Noah Rothman of National Review Online tackles one of the latest silly pronouncements from one of the most misguided and counterproductive members of Congress. New York’s AOC continues to demonstrate her lack of comprehension of basic economic facts.
Progressive darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, during a recent podcast appearance, said she doesn’t think billionaires should exist — and called out companies like Airbnb for having political power. Noah Rothman, on today’s edition of The Editors, says he loves “it when she explains what she means by this is to take away options from you.”
“Californians,” Noah reminds listeners, “were presented with this in the form of efforts to unionize ride-sharing companies by virtue of a constitutional amendment. . . . And it was repealed by the voters, because once they had experience with the suboptimal condition, it was not like they experienced a better set of economic circumstances. They ended up having to pay more, and they had fewer choices for which they were paying more.”
“That’s what happens when you implement this sort of policy, and it’s hard to call it a policy because it’s not really policy. It’s envy,” says Noah.
Noah points out that AOC and her ilk “bring this sort of turn-of-the-century parlor socialist outlook to the debate where you can kind of deduce that the caricature that they’re envisioning is not . . . Taylor Swift or Michael Jordan or Jay Z or Steven Spielberg. It’s like a Jay Gould or a James Fisk . . . this ancient caricature of either a robber baron or somebody who’s manipulating the system for their benefit.”
“They don’t reckon with the billionaires as they are in our current economic system, but they don’t reckon with economic activity either,” says Noah.
“I can’t see anything other than ignorance about how the economy works in this assessment.”
