Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez believes there is no legitimate way to “earn” $1 billion, so billionaires instead have to “create a myth” about how they made their money.
While speaking on Ilana Glazer’s “It’s Open” podcast this week, the New York representative explained that, after a certain threshold, money is no longer well-earned.
“There’s a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned, right,” AOC said. “You can’t earn a billion dollars. You just can’t earn that. You can get market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they’re worth, but you can’t earn that.”
“So you have to create a myth that — since you didn’t earn that, you have to create a myth of earning it. So if you’re making minimum wage at a Walmart and you’re making seven bucks an hour. And I mean, dang, with these gas prices, it takes you seven bucks to get to work, so as a result, we’ve kind of internalized this moralized system, right?” she continued. “‘The people at the top are smarter, better, you know, more sophisticated.’ And therefore, the people at the bottom are uneducated, lazy, etc.”
AOC has stayed on the case of not only billionaires, but also Donald Trump and his administration as of late. Most recently, it has been Kash Patel who earned her criticism in the wake of The Atlantic story detailing the FBI director’s alleged “erratic” behavior.
“I mean, I think we saw after the men’s Olympic hockey championships, the fact that this is a guy who is hurling bottles in his face, up in the air,” she said. “It’s not just embarrassing, it’s a person who’s easily manipulated.”
Ocasio-Cortez concluded: “If he’s conducting himself in this compromised way in public — especially in a position like the FBI — when you are acting crazy, you are creating opportunities for blackmail.”
