The Left’s favorite new congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., had some choice words for former Starbucks CEO and possible presidential hopeful Howard Schultz.
“Why don’t people ever tell billionaires who want to run for President that they need to ‘work their way up’ or that ‘maybe they should start with city council first’?” wrote Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter in response to a Daily Beast report that her 70 percent marginal tax proposal inspired the businessman to run for office.
Aside from the fact that this is literally the first question asked of billionaire presidential hopefuls (see: Ross Perot, our current president, etc.), this question also assumes that Schultz inherited a trust and a corporate throne from daddy when nothing could be further from the truth. Hate on Schultz if you will for his milquetoast brand of bland aphorisms, but you cannot deny that his life has exemplified the American dream.
Schultz was born to a poor Jewish family in Brooklyn in 1953. His father was a truck driver, and the family lived in public housing projects in Canarsie, just south of Brownsville, one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in all of New York City. Thanks to an athletic scholarship, Schultz became the first member of his family to go to college.
He started off his career as a Xerox salesman and then became a manager at a Swedish coffee maker manufacturer. It was then that he visited Starbucks and became inspired to revolutionize coffee culture in America. He formally joined Starbucks after a few years of cafe endeavors, became CEO by 1987, and the rest is history.
Starbucks now employs more than a quarter-million people and has a market cap of $78 billion. Schultz successfully brought the Italian coffee culture he had always dreamed of to all 50 states and then across the world. Schultz’s push for ample employee benefits kept staff turnover low relative to other shift workers, and the billionaire famously initiated a program to help employees get an online degree from Arizona State University for free. As of last year, Starbucks had reached complete gender and racial pay equity.
Say what you will about Schultz, but he’s lived the liberal American dream.
Forbes issues a self-made score for all of the wealthy people they rank on various lists. A score of one indicates pure inheritance. Ten means a person is entirely self-made.
Donald Trump has a four.
Kylie Jenner has a seven.
Schultz has a perfect ten, the same as Oprah Winfrey.
If entitlement is your only attack on Schultz’s presidential ambitions, it’s time to find another angle.
