Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the socialist neophyte who won a New York Democratic congressional primary in June, is young and attractive and has a compelling personal story. She likes to remind the public of her working-class roots, and rightly so. “The restaurant I used to work at is closing its doors,” she recently remarked on Twitter. “I swung by today to say hi one last time, and kid around with friends like old times. I’m a normal, working person who chose to run for office, because I believe we can have a better future.”
The authenticity of her story isn’t the problem. The foolishness of her ideas is. The left-wing statism she wants to impose on New York is guaranteed to punish the people she means to help. The owner of the restaurant where Ocasio-Cortez used to work is closing his doors, as he told the New York Post, because “the rents are very high and now the minimum wage is going up and we have a huge number of employees.” Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, as she’s likely to become, favors a dramatic increase in the minimum wage.
When she appeared on The Daily Show in July, host Trevor Noah asked her if the $15 minimum wage would stifle growth. Ocasio-Cortez responded that “studies show” the $15 minimum wage hasn’t hurt growth in Seattle. We wondered, what studies? The Seattle Minimum Wage Study Team at the University of Washington issued a report in 2017 showing that, on the contrary, the minimum wage hike actually suppressed low-income workers’ wages by keeping them from working more hours and making it harder for them to find work. Ocasio-Cortez also explained to Noah that “one of the biggest problems that we have is 200 million Americans make less than $20,000 a year. That’s 40 percent of this country.” Do “studies” show that, too? Because it’s nowhere near true.
A few commentators have lately wondered if the Democratic left will have an answer to Donald Trump and his rhetorical mayhem. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just might be it.
