Whole Foods CEO John Mackey does not believe that socialism is the answer to the United States’ economy.
Mackey praised capitalism and criticized socialism during a virtual event with the American Enterprise Institute on Nov. 24.
Whole Foods CEO condemns socialism as ‘trickle-up poverty’ https://t.co/PrStQ5UiRm pic.twitter.com/youyBUL2hk
— New York Post (@nypost) November 30, 2020
Mackey called capitalism “the greatest thing that humanity’s ever created.”
“It needs to evolve,” Mackey added. “Otherwise the socialists are going to take over, that’s how I see it. And that’s the path of poverty.” (RELATED: Whole Foods CEO John Mackey: Microsoft Was ‘Better Off When Bill Gates’ Was In Charge)
Mackey said the young people of the United States have been given an “inaccurate” and “wrong” narrative about capitalism.
“They talk about trickle-down wealth, but socialism is trickle-up poverty,” Mackey said. “It just impoverishes everything.”
“We’ve told a bad narrative, and we’ve let the enemies of business and the enemies of capitalism put out a narrative about us that’s wrong, it’s inaccurate and it’s doing tremendous damage to the minds of young people,” Mackey said. “We have to counter that.”
Mackey went on to warn that our society and economy would decline if socialism was fully embraced in the United States.
“Socialism has been tried 42 times in the last hundred years and 42 failures,” Mackey said. “It doesn’t work.”
“They’re trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle, and if they stuff it back in the bottle, we will stagnate,” he added. “We’ll begin to regress.”