Embrace socialism or let corporations fail — America needs to make a choice, NYU professor says

That’s NYU professor and popular podcaster Scott Galloway talking to MSNBC this week about the state of the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic.

He said the country needs to decide whether the way forward is capitalism or socialism, because as it stands right now, business are benefiting during the good times and then enjoying a safety net during the bad, much like what happened during the financial crisis.

“Let’s not have capitalism on the way up and then when we hit a crisis we have the worst type of socialism, we have cronyism,” Galloway said, pointing out that, going forward, companies using most of their bailout money for stock buybacks should be allowed to fail.

His thoughts echo those of billionaire Mark Cuban, who said last month that he’s “so tired of the rich profiting from every cataclysm” and that federal incentives should be shared with all workers.

“If we are going to bail out companies, we need to make sure all employees benefit from a turnaround, not just execs,” Cuban said. “This would be a step toward income equality.”

Galloway also took aim at companies like Amazon AMZN, +4.35% , Walmart WMT, +2.77% and Uber UBER, -1.38% as examples of how the U.S. economy is basically divided into three groups: shareholders, consumers and workers — the first two benefit, while the last struggles.

And many of these “essential” workers are getting overlooked during the current crisis, he said.

“Every night at 7:00 we’re leaning outside our balconies and applauding and honoring our health-care workers, and we should because they’re saving lives,” Galloway explained. “But we don’t go outside our windows and honor the people working in grocery stores or the transit workers, 41 of whom have died in New York state, making sure we have basic infrastructure.”