Like most viral right wing memes, this trope is long on misplaced indignation and shallow ideals as well as short on factual backing and nuanced understanding.
An unfortunately popular right wing trope making the rounds on social media - which claims that AOC and young people are blind to prosperity - is rife with upper middle class privilege.
It's hamstrung by a very short-term/limited concept of what should lead to enjoyment and fulfillment in today's world; namely disposable consumer items whose exploitative costs, in both human suffering and ecological degradation, are kept out of sight and mind by corporations who privatize the profits and socialize the costs to the public.
Perhaps we can forgive the author’s naïveté, as her rhetoric and talking points are indicative of someone whose views of the world at large are the result of the misinformation and propaganda that is right wing media. I can empathize with that state of misunderstanding, because that was me at one point in my life too. But that's only a reason, not an excuse, for ignorance.
Like most viral right wing memes, it's long on misplaced indignation and shallow ideals as well as short on factual basis and nuanced understanding.
Anyways ...
(1) The statistical data on the cost of living vs wages for those not in the top 1% verify that AOC is right about an entire generation being left behind. I desperately wish that wasn’t the case, since I am a part of that cohort!
(2) Further, her fear-mongering about capitalism ”being destroyed” is weak tea. She doesn’t see the distinction between aristocratic democratic capitalism and social democratic capitalism. She’d be well served to take a course in Comparative European Politics.
(3) She’s dismissive of an entire generation, as though they aren’t still bleeding out from the Great Recession, as though haven’t watched their parents’ generation sell out the earth’s climate for consumerism and fossil fuels, and as though their government’s budget hasn’t been pillaged for $6 trillion dollars worth of endless wars that are unwinnable and won’t defeat terrorism.
The screed can be viewed here
