Communism has never worked — at least not as its proponents have promised. History is replete with examples confirming this reality beyond any reasonable and rational shadow of doubt. In fact, based upon its record of oppression and death, communism is perhaps the most immoral system of government ever conceived by mankind.

Yet despite the historical record and logical reasoning, soft communism’s advocates, socialists, continue to insist that it will work to bring “fairness.” They claim that a truly moral society can only be one that has embraced and thoroughly implemented socialism everywhere.

New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-identified “Democratic Socialist,” recently expressed this sentiment in a podcast interview.

In an effort to demonize wealth accumulation as patently immoral, AOC stated, “There’s a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned. Right? You can’t earn a billion dollars.” For emphasis, she reiterated, “You just can’t earn that.”

Really? So, how have numerous individuals across multiple different industries, from sports to entertainment to business, accumulated billions of dollars?

AOC’s answer is mind-numbingly ignorant: “You can get market power. You can break rules. You can do all sorts of things. You can abuse labor laws. You can pay people less than what they’re worth. But you can’t earn that, right? And so you have to create a myth that, since you didn’t earn that, you have to create a myth of earning it.”

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) <a href="https://twitter.com/MarcoFoster/status/2052427151371047016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>May 7, 2026

So, according to AOC, the only way people have accumulated billions of dollars is through a rigged system that abuses the labor of others. Cheating and stealing from others, she insists, is the only basis for this wealth accumulation, and therefore it is immoral. For her, the “myth” is that people can legitimately earn billions of dollars. Capitalism is the problem.

She defends her inane claim by pointing to minimum wage workers at Walmart, suggesting that the “system” — by which she means capitalism — teaches people to believe that “the people at the top are smarter, better, you know, more sophisticated and therefore the people at the bottom are uneducated, lazy, etcetera.”

Furthermore, she clarified, “Someone can certainly make a billion dollars. That’s not the same thing as earning.”

Faced with blowback, she took to X with more economic insanity. “The single largest form of theft in America is wage theft,” she said to begin a lengthy rant. “$50 billion a year are [sic] stolen from American workers.” A lot of money is certainly taken from workers’ paychecks, but it’s in the form of taxation before it ever even hits their bank accounts. That amounts to $4-$5 trillion annually.

She wasn’t done. The Bronx Democrat also displayed her historical ignorance, asserting, “The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time.” Tell that to George Washington, one of the wealthiest men in America at the time. Or tell that to Robert Morris, who was the wealthiest man in America and who used his fortune to finance a great deal of the Revolution while leaving himself bankrupt. All 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, in fact, pledged their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.”

In any case, AOC has exposed the evil at the root of communism: envy. By her logic, since it would be impossible for someone working a minimum-wage job to accumulate a billion dollars in wealth, it’s illegitimate for someone else’s work to earn them billions. Her assessment is not based on any actual understanding of economics; as noted above, it is based on the Marxist notion of “fairness,” which holds that the value of all work is the same.

This notion that all labor is of equal value is abjectly false, which is why communist systems invariably fail. The fact of the matter is that in a free market system, goods and services that consumers demand will invariably give rise to greater profits for those able and willing to supply them, while those providing goods and services not in demand will not turn a profit.

Just because the vast majority of people lack the talent, skills, and ability to earn a billion dollars does not mean capitalism is “unfair” or “unjust.” Capitalism affords high achievers the opportunity to earn such wealth.

Indeed, if it weren’t for these exceptionally high achievers, the rest of society would suffer great loss. AOC likely enjoys her smartphone and her Tesla, as well as air travel, electricity, modern medicine, and a nearly inexhaustible number of other modern amenities that are almost entirely attributable to free-market capitalism, which rewards ingenuity, development, risk-taking, and hard work.

One would think that this reality would be obvious, but apparently, AOC is so ideologically captured that she cannot see this.

It’s actually far worse than mere ignorance, though. As political commentator Robby Soave insightfully observes, “What she’s doing here is trying to provide a moral justification for mass wealth confiscation, since in her view it is never earned legitimately.”

As communists have always done, in order to convince people to hand over all societal decision-making power to a tiny cabal of self-proclaimed do-gooders, they must convince the masses that wealth itself is immoral, no matter how it has been acquired.

Finally, it’s long been rumored that AOC has White House aspirations, but she put that in alarming perspective: “My ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country.”