Millennials may love socialism… but the founder of Home Depot is challenging them to put their money where their mouth is.
“I’ll put you in my plane and I’ll fly you down to Venezuela, and let’s see how good socialism is doing down there,” said Ken Langone, the billionaire investor who founded Home Depot, during an interview with Yahoo Finance.
As recently as a few years ago, Venezuela was cited by many prominent American liberals as evidence of a successful socialist state.
But following a crash in oil prices, the Venezuelan economy has been in freefall–with hyper-inflation, economic contraction, and widespread starvation in what used to be Latin America’s richest country.
Langone explained that many millennials turned to socialism after the 2008 market crash left lasting impressions.
“They were 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 years old,” he explained. “So capitalism did not present itself very well.”
“But that wasn’t capitalism,” he added. “That was a system that’s gone amok.”
