AOC, the Congresswoman from New York, who hasn’t passed a single piece of legislation, is really good at agitation. She attended the Met Gala last night. It’s the place to be seen every year for the fabulously rich, famously rich, and the famously famous. They gather to show us that they care dressed in absurd $50,000 dresses. You know they care when they spend 50K on a dress. AOC showed up to make her statement. It was predictably stupid and very AOC.

“Tax the Rich.”

I’ve always found the “tax the rich” demand to be utterly banal. The rich are, in fact, heavily taxed.

Forty percent of individual income tax is paid by the top 1%. The top 10% of income earners paid 71% of income taxes. The top quarter of income earners paid close to 90% of all income taxes.

AOC wants to “Tax the Rich.” What she really means is she wants to tax all wealth so there are no rich. Equity of income is her goal. Everyone is poor, except our “betters,” like AOC. I think this has been tried before.

The Met Gala ended and the rich, the famously rich, and the famous are still rich, and still famous. Nothing changed for them. They will tweet and TikTok complaints about the rich, usually from a penthouse, or their summer home in the Hamptons or Martha’s Vineyard. They’ll still take advice from a smart CPA and pay the minimum tax they owe. If hypocrisy were currency, they’d all be Jeff Bezos.