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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: the Future of the Democratic Party?

By

Debbie Young

Is free health care, free college, free money for everyone (aka “universal basic income) the new mantra of Democrats?

During an interview on The Daily Show, Ocasio-Cortez muddled through how the government would pay for all the free stuff she is proposing.

This is an excellent, excellent question — and, in fact, there’s a lot of back-of-the-envelope stuff based on our values. So, for example, I sat down, ummm, with a Nobel Prize economist last week. I can’t believe I can say that! It’s really weird. But one of the things that we saw is, if people pay their fair share — share. If corporations and the ultrawealthy — for example, as Warren Buffett likes to say, if he paid as much as his secretary paid, 15 percent If he paid a 15 percent tax rate, if, uh, corporations paid — If, uh, we reverse the tax bill but raise our — our corporate tax rate to 28 percent which is not even as high as it was before. Um, if we — If we do those two things and also close some of those loopholes, that’s $2 trillion right there.

All right then, lots of free stuff. Charles C. Cooke notes in NRO:

Speaking to a friendly Trevor Noah, Ocasio-Cortez revealed that she does not know the difference between a one-year and a ten-year budget; confused the recent increase in defense spending with the entire annual cost of the military; implied that the population of the United States was around 800 million strong; and, having been asked to defend her coveted $15 minimum wage, launched into a rambling and inscrutable diatribe about “private equity” firms that would have been a touch too harsh as a parody on South Park. If anything, she was worse this time than she had been during her appearance on Firing Line a few days earlier, on which newly revamped show she demonstrated her obliviousness to the fact that the United States economy exploded during the 1990s, to the manner in which unemployment numbers are calculated, and to even the most obvious facets of the Israel–Palestine question about which she has assured her supporters she is so passionate.

The Democrats are looking for socialism to save them, writes Joseph Curl in the Washington Times. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, whom DNC chair Tom Perez calls the “future of our party,” is a self-described socialist who is pushing the Democratic Party even farther left.

Read more here.

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Debbie Young

Debbie, editor-in-chief of Richardcyoung.com, has been associate editor of Dick Young’s investment strategy reports for over three decades. When not in Key West, Debbie spends her free time researching and writing in and about Paris and Burgundy, France, cooking on her AGA Cooker, driving her Porsche Boxter S through Vermont and Maine, and practicing yoga.