Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone warns that the U.S. economy and education system are in “serious trouble.”
"We are in trouble — we are in serious trouble," the CEO of the venture capital fund Invemed Associates told CNBC.
“71% of our federal budget are entitlements. Interest rates are not only historically but unrealistically low,” he said.
“Our educational system, I want to ask — I want to challenge the president. Show us where we were when you started eight years ago and show us where we are today. It's getting worse in public schools. It's not getting better,” he said.
“These poor kids — when we take away that step, which gives the kids the shot at participating in a thriving, dynamic society, when we take that away, what's left?”
Langone also suggested that students should learn a valuable trade instead of taking part in a two-year higher education program, which more often than not is funded through evening and weekend jobs.
“Get a job and learn a trade,” he said. “Look what happens to the kids. They're working like hell, holding down a job at night, going to school during the day. They have the right motive. They have the intention. They want to participate in this great thing called America and they should, but we're not giving these kids a shot.”
But not all respected financial voices are as pessimistic.
Investment icon Warren Buffett has bemoaned the "negative drumbeat" on the U.S. economy from presidential candidates in his annual Berkshire Hathaway Inc. shareholder letter earlier this year, saying they are misleading Americans into believing their children will be worse off than they are, Reuters reported.
"It's an election year, and candidates can't stop speaking about our country's problems (which, of course, only they can solve)," Buffett wrote, italicizing "they" for emphasis.
As a result of their dour outlook on the U.S. economy, many Americans now believe that their children will not live as prosperously as they themselves do, the 85-year-old Buffett said.
"That view is dead wrong: The babies being born in America today are the luckiest crop in history," Buffett said.
(Newsmax wire services contributed to this report).
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