Augmenting the Collection of AOC Humor

May 11, 2019 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty
 

If Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez didn’t exist, I might have to invent her since she helps to make socialism such an easy target for mockery.

Though I actually admire the fact that she doesn’t try to disguise her agenda. Like “Crazy Bernie,” she openly and boldly pushes for an ideological agenda that would put the United States somewhere between Greece and Venezuela in the global rankings for economic liberty.

And while that would be a horrible outcome, it does generate the satire for today’s column.

We’ll start with a clever cartoon I saw on Facebook. It appears that Ms. AOC slept through a critical class.

Indeed, even though it should be difficult to overlook 100 million deaths caused by socialism, she may have slept through all her classes according to the satirists at Babylon Bee.

The problem has become so acute that her economics degree from Boston University has been revoked.

…an independent degree quality control board issued an emergency recall on her economics degree. Basic Economic Understanding Bureau officials burst into the congresswoman’s office and confiscated her economics degree early Tuesday morning “for the safety of the nation.” They found it hanging on the wall next to a hammer & sickle flag. They tore it down and returned it to Boston University for safekeeping. …one BEUB official said. “We pulled up Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitter account, and sure enough, she compared the price of a croissant with the price of an hour of human labor. She seemed to have no understanding of the underlying facts.” …While officials were not allowed to detain Ocasio-Cortez herself for a recall and were forced to release her after questioning, they recommended she read Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell or Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt to aid her in her recovery.

I can’t resist making two serious points.

• First, there are plenty of leftist economists in the academic world, So she could have been paying close attention in all her classes and simply learned garbage.
• Second, while it would be nice if AOC read Thomas Sowell, I doubt it would help. My experiences with dedicated leftists suggest that they are impervious to understanding tradeoffs.

But since I’ve written over and over again about the foolishness of socialism, let’s bring another voice to the discussion. In an article for Quillette, Jonathan Church summarizes the economic blindness of AOC.

With over 3.5 million followers on Twitter…and an audacious personality, she has become a vociferous presence in the contemporary social discourse…she is alarmingly prone, not simply to making mistakes that arise from climbing the learning curve on complex policy issues, but to making reckless intellectual mistakes that should easily be avoided by someone who has gloated about having an economics degree. Rarely does an AOC remark on economic issues go by, in fact, in which she does not demonstrate an ideological impulsiveness that compromises any presumed adherence to sound economic reasoning, prompting doubts about how much she learned when she studied economics at Boston University. …AOC repeatedly demonstrates a glaring lack of command not only of facts, but of basic economic principles. 

And what are these mistakes?

The article has many examples, but my favorites deal with the so-called Green New Deal and her misunderstanding of employment data.

…her Green New Deal…appears to be inspired by the highly-risky, nonsensical ideas of Modern Monetary Theory… Instead of focusing on entitlement reform and addressing the demographics and rising health care costs which lie at the root of America’s looming debt crisis, the Green New Deal would “spend the U.S. into oblivion,”… in one high-profile PBS interview last year, she claimed that unemployment in America “is low because everyone has two jobs” and “people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week.” She was subsequently chastened by Politifact.

But I’m digressing. Let’s enjoy some more humor.

Here’s a satirical video that’s received a lot of attention. It features an 8-year old Mini-AOC.



Also, you’ve probably seen information about how to detect if someone is using illicit substances.
Well, here’s how to tell if someone is buzzed on things they shouldn’t be using.

Here’s some more clever satire from Babylon Bee. It appears Ms. AOC is not cut out for success on some game shows.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was pumped to attend a taping of The Price Is Right in Hollywood this week. The special guest introduced herself as a U.S. representative and rising star of the Democratic Party. Things got interesting when the game began and every time it was her turn to estimate the price of an item her answer was “free.” …She went on to guess that diamond earrings, a set of jet skis, and even a giant pile of cash were all free. Carey unveiled a package containing world-class healthcare and she said, “Definitely free.” …Cortez was never able to advance to the game proper, and as the credits rolled she appeared visibly upset. A hot mic picked up comments she made in frustration, claiming that the game was rigged by capitalism and that “everybody knows giant piles of money are free, that’s like basic economics 101”.

Last but not least, I assume everyone has seen Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

The remake is even more terrifying!

As always, feel free to peruse the entire collection of socialism-themed humor.

And if you want more info on the evil of socialism, just read more about the real-world consequences of bad policy.