Summary
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denied claims that she is secretly wealthy, stating she is worth less than $500,000 and doesn’t trade stocks or take corporate money.
Her financial disclosures show modest savings and student debt.
Some conservatives on X, despite opposing her politics, praised her perceived integrity.
Accusations of political corruption have surged online, partly fueled by Elon Musk.
That’s because she’s actually trying to help people, and you don’t get rich helping people.
Well obviously you do. Or she isnt trying to help people. She admitted to having hundreds of thousands of dollars
Where are you from that you think hundreds of thousands of dollars in the US is “wealth”?
Do you know that 500k in the US doesn’t even get you a nice house? You need literally around 2 mil saved up JUST TO RETIRE BEFORE 70.
She is helping people in that she serves her constituency, she is a representative, nobody expects her to donate her money to anyone, but she does raise money in fundraisers all the time. She helps more people than most of her peers in congress. These fundraisers do NOT make you money, you may have some very backwards ideas about how money works in politics. Even the right respects AOC to an unusual degree, like they do Bernie Sanders. At least about policy and messaging. They care more about people than party.
I mean… 200K-300K-ish can get you a
livablesurvivable place in an okay part of Philly… like there is no “drug dealers” in my area, its not lile “the wire”, its not Baltimore, it just… “Okay” not good, not bad.(15 years ago it was like 100K to 200K). I’ve never heard a gunshot in 15 years living here (or maybe I did and though it was fireworks, who knows). My mom got robbed once. That’s it. Its not a terrible place to live. I mean, I haven’t died, so… 🤷♂️But yea, there are places (like NYC) that’s unlivable, housing in NYC is just insane, its why we had to move out of NYC. (Brooklyn btw)
It’s clear he didn’t read the article, but it’s necessary to point out she doesn’t even 500k- it is assets, which means she’s as far down the hole as the rest of us.
With that amount of money she could not stop working now and live comfortably off of her funds for the rest of her life in the US. She is not rich.
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You have no idea what you’re talking about. 500k in assets is like a decent house that you’re still making payments on, a couple cars, and some 401k savings. People like that are not the problem. That lifestyle should be the base level for every single American, imo.
Ikr? My mom is worth that probably but we barely making it.
It should be, but it isn’t. You’re out of touch with what most people have.
It seems like you may be conflating having ~$500k net worth with being rich, which may not have been your intent, but it seemed that way based on context. I think what the other responder is getting at is that AOC is not rich. She may have a house, a car, and some retirement saved up. All of those are assets, but they do not translate into the kind of liquidity that many other American politicians have.
She was working class before she entered into politics, and some would argue that she still is based on her work and advocacy. I don’t want to sound like I’m accusing your of anything, or putting words in your mouth, because that’s not my intent; I just want to point out a common belief held by a lot of Americans. Lumping someone in with the rich and then holding them in contempt merely because that person is richer than you is exactly the kind of us-versus-them mentality the ruling class wants us to have.
She is rich. There is nothing inherently wrong with being rich. There is something wrong with being a lawmaker who is so out of touch with poor people that you dont realize your own privileges
Can you explain why you think she is out of touch with poor people? I’m genuinely curious, because you may know something about her that I don’t, and if she’s as secretly two-faced as Sinema and Manchin, or has done something to actively denigrate or undermine the working class, I want to be informed.
I understand that most poor people feel overlooked, ignored, and exploited by the rich, and that’s because that is exactly what they do–but their greatest trick is to make us think that it’s not their fault that we are poor. Please look again to the last sentence of my reply: Holding someone in contempt merely because they are richer than you is exactly what the billionaires want you to do, because it distracts and redirects anger away from them, and is just another tool they use to make the working class fight amongst themselves.
She isnt richer than me. I have more money than she does.
I dont care if someone has money. That doesn’t make you a bad person. The issue is that she isnt aware how rich she is. That’s out of touch with reality.
Based on what, jagged_circle? Answer the question.
Based on what?
What are you basing this on? Did you personally speak with AOC?
In the article she said she has hundreds of thousands of dollars and also said she’s not rich
Edit: she didn’t say she’s not rich. She said she’s not a millionaire
You may be misunderstanding the difference between assets and liquidity. These days, owning a home, a car, and paying into a retirement fund for a few years can easily put someone close to having $500,000 in assets. But those aren’t liquid, i.e. they do not translate into having $500,000 in a bank account. Most people that have that much in assets will also have a lot of debt; take into account the mortgage on their house, student loans, car loans, and credit cards, the average person with $500,000 in assets actually has a negative net worth.
Compare AOC to someone like Nancy Pelosi, who has an estimated net worth over $240,000,000, with most of it bound in stocks and bonds that could quickly translate into liquidity. That is what being rich is. That is the kind of person that is out of touch with poor people.
Quote that part.
Lol so you were indeed lying, based on your edit.
So what’s the basis for your claim, then? That she’s so out of touch with poor people that she doesnt realize her own privileges?
Where’s the quote, jagged_circle?
Or are you a liar?
Sure, but your claim rests on a specific definition of what rich is. The notion that her gross assets, not liquidity, are such that she is in not of the working class (her assets produce enough wealth to live upon) glosses over the obscene wealth, corruption, and hoarding that the purpose of the conversation is trying to convey. “Yeah, but other Americans are poorer” is whataboutism in the face of someone interested in adresssing wealth disparity.
If you’re surrounded by people who are millionaires and that becomes your definition of “rich” then you’ve become so out of touch with reality.
There is a difference between someone with hundreds of thousands of dollars of net worth and someone with billions. Both are fucking rich.
The middle class is so far gone in the US that people like you have difficulty remembering what it looks like.
Your idea of a middle class is about as fictional as the idea of the American Dream.
You’re wrong. Source: I’m middle class. Not American.
If you can get bankrupted by an illness, you’re not rich.
Yup and I can say by experience that even making 180K at a fortune 500 company, that makes you still not rich when medical shit goes south.
By that definition, nobody is rich. You can spend 200 billion dollars trying to fight cancer and still die.
“Wise men speak when they have something to say. Fools speak because they have to say something.”
Americans are obligated to save individually for retirement and tax-incentivized to stockpile appreciating assets in personal trusts, in anticipation of becoming too old to work.
It is not that unusual at all for a 30-something professional earning a six-figure salary to set aside 10-20% of that in savings. I suppose you can argue Congresscritters are overpaid and therefore anyone in a federally elected office is de facto not trying to help people. But then you’ve got a problem with how we handle retirement, not with how AOC handles her politics.
Obligated? Most people have to wipe out their retirement funds when they get sick or have to bury their parents
Yes, that’s what they meant by “obligated.”
Our system as it currently exists forces, or “obligates,” people to have large rainy day funds.
Man I miss when we had pensions. Wish we had more unions.
The trick is taking them away slowly enough that every new generation of workers doesn’t even know what they’re missing.
Line must go up, after all.
What’s that, we’re being outpaced on a global scale such that our under-educated workers will soon no longer be able to rely on “We speak English without an accent?”
That’s a problem for after I’m dead, so I’m not worried about it!
Yeah, I really hope the younger generation gets their shit together and do what my generation couldn’t.
Man tried once at my software/engineering place, did not get very far at all unfortunately.
Sorry, best they can do is “saying n****r on the internet gets me attention so MAGA is where I belong.”
Maybe we’ll have luck with the next generation.
Very few people have this
Right, so you’re just confrontationally agreeing with UnderpantsWeevil and me.
Damn man, learn to read an article.
Too bad she doesn’t have hundreds of thousands of MILLIONS of dollars or she could really help the little guy like Musk and his administration.