Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), or AOC has proven herself to be just another empty politician on Capitol Hill, mindlessly droning on about income inequality and whatever other left-wing bromide she can conjure up while never actually following through on any of her insane (and usually inane) ideological cogitations.
Most recently, AOC has found herself running afoul of the very far left element of the Democratic Party that originally helped to put her into power, as they are realizing AOC is just another captured member of Congress to elite special interests.
Yet, every so often, AOC finds a way to remind audiences of her alleged left-wing bona fides by picking an easy target, isolating them, and attacking relentlessly.
That’s precisely what she has done with the multimillionaire Australian real estate developer who grotesquely complained that working-class people had become far too “arrogant” for his own liking and that they would basically need to be punished for their insolence.
It was a classic “let them eat cake” moment that agitated my inner, long-dormant revolutionary into being, prompting me to actually find agreement—to a point—with the otherwise imbecilic congresswoman from the Bronx.
Let Them Eat Cake
According to the multimillionaire property developer, he wants to see the unemployment rate in his home nation of Australia go up to “40, 50 percent” in order to make workers suffer so that they won’t be so arrogant.
And what is the arrogance that the multimillionaire, globalist investor is referring to?
Why, of course, the arrogance that workers just want to work in a safe, comfortable environment, and to be paid what they are worth—rather than the subsistence wages that almost every worker in the West is paid.
Consider this, my friends: the cost of everything for ordinary people in the West has skyrocketed. Have their paychecks gone up to keep up with those costs?
Of course not.
Why does this entitled wannabe tyrant believe that Millennials will never own a home? Not because rich snobs like him are doing their best Marie Antoinette impressions with their workers.
Oh, no!
Not Even Avocado Toast For You!
Instead, he believes it’s because Millennials “are spending $40 a day on smashed avocadoes and coffees and not working.”
I’m a Millennial. I can honestly say that I’ve never had avocado toast. I do enjoy coffee. But that’s mostly so that I can keep working the insane hours that I work to provide for my family.
I, like most members of my generation, work crazy hours. I am fortunate in that I was able to purchase a home for my family. But many of my friends cannot do the same – and they are all gainfully employed and live frugally.
But this rich guy thinks that people who essentially make the businesses of the world function properly, who are paid usually below inflation, are simply too entitled. In the real estate developer’s eyes, workers have to be made to understand that “[the working class] works for the employer, not the other way around.”
I’ve worked for many people like this. I wish I could say that he was an anomaly in our corporatist overlord class. Sadly, this man is speaking for most of his cohort of fellow overly wealthy, entitled elites.
Just how do these individuals make their money? Is it because they innovated something? At one point in our history that was true. But nowadays guys like this get ahead by gaming the system.
In this guy’s case, he made his money in real estate development.
And everyone knows just how freewheeling and barely legal so many practices in the international real estate development business can be. Cutting backroom deals with elected officials to ensure that a given project is moved along, skirting environmental and government regulations—whether they are fair or not (and I happen to believe we need fewer regulations in general)—just to get their cash cow project done … this is how international real estate development really works.
Similar practices define other major industries today, sadly.
The term is rent-seeking behavior.
After corporations that are run by individuals like this reach a certain level of success they stop being as innovative or competitive as their rivals. So, rather than roll up their proverbial sleeves and make their companies more competitive, very often, they use their wealth and size to get the government to do their bidding by creating laws and regulations that favor their industry or corporation over others.
The corporate masters, as we experienced in the 2008 Great Recession, effectively socialize the downsides and the risks of their ventures while privatizing all the gains.
In essence, it is highly unlikely that the real estate developer in question is so much better because he chose not to purchase coffee or avocado toast (which sounds like a God-awful mixture, by the way).
In many cases, guys like this make it big by manipulating the government and politicians to do their bidding, while abusing their workers.
Corporate Profits Surge But Working-Class People Lose Out (Again)
Enter AOC with her apt observation that “corporate profits and CEO pay are at historic highs.” AOC has properly added that “Workers deserve a fairer slice of the pie.”
They do.
Beyond that, though, the context of what the jerky multimillionaire globalist real estate developer was saying should be more properly understood.
For example, the multimillionaire real estate developer from Australia was complaining that many workers in the West are basically lazy because they were paid to not work.
In fact, multiple studies have been done showing that the wild spending the U.S. government and most other Western governments engaged in during the COVID-19 lockdowns to supplement the loss of workers’ pay did hinder productivity among most workers well beyond the pandemic.
Still, what the developer was saying was both sleazy and wrong.
Most people—notably Millennials—are slaving away for employers who treat them as the multimillionaire developer describes. The working class works itself to death for pennies while their bosses get richer. The bosses also pay less taxes than their secretaries do in many countries.
Whatever the case may be about how businesses employ people, the fact remains that the pay of most employees in the West does not keep up with the cost of living.
That needs to change.
A Dangerous, Revolutionary Moment
We must create the conditions that allow for many more people—families—in the working class to build wealth for themselves and their children. Otherwise, we are setting the conditions for a very dangerous revolutionary moment.
We might already be in such a moment today.
In all, while I generally favor lower tax environments and fewer regulations for everyone in a purportedly free society such as ours or Australia’s, I support a 100 percent wealth tax on this globalist, multimillionaire real estate developer who apparently thinks his employees are little more than servants.
That’s something that I think AOC and I can agree on.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert occasionally serves as a Subject Matter Expert for various organizations, including the Department of Defense. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon. He writes from a conservative perspective.
