Whole Foods Founder and CEO John Mackey says American liberties are being “threatened” as “socialists are taking over” the United States.
These comments were made by Mackey on Thursday, during Reason Magazine’s podcast interview. Mackey does not hesitate to call out socialist policies. He has said previously that his viewpoint on economics is “conscious capitalism.”
Mackey stated:
“My concern is that I feel like socialists are taking over … They’re marching through the institutions. They’re taking over education. It looks like they’ve taken over a lot of the corporations. It looks like they’ve taken over the military. And it’s just continuing.”
Of course, as many of us know, socialists want big government; they want the government to control every aspect of our life, government-run healthcare, “community policing,” which is another word for abolishing the police, control what is taught in schools through the teachers union, abolish capitalism, and raise taxes to fund all their fantasy policies, including raising corporate taxes, which will only be passed on to the consumer.
Some of the politicians who tout these socialist policies try and paint it as “helping the working class,” and at times, they include the middle class in their messaging, but that is simply not true. Socialism has been tried, and it’s failed time and time again. Socialism has made more people poorer than capitalism, and has also helped to lift more people from poverty. These far-left politicians, and their followers, want socialism to bring about communism. This was attempted during Soviet Union’s days, when communists fought capitalism and pushed for communism. This failed.
This has never worked, it won’t work and it will never succeed, however Mackey is correct. There seems to be a far-left movement in the United States, and if we don’t pay attention, they will do their best to get their way.
Mackey continued:
“You know, I’m a capitalist at heart, and I believe in liberty and capitalism. These are my two core values. And I feel like, you know, with the way freedom of speech is today, the movement on gun control, a lot of the liberties that I’ve taken for granted most of my life, I think, are under threat.”
He said, “
“From an investor’s perspective, the purpose of the business is to maximize profits. But that’s not the purpose for other stakeholders—for customers, employees, suppliers, and the community,” he said in a 2005 debate with Nobel laureate Milton Freidman and former Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers, “Each of those groups will define the purpose of the business in terms of its own needs and desires, and each perspective is valid and legitimate.”
Repeatedly, Mack has called out the academic community for promoting socialist ideas, which he calls “generally hostile to business.” He has also stated time again that capitalism is the “greatest thing humanity has ever done.”