The World’s Most Economically Illiterate Statement

Back in 2014, I shared two videos, one narrated by Prof. Don Boudreaux and the other narrated by Prof. Deirdre McCloskey, making the point that grinding poverty and material deprivation were the norm for most of human history. It wasn’t until capitalism emerged a few hundred years ago that we made the jump from agricultural poverty to industrial prosperity.

I know at least one person who didn’t watch those videos.

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley isn’t as well known as other members the “The Squad,” especially Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar (jointly featured in this bit of satire), but she deserves some sort of recognition for being totally clueless about economics and history. Indeed, she may even deserve some sort of prize for uttering the year’s most economically illiterate sentence.

“Poverty is not naturally occurring; it is a policy choice.” Rep. Ayanna Pressley

…

Unfortunately, we live in an era where politicians would like us to believe that the economic pie is fixed and that it’s the job of government to re-slice the pie with class-warfare tax policy and lots of redistribution.

But when they re-slice the pie, they also change the size of the pie. And not in a good way.

The World’s Most Economically Illiterate Statement