In another clip from AOC’s ridiculous interview a few days ago, she explains why billionaires don’t really ‘make’ their money. Rather, she says they ‘take’ the money from all their workers.
Watch:
AOC on why successful businessmen don’t deserve their wealth: “You didn’t make those widgets! You sat on a couch while thousands of people were paid modern day slave wages, and in some cases real modern-day slavery; you made that money off the backs of undocumented people …" pic.twitter.com/Y2w3nSfezo
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 20, 2020
This mentality is so negative and absurd. First of all, she generalizes that billionaires exploit their workers by paying them less than a living wage, and in many cases ‘slave wages’, saying they take their wealth from their workers. Speaking in general terms, that’s ridiculous. I know she hates that we have companies that move overseas where labor is cheaper, but if we do what she wants and force all companies to pay everyone at least $15 an hour, if not more, that would send even more companies overseas and kill even more jobs here in America.
In this country we have a minimum wage that companies must meet. It’s the law. Many workers make far more than minimum wage, especially when they have years of experience under their belt. Most importantly, these workers agree to the salaries they are paid. If they don’t think it’s enough, they can go work somewhere else. I know AOC would argue that people don’t always have this opportunity, but I think in most cases here that’s not true. People go from job to job all the time in this country and many work more than one job to make ends meet.
Secondly, yes millionaires and billionaires make a ton of money. But their ingenuity and ‘greed’ creates many jobs for many people that wouldn’t exist if they didn’t take a risk at some point in their life, most likely when they weren’t “millionaires and billionaires”. There are so many people around the world living in desperate poverty who would love to come to America and work for a company like Amazon, which already employees close to 700,000 people. We want more millionaires and billionaires like Jeff Bezos because they create jobs and lift more people out of poverty.
I could go on and on about this until my fingers bleed. The point is that capitalism is the only system that really lifts people out of poverty on a massive scale and allows many to live middle class and upper class lives. To throw that out in place of whatever socialist system AOC is proposing would turn us into the Soviet Union or, even worse, Venezuela.