Today, Andy joined Cheddar to discuss the humanitarian crisis of the Coronavirus and how it may affect the economy. Andy made the point that while the virus is a threat to the economy, if it spreads and becomes a worldwide pandemic, the focus will be on controlling the outbreak, not the economy.
Next, host Tim Stenovec asked Andy about Bernie Sanders becoming the front runner of the Democratic primary. “I think he [Sanders] has kind of hurt the Democratic Party in two ways. One is, if he’s the nominee, there are a lot of moderate democrats, democrats in business- who can’t vote for him… [Two] If he’s not the nominee, I don’t see those Bernie supporters, the Bernie troops, voting for Mike Bloomberg,” suggested Andy.
Stenovec then asked Andy if Trump’s recent aid to American farmers can be categorized as a socialistic move. “The difference between capitalism and socialism isn’t whether the government helps groups that are underprivileged or groups that are in trouble- we expect the government to do that. The difference is whether you have an economy that’s focused on people trying to meet the needs of other people, in other words ‘the consumers,’” said Andy. He went on to note that we have a constitution that says the government was created to protect the general welfare, and that is exactly what President Trump did with aid to farmers while still maintaining a very capitalistic economy.
In closing, Andy was asked about the extreme U.S. deficit. Andy argued that we really needed to rebuild the military and President Trump made that a priority. Next Andy said that wealth redistribution has been the essential growth of the government for the past fifty years and in order to reduce government spending meaningfully, we must reduce non-discretionary spending. Andy noted that this doesn’t mean benefits should go away but rather be run more efficiently, which will take congress coming together to find a solution. “If we’re not willing to talk about them [wealth redistribution programs reform] then this problem is going to continue and the deficit will continue to be high,” concluded Andy.
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