I checked twitter for potential news stories and apparently AOC is selling a "tax the rich" hoodie for the price of a AAA video game. I don't buy clothes that often (and when I do it's usually when they're marked down because I can't afford them full-price), and it makes sense when you think about what the actual cost of the labor is for ten seconds, but seeing that a hoodie when reasonably-priced (to account for the workers' costs of living) is too fucking expensive it makes me feel even poorer (I've never made more than $16k/year in my entire life, because grad school - usually 2/3 of that would go to my rent).

A lot of the succdem AOC stans on twitter are focusing on how selling merch like this to fundraise highlights the contradictions - many workers making close to a poverty income feel as though they literally can't afford to buy a shirt that doesn't involve underpaid sweatshop labor or which doesn't fall apart after a year - and how it makes the chuds "mad", but I feel like if AOC is trying to make it look like she's raising funds from working-class supporters and not petty-bourgie ones she is doing a very shitty job of that from a national perspective. $60 might be less than a day's pay for a lot of minimum-wage NYC workers in her constituency, but that's close to a week's income in some of the poorest parts of the US.

I fucking know better and still briefly felt almost viscerally angry at AOC for making me feel poor, triggered enough to write this post at least, because the message so many unconscious working and poor lumpen not already on board with socialism - including broke-ass rural Fox News viewers who are gonna hear about this fundraiser through the lens of Tucker Carlson or whichever ghouls they have shitting on the left on that channel nowadays, who have never not had to deal with the harsh reality of only ever getting paid enough to afford shitty Walmart clothes stained with the blood of Bangladeshi workers, with that kind of shit constantly weighing on their conscience - are gonna take away isn't that the workers who made these clothes deserve a living income (and so do you!), but are gonna view this through the lens of AOC being an out-of-touch coastal PMC nonverbally saying, "haha fuck you, you're too poor to support the working class, socialism isn't for you" with little understanding of the absurd cost-of-living differences across geography. The fact that AOC's volunteers get the shirt for free only matters for workers who actually live in AOC's district.

If you're gonna try to sell merch to fundraise for what's ostensible a working-class political campaign in the US (setting aside the obvious problem with AOC, that she's a Democrat with the expected puppet-strings attached), potentially pricing out a good half of the US working class isn't exactly a good look. Most workers in this country are still very far from being politically motivated enough to pay more than a small token amount in dues to DSA or whichever actual Marxist org they're a part of, and very few are even that involved. Selling incredibly cheaply-made pins with the same "tax the rich" slogan, even if they were priced according to the living costs of the workers who produced them at every stage, would have a much lower barrier to entry. Selling subscriptions to your org's newspaper/publication or selling individual copies of your org's paper for a couple bucks a piece has a much lower barrier to entry.

One last thought: one of the responses on twitter was something to the effect of "how about we tax the rich and lower taxes to the lower/middle classes". Tweak this to "tax the rich and the corporations, lower working-class taxes" and you already have a much better demand than just "tax the rich". Progressive succdems and libs who even come close to suggesting that workers should pay more in taxes when they're not getting their money's worth (because of neoliberalism and the military budget), in a country where people of all incomes and classes fucking hate paying taxes (except altruistic urban PMCs who can afford to take the hit) is shooting yourself in the foot. When so many workers in this country are already paying at least half their gross income to their fucking landlord and are still making less than even $15/hour, a tax hike on the working class is a poison pill.