Summary
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denied claims that she is secretly wealthy, stating she is worth less than $500,000 and doesn’t trade stocks or take corporate money.
Her financial disclosures show modest savings and student debt.
Some conservatives on X, despite opposing her politics, praised her perceived integrity.
Accusations of political corruption have surged online, partly fueled by Elon Musk.
The pot accuses a bottle of milk of looking black
AOC is a prodigious fundraiser with a significant national following. She might only have a half-million in the bank, but her name and her reputation are worth orders of magnitude more.
Conservatives have a hard time believing someone like that isn’t getting rich quick on $AOCCoin or LeftyBear merch offerings.
Being dishonest you have a bigger selection of instruments to gain power. So politicians are more likely to be dishonest than the average person. And then a dishonest person would use the opportunity.
Anyway, cool for AOC to be honest, but unfortunately her views (specifically support of MMT) are a certain way to nuke the economy of the USA.
If we detach ourselves from the emotional part (suicides, hunger deaths), it may even be liberating, if USD as a currency takes a 10000x inflation in a year or so, while big businesses reliant on American system of connections grown by decades of stability die. US main capital is still human capital, competent people and their knowledge. No hyperinflation will kill that, if recovery is quick enough.
Except that’s not the way people like AOC promise.
The US economy gets nuked every 8-12 years thanks to private equity and boom-bust capital trends. MMT just moves the ball out of the hands of a cartel of hedge funds and into the hands of the US Treasury. I’ll happily agree that its not sufficient to solving the problem of malinvestment and industrial waste. But that’s precisely because its an extension of Keynesian-cum-Friedmanite monetary theory of economics. At some point, you have to take account of real assets, not just float around fictitious capital.
You don’t get inflation like that under Eisenhower/Carter era tax laws. MMT, in practice, is still predicated on some degree of currency recapture. You’re just replacing credit elasticity through private lenders with spending elasticity through public spenders. “Here’s a $500k loan, build a house and pay me back at 6% APY” isn’t meaningfully different than “Here’s a $500k grant, built a house and your builders are going to pay me back 6% VAT”.
AOC promises a large public investment in value-adding infrastructure. She’s just proposing direct payment rather than tax-incentivized private investment.