Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez visited a restaurant that she used to work at in New York City on Monday on its final day in business, closing largely because of policies supported by the 28-year-old bartender-turned-politician.
Ocasio-Cortez’s former employer, The Coffee Shop in Union Square, has shut down after a 28-year run due to high rent and an ever-increasing minimum wage — a policy that Ocasio-Cortez strongly supports.
“The restaurant I used to work at is closing its doors,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. “I swung by today to say hi one last time, and kid around with friends like old times.”
“The rents are very high and now the minimum wage is going up and we have a huge number of employees,” The Coffee Shop co-owner and president Charles Milite said in a July interview with the New York Post. “The times have changed in our industry.”
The restaurant employed 150 workers who now are without a job, but that didn’t stop Ocasio-Cortez from making the event about herself.
“I’m a normal, working person who chose to run for office, because I believe we can have a better future,” Ocasio-Cortez added on Twitter. “You can do it too. We all can.”
Increasing the national minimum wage has been one of the issues that Ocasio-Cortez has been most vocal about, despite the fact that it does not work and it actually hurts the economy.
Michael Saltsman of the Employment Policies Institute told the Free Beacon that leftist politicians are to blame for businesses like The Coffee Shop closing their doors.
“Ocasio-Cortez’s desired ‘living wage’ of $15 an hour has been a living hell for many small business owners in New York, who’ve been unable to offset the cost through higher prices,” Saltsman said. “It’s fine to mourn the impending closure of your former employer—it’s better to understand the misguided minimum-wage mandates that contributed to that closure.”