XPost: alt.sports.football.pro.dallas-cowboys, alt.sports.footba   
   l.pro.phila-eagles, alt.sports.football.pro.ne-patriots   
   From: commies@cnn.com   
      
   In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, newly elected   
   Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was compared to Donald   
   Trump in her “ability to galvanize [her] supporters through   
   social media.” To this she replied: “In order to resonate with   
   people, you have to tell them what you mean, you have to be   
   willing to make mistakes, you have to be willing to be   
   vulnerable and learn as you go.”   
      
   Ocasio-Cortez has indeed garnered a lot of attention since   
   upsetting Joe Crowley in the race to represent New York’s 14th   
   district in the U.S. House of Representatives last year. With   
   over 3.5 million followers on Twitter, an initialism (AOC) that   
   has caught on with cable news, and an audacious personality, she   
   has become a vociferous presence in the contemporary social   
   discourse—particularly on issues like race, taxes, health care,   
   Amazon, economic inequality, and climate change.   
      
   In the latest example, AOC sparked controversy when she took   
   former U.S. President Ronald Reagan to task, as related by   
   Huffington Post, by bringing up “one of [his] favorite anecdotes   
   from his 1976 presidential primary campaign…about a Chicago   
   woman who was accused of fraudulently collecting public benefits   
   under a variety of names.” AOC remarked: “So you think about   
   this image, ‘welfare queens’…and what [Reagan] was really trying   
   to talk about… He’s painting this really resentful vision of   
   essentially black women who were doing nothing, [who] were sucks   
   on our country, right? … That’s not explicit racism, but it’s   
   still rooted in racist caricature. It gives people a logical—a   
   “logical”—reason to say, ‘Oh, yeah, no. Toss out the whole   
   safety net.’”   
      
   While the remark sparked controversy because of the alleged   
   racism implicit in Reagan’s anecdote, AOC seemed intent on   
   blaming Reagan not for racism per se but for instigating efforts   
   to “[t]oss out the whole safety net.” Indeed, perhaps the most   
   common feature of her public remarks on policy matters is that   
   they relate to economic issues, such as the role of the   
   government in the economy. Unfortunately, however, another   
   common feature of her public remarks is that 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.   
      
   To be fair, her soak the rich tax policy draws on legitimate   
   debates among economists about the pros and cons of supply-side   
   economics, which was a central tenet of what came to be known as   
   Reaganomics, and whether high marginal rates on large levels of   
   income would have severe counter-productive effects on the   
   marginal propensity to consume (probably not). But this is a   
   debate that has been rehashed like so much old laundry that even   
   a lay person without a college education can understand the   
   basics of what is at stake. More generally, there is no reason   
   to take AOC seriously when she speaks about economics, whether   
   about the social safety net or any other issue related to   
   economics, even though she studied economics as a college   
   student. The reason is that AOC repeatedly demonstrates a   
   glaring lack of command not only of facts, but of basic economic   
   principles.   
      
   First, her Green New Deal, which appears to be inspired by the   
   highly-risky, nonsensical ideas of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT,   
   which I have written about here). 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,” likely beyond anything that could have been imagined   
   when President Reagan’s critics blamed his supply-side fiscal   
   policies for increasing America’s debt load (as a percentage of   
   GDP) during the 1980s.   
      
   Second, she demonstrated her F-grade economic literacy when   
   tweeting about tax incentives and her opposition to Amazon’s   
   attempt to establish offices in Long Island City. She   
   subsequently claimed, “If we’re willing to give away $3 billion   
   for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion in our district   
   ourselves if we wanted to,” as if the $3 billion were a giveaway   
   from funds already available in the tax coffers, rather than “$3   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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