The CEO of Whole Foods is no fan of socialism. John Mackey suggests that socialism is a failed system and it “impoverishes everything,” further claiming that it really means “trickle up poverty.”
Mackey participated in a conversation set up by the American Enterprise Institute and made several notable quotes that are making rounds on social media. A critical quote of his starts out like:
“We have to recognize that some of the progressive insights are important and they shouldn’t go away, but we can’t throw out capitalism and replace it with socialism, that will be a disaster… Socialism has been tried 42 times in the last 100 years, and 42 failures, it doesn’t work, it’s the wrong way. We have to keep capitalism, I would argue, we need conscious capitalism.”
The CEO claims that corporations utilizing capitalism are misunderstood, further stating the following:
“Until we get this corrected, capitalism is always going to be disdained and criticized and attacked… It’ll be attacked for its motivations, because its motivations are seen as somehow impure. Yes, of course, business has to make money. If a business doesn’t make money, it will fail, but that doesn’t mean that its purpose is to make money.”
Mackey backed up his words by reminding people that Whole Foods has created 100,000 jobs and businesses should be thought of in regards to the value it brings. By that he means job creation and residual effects that come into play, allowing many to prosper, such as other trades that go on with suppliers and businesses.
He made more comments on his disregard for socialism, referring to it as “trickle up poverty” as reported:
“It needs to evolve, otherwise the socialists are going to take over — that’s how I see it, and that’s the path of poverty… They talk about trickle down wealth, but socialism is trickle up poverty. It just impoverishes everything, that’s my fear, that the Marxists and socialists, the academic community is generally hostile to business. It always has been. This is not new.”
Mackey also dives into college educations and several thoughts on who should be teaching, and perhaps who shouldn’t be. His 54 minute interview video can be seen below.