By Talia Kaplan FOXBusiness
Langone co-founded Home Depot in 1978 and helped create what would be become the world’s largest home improvement retailer.
Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone told “Cavuto: Coast to Coast” on Tuesday that he believes Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden wants to “suppress” capitalism.
Langone, who wrote the book “I Love Capitalism!: An American Story” in 2018, made the comment while noting that he, Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank and Pat Farrah developed the Home Depot store, which first opened in1978.
He pointed out that he and the three others “started the company,” but stressed that “the success of this company is largely in the hands of the 480,000 people that work in those stores.”
“That’s what this company is, those people,” he continued, adding that most of the people that started working for Home Depot “came to us out of high school.”
“We had 3,000 young people that came to work for us out of high school in the parking lot pushing carts,” Langone said, adding that they “are multimillionaires today.”
“Ask those kids about capitalism, ask all the people in our stores now about how they like working for Home Depot and more importantly they are Home Depot, that’s capitalism,” he continued. “This is what Biden, I believe, wants to suppress.”
He acknowledged that Home Depot is not the only success story, citing Google, and Microsoft as other examples.
“These people have put their shoulder to the wheel and have built one of the greatest economies the world has ever known,” Langone said. “Why change it?”
He then acknowledged that “we could do things a lot better” and “we got to have more diversity” and “inclusiveness.”
“All these things are critical, but if you do those things, you’re going to succeed – it’s part of the process,” Langone continued.
Host Neil Cavuto asked Langone on Tuesday where he sees American going “regardless of who wins” the election.
In response, Langone pointed to Biden’s tax plan to repeal changes made to individual income tax rates for the wealthy (individuals with incomes over $400,000) under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which means the top rate would revert back to 39.6 percent, from 37 percent.
“There’s no way in the world Joe Biden can raise the kind of money that he wants to raise by stopping at a $400,000 income,” Langone said. “The big money in tax revenue is the middle-income people.”
“He’s lying to you if he tells you he can achieve these numbers and leave the middle-income people alone,” he continued. “That’s where the numbers are. It’s that simple.”
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He went on to say that he believes the U.S. is at “the cusp of a great recovery.”
He noted that in New York “we are not seeing anything like the pressure we saw back in April and May” because of the novel coronavirus.
Langone, who is also a philanthropist, said he believes that “once we get beyond this,” prosperity will follow.
“We’re going to get a vaccine, no doubt about it, we’re going to have a number of vaccines,” he said, adding an immunologist told him that the vaccine “could be as much as 90% effective.”
“If that’s the case, we stopped the virus in its tracks,” Langone continued.
He went on to say that “we got to figure some way out to get back from this cliff of all this money we dumped into the economy.”
“We got to do something about that, but I believe if we get out of this thing through the vaccine, through distancing, through masks, through washing your hands, if we get through this thing, I have no doubt we are heading into a period of prosperity in America that’s going to be very exciting, very positive and most importantly very beneficial for the middle-income people in America,” Langone said.
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“They are the people we have to help, they are the people that are the backbone of America, they are the people when you raise taxes they always get in the neck.”
