Consider this a follow up to Ed’s post from earlier today. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t seem to know how she will pay for any of her Democratic Socialist policy priorities, which include free healthcare, free college, etc. Can her fans in the district where she is running do any better? You will absolutely be shocked by the answer!

People on the street were quick to offer support for Ocasio-Cortez’s brand of socialism, and overwhelmingly supported her vision for the district. They were more hesitant, however, to offer ideas for how to pay for all of the free things that Ocasio-Cortez is promising. “I don’t know where the money would come from, but they can figure it out,” one person stated confidently.

I’ve learned not to expect much from people in these man-on-the-street interviews. Still, I think this clip explains a lot of the youth support for Ocasio-Cortez. A lot of younger people just assume that someone will figure out where the money to pay for all of this should come from. Only one guy (pictured above) makes the connection, i.e. it’ll have to come from us. He doesn’t expound on that idea much but I will.

It’s not just the billionaires who will be tapped to pay for all of this. Why? Becuase there aren’t enough billionaires to cover $20-30 trillion in new spending over ten years for a Medicare-for-All system. We tax income not wealth and even billionaires aren’t earning billions a year. Even if we started taxing billionaires on their wealth, it wouldn’t be enough.

Someone in this clip suggests raising taxes on corporations. That’s at least a semi-coherent attempt to deal with costs, so partial credit for trying. But what happens when you sharply raise taxes on businesses? They can’t print money in a back room to cover the sudden cash grab by the government. They might make up some of the difference by reducing costs (layoffs, off-shoring, cutting quality), but it’s likely they will also be forced to raise prices. So who ends up paying? Again, we do. Maybe some of these folks would vote differently this November if they thought this through a bit more.