Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will pay every staffer a living wage, ending the longstanding practice of Congressional staffers taking second jobs

HINT: Ron Swanson was not written as an anti-government ideal, but a parody.

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You’ve never heard anyone call a woman “dude” before?

As for all politicians being worthless parasites, hey, someone’s gotta do that work. At least in any place that’s not a lawless Mad Max Land. They’re not automatically parsites. Even if many of them in the U.S. basically are in it for themselves, it doesn’t have to be that way.

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And inviting in a business with a multibillion-dollar tax credit plugs this hole…how? New York City is not lacking for white collar jobs. New York City is lacking in two (among many) things:

  1. a balance between the needs of neighborhoods and regular people vs. the interests of corporations and the wealthy

  2. corporations that pay their taxes

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Prove it. Prove it with numbers that aren’t Amazon’s, and prove that they would have been high-paying. And I will hold you to a high standard here, so don’t skimp. Show me a study. Otherwise, I don’t fucking care about your opinion.

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Oh gawd.

Neither she nor Bernie nor any other prominent Social Democrat is opposed to prosperity or abundance. This is the myth the ultra-wealthy feed to their minions to stir up anger and protect their own power.

There are plenty of millionaires in the social democracies of Europe, but at the same time the poor aren’t also struggling without access to health care or decent education. In short, more people are prospering there.

Amazon coming to NYC wasn’t 100% beneficial, and a lot of NYC residents didn’t want it there-- that’s how democracy works, the people get a say in their own neighborhood, or are you opposed to that?

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By futures, I’m going to assume the subtext is stock futures. Don’t worry, your stock is up 10.83 points at the time of this posting.

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It’s a common sentiment amongst defenders of late-stage capitalism. Here’s a quote from Peter Thiel:

For all these reasons, I still call myself “libertarian.” … But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible… The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.

What amazes me is that people who (based on their obvious ignorance of economic and financial matters) have no chance of attaining a fraction of Thiel’s net worth in their lifetime also espouse this wrongheaded greedpig view.

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Prosperity and abundance for the ultra-rich, in hopes that their Prosperity Gospel will trickle down on the rest of us?

Amazon blamed local politicians. It would be a stretch to include a Congressional Representative with no direct power over the deal. Her tweets must be Super Effective!

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Abundance doesn’t exist. We live in a world of limited resources. Abundance is a myth that privilege allows people to believe in. Just sayin…

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Not only was she not “instrumental” in this, it wasn’t even her district! Long Island City falls into the 12th Congressional district and is represented by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, not AOC.

Dud you’re absorbing misinformation that makes you useful to a certain group of wealthy people who want to maintain the status quo. Useful like, say, a tool…

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Yeah. I just keep pointing out the obvious to these guys-- the US economy did better overall when unions were stronger and the top marginal tax rates were higher. Hardly anybody in Canada, Japan or Europe wants to give up their national health care, even if they sometimes complain about it (but then complaining is part of the human condition.)

For people like Thiel “freedom” means his own freedom, not anyone else’s. The freedom to make lots of money, give very little back to the state that provides the infrastructure and security that made it possible, and have more say in the political process than anyone with less money.

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As long as she’s 35 on inauguration day, that’s all that matters, legally speaking.

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Any moment now the people of Denmark are going to all be locked up in prison camps, thanks to their various social welfare programs.

Of course this pro-business website seems to think otherwise:

There are trade-offs, but always working towards higher economic growth isn’t some magical cure-all that feeds the poor and heals the sick. You can disagree, but I think having a population who feel secure and happy and who get to enjoy their lives is better than having people constantly in a life-or-death struggle to make ends meet, only to wind up old, sick and nearly destitute after working full-time their whole lives and not being able to save enough to retire.

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I don’t know if you feel that this is an apolitical point of view, but it is the explicit talking point of one of America’s two major political parties since Reagan. Your post is unwitting volunteer work for Ted Cruz’s re-election campaign.

If politicians are doing nothing to making the lives of Americans better, vote for different politicians. Or, do what Ocasio-Cortez did: run for office yourself and turn yourself and starting shaping the narrative.

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Emphatic agreement, there.

You know my thoughts on this.

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No one ever became more competent by being paid more. All higher pay gets you is less laziness. If more money guaranteed more competence, Donald Trump would be a supergenius who has working good answers to every problem in the world, instead of the whiny, petulant, lazy, ignorant, stupid, short-sighted, cowardly, irresponsible, lying, sociopathic, psychopathic, self-entitled, greedy, selfish, immoral, hypocritical, lying, worthless overgrown spoiled brat heap of phony fraudulent criminal possibly traitorous garbage that he is.

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[citation needed]

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https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/02/25/ocasio-cortez-hits-back-after-fox-news-slams-staff-wages/23677739/

I am confused. So paying your staff is “just like communism and socialism?” I would have thought it was the opposite, like “paying your staff what they are worth.”

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