Looking for Equal Equality

AOC recently complained that the stock market is going up too much and employee wages aren’t. She spit out one of her Twitter soundbites, “Inequality in a nutshell.”

AOC seems incapable of distinguishing between income  and wealth.  The difference is a mathematical integral that includes intent, planning, discipline, desire, study, etc.  One is how much money you get, an the other is about what you do with it.  Meanwhile, she pounds out the message that the stock market is not the economy and we should not pay attention so much to a rising stock market. For example, here’s a report from MSNBC, with much more favorable treatment of AOC.

Socialism (AOC’s self-identified way) seems fixated on how much money everybody has, wanting it to all be – forced toward – equality (taking from those with plenty, and giving to those with less).   A fundamental problem, however, is that the socialist attitude ignores many factors of how wealth is accumulated.  What wealth you have often is VERY dependent on how you handle your income.

The socialist way also ignores fundamental concepts of fairness – for example, ask your socialist classmate to share half of their academic grade “wealth” with someone who has a lower grade (grades have a lot to do with how well a person does later in life, so everybody should be given equal opportunity later via equal grades now).  Your socialist friend will ignore the offer to share in future success.

Political spin aside, the market has climbed a lot under the Trump administration.  During the same years, unemployment is down and wages have risen.  But let’s go along with AOC and ignore those facts for a moment.

I’m more bothered by the typically selective hypocritical views. As a 18 year old, when the DOW took a 30%+ nose-dive in 2008, I wonder if she’d like her wages indexed to the stock market?   Or mandate a Federal correlation (stock market goes down 20%, minimum wage goes down 20%).   No, I suppose she wouldn’t go for that.

Wages do not nose-dive when the market drops. What about inequality then?  How come we only hear this attitude when someone who does not take market risks wants to hitch a ride on the coat tails of those who do?