'For once, AOC is right': AOC gets more than she bargained for after complaining that residents are fleeing New York City

The New York Post delivered a reality check to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) this week after she complained about the sky-high cost of living in New York City.

At a virtual town hall on Monday, Ocasio-Cortez condemned the sweeping budget cuts that Mayor Eric Adams (D) says are necessary because the migrant crisis is draining city resources.

"Why is the only conversation in the room cuts and why is there no conversation about revenue raising?" Ocasio-Cortez complained. "The people who are moving out of the city are not by and large the wealthiest people — they're the working class that can't afford to live here anymore."

On Tuesday, the New York Post editorial board issued a response to Ocasio-Cortez.

"For once, AOC is right," the board acknowledged. "The thing is, it’s the policies that she and her progressive allies want more of that have made the city so expensive."

For starters, the city finds itself in this position because it has to feed and house tens of thousands of migrants, costing city taxpayers more than billions of dollars, the Post pointed out. Yet progressives — at least before the migrant crisis — are very pro-immigration and have been quick to condemn efforts to stymie mass migration.

Second, the Post said progressive housing policies are making housing unaffordable through rent controls, the elimination of tax breaks for developers, and other government interventions that hamstring landlords.

Third, the Post pointed to the "Green New Deal" climate laws that progressive lawmakers demand. Those policies, according to the Post, "are already sending power prices for New Yorkers skyward." Fourth, the city's progressive criminal justice reforms are not helping the Big Apple's hospitality score.

Finally, the city's wealthiest residents are leaving, the Post noted, pointing to the high-income earners and billionaires who have moved out of the city in recent years. It turns out that people who are successful at making money don't like being taxed up to their eyeballs.

"AOC and her fellow leftists simply don’t care what their ideas actually mean for the people whose interests they claim to represent," the editorial board wrote. "And if progressive ideology continues to rule New York, it’ll get ever more unaffordable — and the exodus will accelerate."

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