As persistent inflation and squeezed household budgets leave millions of Americans feeling financially stretched, democratic socialist leaders are pitching rent controls and greater government involvement in the economy as an equalizer.

Patrice Onwuka, vice president for economic policy at Independent Women, is pushing back after her defense of capitalism and the American dream drew criticism online, warning Americans not to be swayed by what she calls the socialist “pipe dream.”

On Aug. 26, Onwuka wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post criticizing the socialist movement for challenging “the very ethos of what drew [her family] here.” Her family immigrated legally from Montserrat in the Caribbean more than 40 years ago, arriving in Boston with just suitcases and living in a drug-ridden neighborhood before building wealth through ownership of a multifamily “fixer-upper” home.

Online commenters dismissed her defense of capitalism as “billionaire propaganda … so tone-deaf”; “Everything you described happened under today’s capitalist system”; “Capitalism already destroyed the American dream”; and “You’re talking about 30 years ago … it’s not like this anymore, who are you kidding?”

“Those people who called my work ‘billionaire propaganda,’ well, I’m not a billionaire, so that’s not what I’m talking about. And if they actually read beyond just the headline, which I doubt most did, then they would actually realize I started with my family’s story of coming to this country with just a few suitcases of clothes and living in the ghetto in the 1980s,” she told Fox News Digital.

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“Nothing was handed to us, and that’s what my parents taught us, like so many people’s families, instilled values about personal responsibility, about putting money aside, saving for what you want to build towards, self-denial, really working towards a goal and achieving it, and recognizing that opportunity does get dressed up as hard work,” Onwuka said. “But, when you’re willing to put the time and effort in, there is so much that you can do and so much you can achieve, frankly, that you can’t achieve in other countries.”

Onwuka said Americans feeling squeezed by inflation and household expenses should be wary of political promises that government intervention will deliver greater economic equality.

“Don’t be fooled. They are going to sell you a pipe dream and play off emotions of how people are feeling about their financial positions,” Onwuka said. “I get it, folks, when you hear the Census data come out that we had record-low poverty in 2025, record-high median incomes, which is really great news, but then you look at your own family budgets and feel like you don’t have that extra cushion because of high gas prices and inflation not coming down to where it was prior to the pandemic — don’t latch on to a new shiny object saying, ‘Oh, I can make things better and everything will be equal.'”

“In their eyes, equal looks like everyone living like Jeff Bezos. Equal looks like everybody living like Elon Musk. But we all understand that there’s certainly not enough money for the government to confiscate to make everyone a billionaire on day one,” she continued.

“What equal ends up looking like is what it’s looked like in other countries where this failed democratic socialist experiment has failed. Equal looks like bread lines. Equal looks like store shelves where you have maybe one or two items, not the plethora and variety that we have in our store shelves at very low cost. Equal looks like inflation in the thousands of percent rather than in the 3 to 5% range that we have right now.”

Onwuka specifically called out the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) platform’s support for universal rent control and tighter regulation of investment properties. In New York City, DSA-backed Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on freezing rents for rent-stabilized tenants, and the city’s Rent Guidelines Board later approved zero-percent increases for one- and two-year leases for rent-stabilized units.

“When you look historically at what has happened when rent control is implemented, well, the cost for providing that home — the mortgage payments, the maintenance fees, fixing pipes, fixing issues that come up — those costs continue to rise. The rent is capped, and so the amount that a landlord has to be able to keep that property in a very livable, comfortable space for their tenants, that money diminishes until it becomes nothing,” Onwuka explained.

“And when it goes into the negative, then there is absolutely no reason for a landlord to continue to rent their property out. And so what you tend to have is you have a lot of vacant properties sitting unused. Because it’s too expensive to fix them up and to keep a tenant in there since the rent that they can charge is artificially capped,” she continued. “That is dangerous.”

She further argued that rent controls can lead to property dilapidation, which she said could give the state a pretext to seize private property.

The Democratic Socialists of America did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

An August analysis from the libertarian Cato Institute estimated that the DSA platform would cost between $71 trillion and $212 trillion in new federal spending between 2027 and 2036, equivalent to 18% to 53% of U.S. GDP. The analysis also estimated that confiscating 100% of the total net worth of America’s 400 richest individuals — $6.6 trillion — would cover only 3% to 9% of the plan’s estimated 10-year cost.

“You start to see why their solutions actually do not work, but turn us into pretty much indentured servants to the federal government or the state government,” Onwuka said.

“Government plays a role in terms of reducing the barriers that people have and the hurdles that people have to pursue opportunities,” she added. “Whether you want to be a nurse or you want to be a firefighter, or you want to have your own small business, or you want to be a YouTube sensation — the government’s role is not to tell you where to go. Government’s role isn’t even to make it harder for you to get into any of those occupations.”

“The government should be looking for ways to ensure that the barriers are lowered so that you can compete, that you can pursue the education you want and that you go as far as you desire to go … the Democratic Socialists of America, they don’t have that to offer. They want to tell you what to do, what to become and limit your opportunities. And I don’t want that for you, for me or for my children, or anyone’s children.”

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