‘Woke Generation’ Is Threat to Economy, ‘Entitled’ Are Not Working and Living Off Handouts: Home Depot Founder

Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus speaks prior to a ribbon cutting ceremony at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, Georgia, on Nov. 19, 2005. Barry Williams/Getty Images

Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus warns about the “woke generation” pushing the climate change agenda and enforcing diversity being a danger to society, while many people living on handouts refuse to work even as a recession looms ahead.

“I certainly don’t want to see the woke generation coming up, especially the leaders. I’m watching Davos, what happened in Davos, and they’re recommending spending more money on climate control when we don’t have it,” Marcus said Thursday in an interview with Fox. “We’ve already overspent. And if anything, climate control has caused most of the problems we have today.”

“We need leaders who are basically thinking about the shareholders and their employees, and how well the shareholders are doing and their employees. And I think today it’s all about woke diversity, things that don’t hit the bottom line.”

Marcus also finds it difficult to understand how there can be more than 10 million job openings in the United States, but only six million people actively looking for a job with a potential recession ahead. After some meetings, Marcus found that it is now difficult to hire people because most of them do not want to work, especially the “office people.”

“They want to work three days a week. It’s incredible. How do you have a recession when you have people that don’t want jobs?” he asks.

Marcus called the “woke” generation as being “entitled” as they have been given handouts. If someone does not work, the government will pay them as much money as they did while they were employed. As a result, laziness develops and society becomes socialist, he pointed out.

Small-Business Woes

Marcus also highlighted the struggle faced by small-business owners in the current economy. He cited a recent survey which found that 60 percent of small businesses believed they will “not be here in the future” and that their establishments will shut down.

The Home Depot co-founder pointed out that 70 percent of the active workforce in the United States is employed by small businesses.

“Why are they not going to be able to make it? Number one, inflation. Number two, they can’t get people to work,” Marcus said. “Take a pizzeria shop: He can’t find anybody to work. He’s working 12, 14, 18 hours a day, and he may not be able to make it.”

“Then you throw in all these absurd rules that you have to follow, and every state has some dumber and dumber [regulations],” Home Depot’s co-founder said about “woke” labor laws. “New York, in fact, leads the country in dumb, but maybe not, maybe they’re second to California.”

A recent survey by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) found that small-business optimism remained below its 49-year average for the twelfth straight month in December.

Inflation was cited as the single most important problem by 32 percent of small-business owners. Labor costs were cited as a top business problem by 8 percent of respondents, while 23 percent saw labor quality as a major business issue.

Rise of Woke Capitalism

In an interview with NTD’s “Capitol Report” last year, Justin Danhof, executive vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, said that the issue of corporations catering to progressive “woke capitalism” is the result of the left pushing such agenda.

While the left decided to engage with business, the right “ignored business to our peril.” Just like when the left took over institutions of higher learning in the 1960s, so did it succeed in mobilizing large corporations to push a liberal agenda, he stated.

Danhof pointed to the board of the Fortune 500 companies where there has been a “dramatic shift” to the political left.

“The search agencies, for example, that the companies use, got super woke. So they’re placing people on boards for ideological reasons that have nothing to do with the performance of companies,” he said.