Class Warfare
U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–NY) claims that “economic stagnation for the working class” is due to “economic elites” “taking the lion’s share of growth for themselves and leaving crumbs” for everyone else.
IN FACT, AOC and her fellow progressive elites have supported and enacted at least 10 agendas that have hamstrung the working class:
- Government social programs, which reduce incentives to work and the ability to save.
- Government money printing, which is the primary driver of inflation and increases the wealth of current asset holders while making homes, stocks, and other investments less affordable for everyone else.
- Pervasive and aggressive government regulations, which raise the costs of living and make it difficult for small businesses to compete with major corporations.
- Mass illegal immigration, which reduces the wages of low-income workers and decreases the prices of services that high-income people purchase, like maids, nannies, landscapers, and restaurant meals.
- Green energy mandates, which increase the costs of energy and virtually everything else.
- Government-mandated employee benefits, which reduce workers’ wages.
- Monopoly powers for unions, which raise taxes and consumer prices.
- Liberal ethics about sex, which create household fragmentation that dilutes workers’ incomes.
- Multiplicative increases in education spending, which raise taxes while failing to substantially improve student achievement.
- Raising the minimum wage, which destroys jobs and increases the costs of living while raising the average income of families below the poverty line by about 1%.
AOC also claims that “you are being screwed over” on the basis of “class,” echoing the primary rhetoric of the leaders of the Soviet Union. In their country, the average living standard “was roughly one third that of the United States.”
In contrast, middle-income Americans are richer than their counterparts in every other nation of the world partly because wealthy Americans invest in enterprises that increase productivity, which is the primary driver of living standards.
If politicians confiscated the $6.8 trillion of wealth owned by all 902 billionaires in the United States, it would fund the federal government for only one year, or pay 18% of the national debt.
