Home Depot cofounder Bernie Marcus sat down with the Financial Times and
basically called modern American workers lazy, fat and stupid,
lovely guy, real lovely.
Now he says this in the context of the interview, quote,
I'm worried about capitalism.
Same, same, but
unfortunately we're worried about capitalism from different points of view.
For Marcus, he says, thanks to socialism, nobody works.
Nobody gives a damn.
Just give it to me.
Send me money.
I don't want to work, I'm too lazy.
I'm too fat.
I'm too stupid.
He says of the current workforce here in the United States.
Now it is interesting that he blames it on socialism,
which doesn't really exist here in the United States.
In fact our system which enables corporate greed is just as robust as ever.
So I'm unclear as to what he's referring to when he mentions socialism but
Cenk maybe maybe you can enlighten us on that.
>> Yeah man, these people associated with
starting Home Depot questionable dudes, man.
>> He's a bad dude, ran around with a bunch of bad boys.
>> Yeah and a lot of them, not all of them,
but a lot of them are are mega republicans, he's one of them.
This guy's the bizarro Bernie, he hates the workers.
They've made an insane amount of money.
I believe that they're worth $321 billion, that's the market valuation of Home Depot.
What on God's Green Earth are you crying about?
Are the workers now demanding to have some rights.
It's not like it cost you anything brother, you've got billions stacked on
top of billion stacked on top of billions- >> He's like 93-years-old, you're 93.
>> Yeah.
>> You know what I'd be worrying about at 93 nothing, nothing.
I'd be thinking about, what can I do to maximize the last few years of my life?
Let's just keep it real.
Really, you don't even work at Home Depot bro?
What are you doing?
Step aside, move it along- >> At 93,
I'd be worried about one thing cardiac arrest.
>> Well, yes, I'd be worried about when it's gonna be my time for sure.
But that worry would make me reconsider whether insulting
people who aren't working hard enough at Home Depot makes sense.
Maybe there's other things I should spend my mental energy on,
that's all I'm saying.
Anyway, but I wanna give you some more of his comments because he says, quote.
Capitalism is the basis of Home Depot and
millions of people have earned this success and had success.
I'm talking manufacturers, vendors and distributors and people that work for
us who have been able to enrich themselves by the journey of Home Depot.
That's the success.
And I wanna look into that a little further.
How do the workers at Home Depot really feel?
I'm sure he's thinking about executives, both at Home Depot and
the manufacturing companies that they do business with.
But if you actually look at how workers feel at Home Depot.
It's just fascinating stuff.
So there's a comparison on Indeed between Costco employees and Home Depot employees.
Let's go to the second.
There we go. So salary satisfaction,
83% of workers at Costco Wholesale are satisfied with what
they're getting paid, only 47% say the same at Home Depot.
What about CEO approval?
Well, 88% of workers over at Costco are are happy with the CEO,
78% say they're happy with Home Depot's CEO.
Seems there might be some issues over at Home Depot in terms of their management
style pay, stuff like that.
>> Yeah, so I think perspectives is so critical here and
it's never really discussed.
So Anna you nailed it, Bernie Marcus is looking at this from the perspective of
executives and other company owners, etc.
And he's not wrong about that he made tons of money.
Other executives at Home Depot and
other companies make tons of money from Home Depot.
That is true and that's one of the upsides of capitalism.
But when he says millions, wait a minute, there are millions of executives.
There are millions of employees but those are the guys you just crapped on.
So you're saying Home Depot success should be all be about rewarding executives and
shareholders and property owners and the upper class.
But we should not share that success with millions over the course
of all these decades of employees at all of those companies.
They're the bums, they're lazy, they're fat,
I don't wanna pay them, I don't want them to have the rights that they should have.
So then, who does capitalism work for?
In a sense, Bernie Marcus is right, it works for him.
It works for everyone, he knows.
That's why he's, I don't get it, man, capitalism is awesome.
Everyone I know thinks it's awesome, but it doesn't work for
the great majority of us.
And now the thing is, it can,
and that's why that Costco example is such an important one.
Costco pays its workers much more and never insults them like this.
It gives them much better working conditions and
that's why you're seeing the satisfaction that you are out of the Costco employees,
and by the way customers.
And they've also not increased prices during inflation,
it's another story that we did.
This is not a random ad for Costco, we're just telling you about two
really interesting examples of how capitalism can and does work.
If you take it from the perspective of everyone as Costco does,
including the workers and the customers.
Or if you look at it from how most right wingers look at it, the Home Depot owners,
and you only look at the owner class, then you think, yeah, this is a great system.
The only problem is the bum workers and 90% of Americans.
>> So when it comes to Costco its success and its treatment of workers.
I just wanna be clear about something, because what that requires is
executives who are willing to go against the way the system is set up, right?
Because look, I I try to think of people, especially in the business world, not as
good or bad, but just individuals who are motivated by incentives or disincentives.
In the way that our system is structured, the shareholders have all the power.
So the fact that executives at Costco during their earnings call
told agents from Citibank that no,
we're not gonna pass off inflationary cost to our customers.
We think that's a bad idea, we're not gonna do this to maximize profits for
the shareholders.
We're gonna go ahead and
keep doing what we're doing cuz it's a model that's worked for us.
That takes principle, that takes a strong person or
a strong group of people and it goes against all of the incentives
that executives have in today's system really.
So I don't know.
I don't know if there's a way to maybe change the fiduciary responsibility,
so it actually looks out for the workers as opposed to the shareholders.
I feel like it's impossible to ever see a system like that, but
that's what we need, right?
>> No, it's definitely not impossible, it's actually very possible and
other countries have it and that's why they perform so
much better in almost every ranking then America.
The Northern European countries that are considered more socialist, like Finland,
Norway, Belgium etc., including the most important factor, the happiness factor.
Their citizens are way, way happier cuz they have a government that represents
them and part of the way that they do that is they write different laws around how
corporations work that their only goal is not to just maximize profit.
Of course they have to have profit otherwise they'd be out of business,
but that they have other responsibilities to stakeholders like employees and
their community and their customers.
So it's definitely possible, we're just choosing not to do it.
And then finally, there is one thing here,
look I've heard from small business owners too and not just the nearly bizarro,
evil Bernie from Home Depot, that workers are demanding more these days.
And that's true and and it's partly a supply and demand issue and now that
we're near at full employment, I mean, it's ironic what Bernie Marcus is saying.
Cuz he's saying they're too lazy when we're at record employment,
almost everyone is employed, that would be the opposite of being lazy.
But what he's actually referring to and that I have heard from different business
owners are, hey workers are demanding more and more and we're not used to this.
>> Well, get used to it.
>> To which I would say, exactly, to which I would say get used to it, it's okay.
They're supposed to have higher wages,
they're supposed to have better working conditions and especially if you're at
Home Depot where you're making gigantic profits that shouldn't bother you 1%.
That means you're just sharing a tiny bit more of your record profits with your
employees.
That's exactly how it's supposed to be.
>> And you get what you give, you want respect,
you want your workers to respect you, you want your workers to
actually appreciate the company and take pride in it.
You gotta show them respect.
If they feel disrespected, they're not gonna respect you.
That's the way it works.