Now that former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proven himself a 2020 contender, unflattering videos and reports pertaining to his character are coming out of the woodwork. The latest in this string of oppo-dumps occurred over the weekend in a video featuring Bloomberg implying that farmers and factory workers are stupid.
In 2016, Bloomberg delivered remarks at the Distinguished Speakers Series at the University of Oxford Saïd Business School in which he expressed doubt that rural America and coastal elites could ever be united due to the former’s inability to keep up in the information economy.
“The agrarian society lasted 3,000 years and we could teach processes. I could teach anybody, even people in this room, no offense intended, to be a farmer,” Bloomberg said, as reported by Fox News. “It’s a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn. You could learn that. Then we had 300 years of the industrial society. You put the piece of metal on the lathe, you turn the crank in the direction of the arrow and you can have a job. And we created a lot of jobs. At one point, 98 percent of the world worked in agriculture, now it’s 2 percent in the United States.”
Bloomberg went on to say that these people could set up “a guillotine someday” if they did not find dignity in the job they are given or fail to grasp the governing factors in the information economy.
“Now comes the information economy and the information economy is fundamentally different because it’s built around replacing people with technology and the skill sets that you have to learn are how to think and analyze, and that is a whole degree level different,” he continued. “You have to have a different skill set, you have to have a lot more gray matter. It’s not clear the teachers can teach or the students can learn, and so the challenge of society of finding jobs for these people, who we can take care of giving them a roof over their head and a meal in their stomach and a cell phone and a car and that sort of thing. But the thing that is the most important, that will stop them from setting up a guillotine someday, is the dignity of a job”
Bloomberg on why farmers can’t work in information technology
MB: “I can teach anyone how to be a farmer 1 dig a hole 2 put a seed in 3 put dirt on top 4 add water 5 up comes the corn”
The skill 4information technology is completely different you need more grey matter#farmers pic.twitter.com/HM13tA6goz
— Pete (@NYBackpacker) February 15, 2020
The video follows another Bloomberg recording that has sparked criticism, particularly from the Left. In an, audio recording from 2015, Bloomberg discusses racial profiling as it relates to the New York City stop-and-frisk policy he helped implement.
“95% of your murders – murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops,” Bloomberg said in the audio. “They are male, minorities, 16-25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city and that’s where the real crime is. You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of the people that are getting killed. You want to spend the money on a lot of cops in the streets. Put those cops where the crime is, which means in minority neighborhoods.”
Another report broke over the weekend in which one of the billionaire’s former female employees alleged he once told her to terminate her pregnancy.
