Socialist New York congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is well known for her economic illiteracy, and in general, gets smacked down a lot for her continuously stupid statements.

Her claims leave people who actually understand economics with expressions like these:

Here, Ocasio-Cortez bristled at the suggestion that Venezuela was the logical end-result of socialism and howled indignation that any of her ideas would lead to that.

Touchy, touchy, touchy. And she's not stopping.

One of the people who really does understand economics, an economic heavyweight in fact, Johns Hopkins University Professor of Economics, Steve Hanke, has raised an excellent Twitter observation about the root of the actual problem, and it's not exactly economic:

.@Ocasio2018 is left stumbling in her socialist incompetence. When asked how to pay for a left-leaning estimated $40 trillion price tag for her policies, she babbles nonsense. It shows that she has as much real-world knowledge as former bus driver & current Venezuelan Pres Maduro pic.twitter.com/dyd9Y0252h

— Prof. Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) December 7, 2018

Bartender, meet bus driver. And the results are clearly the same.

Maybe it goes unremarked, but ought not to, that socialist ideas are held by stupid people, and socialism is synonymous with stupid. Maduro is famously stupid, and Ocasio-Cortez, based on her intemperate remarks, comes off at least as dumb.

Those stupid people, though, sometimes take power through socialism, not as people who live under it, but as people who live above it, people who rule all of us through socialism.

Stalin was known for the stupidity (albeit cunning) of his lieutenants, too.

Ocasio-Cortez an ex-bartender, Maduro an ex-bus driver, both convinced they are entitled to the power to make every decision for us, all for our own good.

Maybe it's time to start getting it into the culture out there that socialism is synonymous with stupidity. Let's see how the Millennials react to that one.