On March 18, 2015, Julia La Roche writes on Business Insider:
Legendary hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones II gave a dire warning about the growing gap between the rich and the poor in the US during a sold out TED Talk in Canada this week.
“Now here’s a macro forecast that’s easy to make and that’s that the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest it will get closed. History always does it. It typically happens in one of three ways– either through revolution, higher taxes or wars. None of those are on my bucket list,” PTJ said, according to a video of the event viewed by Business Insider.
During his talk, Tudor Jones, who has an estimated networth of $4.6 billion, praised capitalism.
“It’s a system I love because of the successes and opportunities it has afforded me and millions of others.”
Over the last several decades, however, there’s been a shift.
Tudor Jones continued: “I’ve seen a lot of crazy things in markets … And unfortunately, I’m sad to report that right now we might be on the grips of certainly one of the most disastrous certainly in my career.”
According to Tudor Jones, the problem has to do with how companies nowadays derive their value from profits, quarterly earnings, and their stock price.
“It’s like we’ve ripped the humanity out of our companies,” he said, explaining that we don’t value people based on their monthly income or credit score. “We have this double standard when it comes to the way we value businesses. You know what? It’s threatening the very underpinnings of our society.”
Right now, corporate profits in the US are at all-time highs. This, he said, is increasing income inequality.
“Higher profit margins do not increase societal wealth. What they actually do is exacerbate income inequality, and that’s not a good thing.”
He explained that if the top 10% of American families own 90% of the stocks, then they will take a greater share of those corporate profits and there’s less wealth for the rest of society.
Tudor Jones said that income inequality in the US is “literally off the charts” and that’s going to come along with “the greatest societal problems” such as lower life expectancy, teenage pregnancy, and lower literacy rates.
His solution is to advocate for justice in corporate behavior.
Tudor Jones recently formed a not-for-profit called JUST Capital with a mission to help companies by using the public’s input to find out the criteria that would define justice.
“Now capitalism has been responsible for every major innovation that’s made this world a more inspiring and wonderful place to live in,” Tudor Jones said. “Capitalism has to be based on justice … I’m not against progress. I want a driverless car and a jetpack like everyone else, but I’m pleading for recognition that with increased wealth or profits should come, has to come … greater corporate social responsibility.”
This year, they will survey 20,000 Americans and plan to release those results in September, Tudor Jones said.
“Maybe we will find out the most important thing for the public is create living wage jobs or make healthy products or help, not harm the environment,” he explained. “At JUST Capital, we don’t know. It’s not for us to decide. We are but messengers. We have 100% confidence and faith in the American public to get it right.”
They plan to issue the survey every year. Eventually, they will rank the companies in order based on the data they collect.
The hope, he explained, is that human and economic resources will be attracted toward those just companies and that they will be the most prosperous.
http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-tudor-jones-on-inequality-2015-3
I wonder what motivates a super-rich liberal like PAUL TUDOR JONES. He cannot believe in genuine equality of economic power. without recognizing that his own freedom and power come from his ownership of productive capital assets. Is he blind to what makes 99 percent of non-owning world citizens so victimized and powerless by systemic barriers to equal ownership opportunities? Wake up!
Jones acknowledges that corporate profits in the U.S. are at all-time highs, which he rightly concludes is increasing income inequality.
“Higher profit margins do not increase societal wealth. What they actually do is exacerbate income inequality, and that’s not a good thing.”
He explained that if the top 10 percent of American families own 90 percent of the stocks, then they will take a greater share of those corporate profits and there’s less wealth for the rest of society.
Yes, after stating the cause, Jone inexplicably calls for justice in corporate behavior as the solution. Yet he cannot define what form “justice” should take. He plans to survey 20,000 Americans to ask them what the solution is. The problem is Americans have been so ill-educated that all they are likely to say, based on their ONLY experience is “create jobs that pay a living wage.” This is NOT the solution to economic inequality.
The REAL solution is to lift all legal barriers to universal capital ownership access by every child, woman, and man as a fundamental right of citizenship and the basis of personal liberty and empowerment. The goal should be to enable every child, woman, and man to become an owner of ever-advancing labor-displacing technologies, new and sustainable energy systems, new rentable space, new enterprises, new infrastructure assets, and productive land and natural resources as a growing and independent source of their future incomes.
Jones’ thinking is the result of being stuck, as is the entire playing field of advocates for change, in one-factor thinking––that is, the labor worker, and he, while gaining wealth through capital ownership, is oblivious to the most powerful and increasingly productive factor––non-human physical capital (the land, structures, tools, machines and robotics, computerization, etc.) that is responsible for 90 percent of the production of the products and services needed and wanted by society. His focus and that of his not-for-profit called JUST Capital should be on broadening personal ownership of capital asset formation simultaneously with financing the growth of the economy, instead of allowing the continued concentration of capital ownership. Jones should grasp this idea instantly, because, after all, his billionaire wealth is the result of his OWNING productive capital assets.
What he should really being doing, leading up to and in the 2016 presidential election year, is leading a national discussion on the topic of the importance of capital ownership and how we can expand the base of private capital ownership simultaneously with the creation of new physical capital formation, with the aim of building long-term financial security for all Americans through accumulating a viable capital estate.
