By Peter Burrows, elburropete@gmail.com. 1/27/19

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, aka AOC, has taken America by storm. The new 29-year-old Congress- woman from New York City is on magazine covers, is featured in TV interviews, has been invited to appear everywhere and is talked about constantly by news pundits.

If I was 50 years younger, I’d throw myself at her lovely feet. However, in my grandfatherly old age I look at this benighted young lady and feel sorry for her. Wikipedia tells us that she graduated cum laude from Boston University in 2011 with a bachelor's degree in international relations and economics. My dictionary says cum laude means “With honor. Used on diplomas as a mark of high standing.”

Why then, was she tending bar and waiting tables before her election? Probably because her college degree is worthless, cum laude or magna cum laude, something a lot of college grads are finding out these days. In AOC’s case, proof she got a college indoctrination and not a college education is to be found in her economic ideas.

How can anybody take economics in college and come away with the conviction that economic prosperity can be achieved with huge government programs paid for by “the rich” and/or by the Federal Reserve writing checks?

How can that person think that the government can provide guaranteed jobs at “living wages” for everybody and anybody? Where has this ever worked? How can this be afforded? Throw in Medicare for all, too.

And, of course, she wants to increase the minimum wage to $15, proving she doesn’t know the first, or the second, thing about economics. (See my article, “God and the Minimum Wage” in Libertarian Leanings.) No wonder college degrees, outside of science and technology, don’t mean much anymore.

Another AOC fact that bodes ill for America is that she is a Catholic, a Latino Catholic, like Pope Francis, who has similarly stupid economic ideas.

With that in mind, it's not inconceivable AOC could run for president on a platform inspired by NYC’s mayor Bill de Blasio, who recently said that NYC has plenty of money to do all the good things de Blasio wants to do, it’s just that the money is in the WRONG hands.

“Right” and “wrong” are words that inherently incorporate a moral judgement. By golly, if money is in the “wrong” hands, it's government’s duty to take it and put it in the “right” hands. Lots of people think that is a proper role for government.

Politically, this works, especially if the electorate is both poor and ignorant. It worked for Hugo Chavez, who enjoyed the unique status of being an elected and reelected dictator. All that oil money down there in Venezuela was in the wrong hands, you see, and Hugo was just the guy to right that wrong. If a few billion ended up in his kids’ bank accounts, that was OK because their hands were the right hands.

Charles Lane, who writes for the Washington Post and is an occasional commentator on Fox News, recently said something to the effect that AOC would be really dangerous if she knew what she was talking about.

No, Chuck, she wouldn’t be dangerous if she knew what she was talking about, she’s dangerous because she DOESN’T know what she’s talking about.