Yesterday, AOC made the argument that no company can legitimately earn a billion dollars.
AOC: “There’s a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned. You can’t earn a billion dollars. You just can’t earn that. You can get market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they’re worth, but you can’t earn… pic.twitter.com/tUi9xTlQ2B
— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) May 7, 2026
She got a lot of flak for that online.
Lies. Billionaires get rich by innovating and risk-taking, offering new and better goods and services at prices people are willing to pay. Government makes cash through confiscation. AOC's conspiratorial, envious view of the world leads to impoverishment and tyranny. https://t.co/jBIe3haxXD
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) May 8, 2026
Building something valuable, that provides value to others, is *real*. You can *create* wealth, without taking from others, because life isn’t a zero-sum game. This is a bad take. https://t.co/5K5J6fSpWD
— Caitlin Kalinowski (@kalinowski007) May 7, 2026
The responses were endless which is why AOC felt the need to double down.
The single largest form of theft in America is wage theft. $50 billion a year are stolen from American workers.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 7, 2026
If a billionaire amasses their wealth by underpaying their full-time workers so severely that they must rely on food assistance and government programs to survive,… https://t.co/fH9pBZbpSa
The single largest form of theft in America is wage theft. $50 billion a year are stolen from American workers.
If a billionaire amasses their wealth by underpaying their full-time workers so severely that they must rely on food assistance and government programs to survive, then no, that wealth was not earned by one individual - it was a wealth transfer subsidized by underpaid American workers and the public who get stuck with the bill for large corporations free-riding off our systems.
The point is less about individual morality. It’s more about how our current economic reality of shattering inequality rewards screwing over workers and exploiting essential systems at scale.
We’re talking monopoly power. Rent-seeking. Wage theft. Profiteering. Stock buybacks. Destabilizing housing markets. Companies using SNAP/EBT to underwrite their wages. Massive government subsidies or contracts to corporations following lobbying and dark money in politics with little to no oversight or accountability.
Some people get enraged that I draw attention to this. That’s on them. Let them call me shrill, dumb, inexperienced, girly, uneducated - these folks will say anything to distract from or undercut the truth that working people are getting screwed, and giving people a fair shake means we must have a grown conversation about reigning in abuse of power.
She's relying on this Economic Policy Institute report from 2014. Wage theft is a general term that covers a bunch of things like forcing people to work overtime without paying them overtime or tip stealing.
But of course even if her figures are accurate, that doesn't back up the claim she made yesterday that no company can earn a billion dollars. Just because some bosses are cheating employees doesn't mean that every successful company is illegitimate.
How about a little perspective? The total amount of wages paid in the US every year is something like $13 trillion dollars.. So wage theft would work out to 0.38% of that total. I'm not claiming it's nothing or that it should be overlooked. Stealing from employees is wrong. I'm just saying that as an argument that all successful US business are actually illegitimate cabals run by thieves, it's not very convincing.
Also, $50 billion in wage theft is a pittance compared to how much US citizens pay in taxes every year, which is something like $4-$5 trillion to the federal government alone. Which loss impacts people more?
Lots of people were making a much simpler argument. What about some of the recent billionaires who no one thinks of as having stolen anything? It only takes one to prove AOC wrong.
The idea that all billionaires got their money by exploiting peopl doesn't hold up to any scrutiny.
— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) May 8, 2026
JK Rowling wrote books about cheeky wizards. I invented a better way to make virtual reality headsets and games to play on them. We just made things people wanted.
It's a solid point but of course progressives hate JK Rowling and wish they could bankrupt her. What about some other billionaires?
I'm pretty sure that AOC's rant against billionaires is directed to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Ackman, and not to George Soros, Oprah and Taylor Swift. pic.twitter.com/JsuI2czZIq
— Joel M. Petlin (@Joelmpetlin) May 8, 2026
When will you be calling @taylorswift13 to inform her that she didn’t earn her $2 billion ?? pic.twitter.com/kku8iPWinu
— 🇺🇸🇺🇸 OGCannaKingCA 🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@OGCannaKingCA) May 8, 2026
Anyway, there are hundreds more comments like these. It's actually heartening how many people are taking the time to tell AOC she's full of it. The DSA dopes haven't taken over everyone's brain yet.
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