A friend of mine was hyping Alexandria Occasio-Cortez, and claiming that "By Nordic standards, her policies are center-left. In the US, she is treated as radical left". I pointed out that she was for open borders, and was told that I couldn't cherry pick. So I did an analysis of her avowed platform on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Congress.
The issues seem to be sorted by order of priority:
1) "Medicare for all"
Sure, this is not extreme in a global perspective. This is also what left wingers have in mind when they go on about how the Democrats would be centre-right in Europe. However, much more is to follow.
2) "Housing as a human right"
Some countries have enshrined it as a human right. But her specifics are more troubling.
Fewer than half of OECD countries have rent control, as she wants. And rent control is an awful idea. She also wants to restrict landlords' ability to discriminate among tenants. This will make rental housing harder to get. And in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, you are allowed to discriminate based on source of income - which she is against.
Sweden has quite strong rent control, but this is by no means uniform across Scandinavia. Norway is laxer, Denmark even more so and Finland has basically none.
She demands more social housing, but that is not working out well in Scandinavia. You can wait 20 years for an apartment in Stockholm. You can wait years in Norway and Denmark. Tellingly, Sweden has the strictest rent control of the 3.
3) "A peace economy"
Given that the whole of NATO free rides on the US, if the US reduces defense spending, this is going to be very bad for the West.
It is notable that the Ukraine war has resulted in Europe giving lip service to the idea of increasing spending. So AOC is definitely radical on this. Also, note that Trump gets criticised for expressing similar ideas on non-intervention.
The US spent 3.22% of its GDP on defense in 2025. Norway spent 3.35%, Denmark 3.22% and Sweden 2.51%. So even by Scandinavian standards AOC is radical.
4) "Justice for Workers & Small Businesses"
In 2023/2024, 15% of the OECD workforce was in a trade union. In the US it's 11.1%. So they are not that far off. Note that like rent control, unions are generally considered bad by economists. Among other things, they raise unemployment.
She wants the federal government to not do business with non unionised companies. Scandinavian countries do not seem to have such laws. Note that this will stop the government doing business with small companies, which will hurt them.
She wants there to be more strikes. Strikes are very damaging to the economy.
She wants a federal jobs guarantee. Scandinavian countries do not have this, and this is another terrible idea. Making jobs for the sake of making jobs will waste a lot of money, and the jobs will not be productive.
She wants the Taft-Hartley Act act repealed. The Taft-Hartley Act, among other things, outlawed closed shops (companies are not allowed to hire non-union workers). Note that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that closed shop practices violate Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights (Freedom of Association).
5) "Real public safety"
She doesn't want criminals in jail and claims expanding the social safety net is the "root cause" of crime. This is provably false. A Finnish experimental study showed that paying poor people did not reduce their propensity for crime. A 2014 Swedish quasi-experimental study also found that "There were no associations between childhood family income and subsequent violent criminality and substance misuse once we had adjusted for unobserved familial risk factors." It is telling that in the US, the richest blacks commit more crime than the poorest whites.
Note that Sweden has had a crime epidemic in recent years and this is spilling over into Denmark and Norway. The Swedish welfare state is extremely generous, so AOC's claims are just preposterous.
6) "Honor in Immigration"
Basically she is in favor of open borders, plus giving illegal immigrants more welfare. This is very radical. As mentioned, this is radical even in Scandinavia. Sweden and Denmark are tightening up immigration and are seeing historic low migration.
There're 6 more items, but the seventh item is about Puerto Rico so I think I've covered the most important parts of her platform; maybe the LGBTQIA+ bit is more important, but we can already see the clear trend here.
So on 5/6 items, AOC is very radical, and I would say she is radical even by Scandinavian standards.
