- While touting economic growth Friday, Biden said he will work with Congress to make capitalism work better.
- This comes after AOC told Yahoo Finance the capitalist system in the US is "not redeemable."
- Biden frequently cites his capitalist beliefs and the benefits the system offers to the working class.
President Joe Biden wants to improve capitalism in the US, but New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says the country may need a whole new system.
On Friday, Biden touted an "extraordinary" jobs recovery following the Bureau of Labor and Statistics release that found the US added 467,000 jobs in January, exceeding expectations. As he has done in the past, Biden noted the significance of capitalism during his remarks. He touted the role it plays in making prices lower for consumers, and stressed the need to promote competition in the country so capitalism can thrive.
"Look, I'm a capitalist," Biden said. "And capitalism without competition is not capitalism. It's exploitation. So I'm going to continue to do everything in my power to work with the Congress to make our capitalist system work better, provide more competition, and lower prices for American consumers."
He did not detail how exactly he will work with Congress, but as the wealth gap persists and lawmakers continue to push big corporations to pay their fair share in taxes, Biden has made clear reforms are needed. While he has not explicitly advocated for a wealth tax, as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed, he has pushed for a higher corporate tax rate in his economic agenda that remains stalled in Congress. But Ocasio-Cortez, who identifies as a Democratic socialist, believes the system is broken.
"To me, capitalism at its core, what we're talking about when we talk about that is the absolute pursuit of profit at all human, environmental, and social cost," Ocasio-Cortez told Yahoo Finance's Andy Serwer in an interview released on Thursday.
She added that as the system exists, a "very small group of actual capitalists" have the ability to control labor and markets, and she views it as "not a redeemable system for us to be able to participate in for the prosperity and peace for the vast majority of people."
Ocasio-Cortez pointed to alternative ways workers can have more power in the economy, like electing them to governing boards of companies, and she stressed the importance of unionized workplaces as a step toward establishing "a more just economy."
As a member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Ocasio-Cortez believes that the government should have power in ensuring workers have as much control as possible over their conditions. As written on DSA's website, capitalism should be replaced with "democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society." This differs from capitalism, in which the government does not strongly intervene.
Still, Biden remains committed to boosting capitalism, and he has frequently expressed support for creating union jobs and building the middle class through policies that seek to target the power of the wealthy and corporations, particularly by working with advisors to promote competition and lower prices for consumers. Back in July, he said during remarks that he "tired of trickle-down," referring to an economic belief that tax breaks and benefits for the wealthy will "trickle down" to the rest of society.
"I've never seen a time when we have the middle class growing that the wealthy didn't do very, very, very well," Biden said at the time. "So that's what we have to do, build it out and up, not just down."
And later that same month, he said that "capitalism is alive and very well," referring to job growth and higher wages.
"We're making serious progress to ensure that it works the way it's supposed to work for the good of the American people," he added.