Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez socialist agenda concerns Alan Greenspan
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is worried about the socialist agenda of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“Beware of double-entry bookkeeping -- it’s only one side of an issue,” he told FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo on Thursday regarding Medicare for all and the Green New Deal. “The question is where is the funding coming from and what does it do to the inflation problem? And because inflation hasn’t taken hold nobody is looking meaningfully at the budget deficit, which is now beginning to rise fairly significantly.”
As far as income inequality sparking capitalists to adjust their views on the system, Greenspan said it’s a fundamental human nature issue, which is hard to fight.
“Remember the basic problem of inequality is a fact that people are born that way – we are all born differently,” he said. “And when you convert that problem into the marketplace normally you have a significant misdistribution of income and it’s only when we look at it and say, 'This is unfortunate for the stability of the system,' which I think it is, it’s very difficult to do all that much.”
Greenspan, who also co-authored the book “Capitalism in America: A History,” believes the U.S. economy is still “way ahead of everybody else.”
“[Capitalism] is a very good thing,” he said. “Look at the United States, with all of its problems, started back very early on in 1800, for example. Very low per-capita income, very small relative to Europe – we outpaced the rest of the world basically because it was a capitalist economy. Private enterprise was a crucial issue and individuals basically during the post-Civil War period – the American economy took off and outpaced everybody.”
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Greenspan also pointed out that socialism has failed historically — most notably in Venezuela, which was once one of the wealthiest, oil-rich economies.
“It’s very sad. They still have the largest oil reserves in the world. That used to be a major international economy – no longer,” he added.