...Billionaire former Republicanmayor and nanny of New York, Dem candidate for president in 2020. Wants to rid the country of assault weapons, other kinds of guns, and 32-ounce soft drinks...
, who is under fire after a string of old sexist and racially insensitive remarks resurfaced on social media last week, made the belittling comments at a 2016 Oxford University forum in England. During the forum, the former mayor asserted that a major obstacle to uniting America’s heartland with the coasts was the inability of blue-collar workers to transition into the information economy.
I never knew much about this fellow, but the more I learn the less I actually want to know.
“I could teach anybody, even people in this room, no offense intended, to be a farmer,” Bloomberg said. “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,” he continued. “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.”
Bloomberg proceeded to argue that with the advancement of the information economy, individuals who would have prospered in the old industrial and farming jobs are now at a disadvantage because they lack adequate education and intellect.
“Now comes the information economy and [it] 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 said. “You have to have a different skill set, you have to have a lot more gray matter.”
Bloomberg added that it was unclear if the skills or “gray matter” required for such high-skilled jobs could be easily taught in schools, so the “challenge of society” was figuring out how to provide for those locked out of the information economy.
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