Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg has drawn criticism after comments he made in 2016 about farming, which he said required less “gray matter” than modern jobs, Fox News reports.
At Oxford University’s Saïd Business School in November, 2016, Bloomberg said that he could “teach anybody, even people in this room, to be a farmer. 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."
The former New York City mayor went on to say, "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. You have to have a different skill set, you have to have a lot more gray matter.”
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr tweeted on Sunday: “Farm tractors and combines pack far more tech than a Bloomberg Terminal. They are mobile data centers. America’s farmers are now experts in agronomy, tech, data analytics, & other advanced skills. Grateful for their work.”
Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume tweeted: “Bloomberg seems to have acquired his knowledge of farming by watching Hee-Haw.”
Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass added: “Bloomberg: mocking American #farmers is no way to unify the country. He might as well have called them #deplorable #rubes. Way to reveal yourself.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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