AOC, in spite of Republican rhetoric to the contrary, is a degreed economist and a damn smart one at that. Her training is mostly orthodox (being difficult to find economics courses not steeped in pre-WWII gold standard thinking) but she leans heavily to MMT/chartalism.
She understands that tax "revenue" is an oxymoron intended to dupe regular morons and that spending is not revenue restrained. The biggest lie RayGun told was not about how the wealthy would invest in the economy if they only didn't have such a dibilitating tax burden, but that the federal government was dependent upon taxation to enable its spending.
This played on a fundamental fallacy that the monopoly issuer of a sovereign fiat currency functioned like a household that must "get" money before it can spend or become mired in debt. This was largely enabled because the people viewed their government as inept, or the enemy, and inferior to private sector capital at managing the economy because of Carter's fumbling during the oil embargo and Volker's total inability to understand government finance while he was in charge of it.
AOC has to answer to her constituents and they are mostly econ illiterate, which means she has to form her opposition to the wealthy status quo interests in ways those constituents can understand and get behind. She knows that taxing the rich is not the total panacea for our economic troubles and that it doesn't actually add any ability to spend for the public purpose, however one might define that.
However, she is playing a brilliant game of chicken with the oligarchs by "threatening" to remove a goodly share of their wealth if they continue to hoard it and do deliberate damage to the working middle class with their unfettered access to our government's leadership. Spending on the public purpose is not directly threatening to the oligarchs except by narrowing the wealth gap, but removing their wealth in large chunks is.
She represents a move back to the center from the fringe right that has dominated American politics for decades. She only appears radically left in contrast to that. The world is moving away from free market capitalism due to its failure to deliver as promised in the RayGun/Thatcher era. I expect her to have a long and successful career in her public service and wouldn't be surprised to see her in the top office very shortly.
