the rich! Tax the rich! Tax the rich!’ We did,” Cuomo said, according to the New York Post. “Now, God forbid, the rich leave.”
It’s not just the rich who are leaving, it seems — you don’t see $2.3 billion drops in tax revenue because of that. Instead, it’s also people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s mother.
However, the great part about Cuomo’s comment is that it explains, in microcosm, just what’s wrong with 70 percent marginal tax rates.
“Tax the rich! Tax the rich! Tax the rich!” she’s saying. If the Green New Deal ever passes, she’ll certainly end up doing that. The thing is that people who will end up paying those marginal tax rates are awfully mobile. They can do what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s mom did, just on a more global scale.
That means we’re going to have to find more people to tax — in other words, the rest of us. And unlike Blanca Ocasio-Cortez, there’s going to be no low-tax Florida for us to move to.
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