Bridgewater Associates CEO Ray Dalio at the Web Summit 2018 in Lisbon, Portugal

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt argued that severe wealth inequality was not only bad for the poor, but also, for the rich. FDR repeatedly told Wall Street that a country with a strong safety net was beneficial for them — as a stable country would be less likely to turn to political extremes like far-right fascism and far-left communism.

Many years later, inequality remains a major problem in the United States. And one of the people who is sounding the alarm is hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio.

During an interview with Financial Times, Dalio cited "gaps in wealth" as a major cause of political extremism — which is an argument that FDR was making 90 years ago.

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Dalio, founder of the firm Bridgewater Associates, told Financial Times, "I think that what is happening now politically and socially is analogous to what happened around the world in the 1930-40 period. Classically, increased wealth and value gaps lead to increased populism of the right and populism of the left and irreconcilable differences between them that can't be resolved through the democratic process."

Dalio added, "So democracies weaken and more autocratic leadership increases as a large percentage of the population wants government leaders to get control of the system to make things work well for them."

During that interview, Dalio also addressed another financial problem: the United States' ever-growing federal deficit.

Dalio told Financial Times, "The great excesses that are now projected as a result of the new budget will likely cause a debt-induced heart attack in the relatively near future. I'd say three years, give or take a year or two."

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