Alexandria Ocasio Cortez continues to excite here. She’s arguing that a system which allows billionaires to exist is immoral because of jock itch. Not that she quite said that even if that’s the meaning of what she did.
For this ringworm is indeed jock itch. An infection carried by some 20% of the population at any one time. It is this very thing which shows that the current socioeconomic order is immoral:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Ocasio-Cortez: System that allows billionaires is ‘immoral’[/perfectpullquote]Gosh, why’s that?
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] The New York Democrat made the statement while responding to a question from writer Ta-Nehisi Coates at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event in Harlem. “I do think that a system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong,” Ocasio-Cortez said. [/perfectpullquote] [perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Ringworm is a common fungal skin infection otherwise known as tinea. Ringworm most commonly affects the skin on the body (tinea corporis), the scalp (tinea capitis), the feet (tinea pedis, or athlete’s foot), or the groin (tinea cruris, or jock itch).[/perfectpullquote]You’re right, capitalism is immoral because athlete’s foot or jock itch.
Tomorrow AOC will solemnly inform us that socialism is moral because Twinkies.
And ring worm existed for thousands of years prior to there being a system which allowed billionaires, or Alabama, to exist. So I wonder what caused it back then?
Same forces that caused climate change before SUVs.
Oh, Mr Worstall! And you were doing so well…. On the web you will (occasionally) find serious discussion of divergent points of view. And you will also (often) find mindless intentional misunderstanding of opposing viewpoints designed to raise a cheap laugh at your opponents expense. This item is an example of the latter. Miss Ocasio-Cortez did NOT say that that a system which allows billionaires to exist is immoral because of ringworm. Nor did she ‘mean’ this. What she said was that a system which allows billionaires to exist while other people do not have access to basic health services… Read more »
Ringworm isn’t an easily preventable disease. It’s an easily treated and very common infection. It’s athletes’ foot for goodness sake. People get it from wrestling competitions as well. It’s also entirely cheap to treat. Off prescription creams costing cents do it. Wibbling about billionaires and ringworm is nonsense. It’s like claiming that the existence of Bill Gates causes nits.
Please don’t compound your error by repeating it. My point was that Miss Ocasio-Cortez did NOT say that the existence of billionaires caused ringworm. She made the common socialist point that society should not have billionaires while people were too poor to afford healthcare – a good emotional tactic. Ringworm was picked to raise the emotional stakes somewhat, but really the particular ailment picked is irrelevant to the point, as is how common or preventable it is. Wibbling about what she did not say is a strawman response, and cedes the point. IIRC, didn’t you comment a little while ago… Read more »
Would getting rid of billionaires get rid of tinea?
Did the Soviets get rid of tinea?
Ms Cortez’s contentions don’t make any sense to me either, I’m afraid.
Then why don’t you read them? It is quite clear that she is NOT claiming that billionaires cause ringworm. She is making a common complaint about the uneven distribution of wealth in society. This is such a standard left wing point to make that I’m surprised you don’t understand it. There are a number of reasonable responses which could be made to it; your second point is a good example of one – that socialist societies do not seem to manage to maintain health care any better. I just wish that such a response could have been made initially, rather… Read more »
One of the easiest ways of getting jock itch is being diabetic and doing lots of sweaty exercise and not washing the groin area properly. Easily solved by using Sulphur soap or over the counter clotrimazole.
What is it about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that makes her critics so eager and willing to beclown themselves?
Possibly the disconnection between her dicta and reality. “Ocasio-Cortez is ideologue. She can’t “lose” and she is not humbled when she cannot answer a simple policy question or is abjectly wrong about a subject, because she thinks ideologically. Her answers, outlook, and attitude are predetermined absolutely, because they are all derivations of an ideology that is utterly shock-proof. There is no experiment, fact-check, or body of evidence potent enough to disarm her, plainly because a person who thinks ideologically will not be allow themselves to be refuted.” What is it about AOC that makes her acolytes so eager and willing… Read more »
I mean, come on, this article is really dumb. There’s no need for her critics to go down the same path as her supporters with misrepresentation and lowest-common-denominator appeals to our base instincts. If one’s complaint is a lack of fact-checking or evidence for her views, then provide fact-checking and evidence — not this kind of garbage.
Are you claiming that AOC didn’t specifically mention ringworm, as she is quoted as saying? Because, if she did say it, it seems perfectly reasonable to point out that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.