On March 26, 2019, Robert Reich writes on The Guardian:
If the CEO of JP Morgan really cared about American workers, he would put an end to corporate executives like him rigging the system
‘Dimon’s own compensation package was $31m last year, and his reported net worth is $1.3bn.’ Photograph: Yuri Gripas/Reuters
On March 26, 2019, Robert Reich writes on The Guardian:
If I may be so bold as to try to lure your attention away from Trump and Mueller for a moment, consider Jamie Dimon’s lament, delivered a few days before Mueller delivered his report.
Dimon is the chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, and wrongdoing by him and the CEOs of other big corporations is more responsible for Trump’s election than anything Russia dreamed of, as I’ll explain.
“A big chunk of [Americans] have been left behind,” Dimon said, unveiling a new $350m program to train workers for the jobs of the future. “Forty percent of Americans make less than $15 an hour, 40% … can’t afford a $400 bill, whether it’s medical or fixing their car; 15% of Americans make minimum wages, 70,000 die from opioids.”
All true, but $350m over five years isn’t even a drop in the ocean of Americans who have been left behind. Nor is it a large sum for JP Morgan, America’s biggest bank, whose profits last year alone amounted to $35bn. The annual budget of the US Department of Education is $70bn.
Dimon’s own compensation package was $31m last year, and his reported net worth is $1.3bn.
Besides running JP Morgan, Dimon also chairs the Business Roundtable, composed of the CEOs of America’s largest corporations, whose 2018 profits broke all records.
Due to vast amounts they spend lobbying and donating to politicians, these CEOs also have more influence over what happens in Washington than any other group of people.
They were instrumental in gaining passage of the Trump tax cuts, which they predicted would generate a wave of corporate investment and boost wages. Instead, the tax cuts generated a tsunami of stock buybacks (more than $910bn last year, an all-time high) that boosted their own pay and the stock prices of their companies, but have done little for average workers.
The Business Roundtable’s motto – “More than Leaders. Leadership” – suggests some higher purpose than making the rich richer, but CEOs like Dimon say their hands are tied. Their responsibility is to their shareholders.
But why, exactly? If Dimon and the others were serious about helping most American workers – whose real wages have been going nowhere for decades and job security is dwindling – they could use their outsized political influence to push for laws requiring CEOs to consider all their stakeholders, not just shareholders.
Rather than make it harder for workers to unionize, they could fight to make it easier, and to give workers larger voice in management decisions and a greater share of the profits.
Rather than reflexively seek tax cuts, they could push to raise taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans like themselves, so there’d be more school funding to prepare American kids for the jobs of the future.
They could seek a higher minimum wage, a larger Earned Income Tax Credit, universal healthcare, and other measures to make left-behind Americans more secure.
If this sounds far-fetched, that’s only because we’ve come such a long way from the era of the 1950s to the 1970s when the heads of big American businesses viewed themselves as “corporate statesmen” and lobbied for measures to improve the wellbeing of all Americans.
Those CEOs supported civil rights, argued that unions “serve the common good”, urged stronger environmental protections, and even backed campaign finance reform.
But then came the 1980s – corporate raiders, Wall Street “greed is good” manipulators, Ronald Reagan’s market fundamentalism, union-busting, and a gusher of corporate money into politics.
Since then, most Americans have come to believe the system is rigged in favor of big corporations and the Street, and they’re right. But nothing is stopping Dimon and other major CEOs from putting an end to the rigging.
They could reduce the need for candidates to raise funds from corporate Pacs and the wealthy by supporting the House Democrats’ first bill, HR1, providing public financing for campaigns backed by small donors.
They could push for stricter limits on the “revolving door” between industry and government, and laws requiring full disclosure of the sources of all campaign funding.
Why shouldn’t Dimon and other CEOs be in the vanguard seeking a constitutional amendment to limit lobbying and campaign spending? The answer is: nothing is stopping them except their own parched, self-serving notion of leadership as maximizing profits and shareholder value.
Yet as heads of institutions with the greatest influence over American politics, they also have a duty to the common good and are uniquely positioned to advance it.
For 40 years, CEOs of America’s largest corporations and Wall Street banks have abdicated this responsibility.
We are now living with the consequences. Jamie Dimon and the Business Roundtable can see those consequences as well as anyone.
Rather than announce token jobs programs, they’d be better served seeking to increase the economic and political power of left-behind Americans – many of whom will otherwise continue to vote for demagogues who only make them feel powerful.
Gary Reber Comments:
Robert Reich once again shows his lack of vision in that he continues to be stuck solely in the one factor world of labor and wages, and apparently does not see how ordinary people, without past savings to risk, can ever be owners of corporations and the underlying productive capital assets they create.
Yes, Jamie Dimon is a hogist. “Hogism,” or today’s “Capitalism,” is propelled by greed and the sheer love of power over others. “Hogism” institutionalizes greed (creating concentrated capital ownership, monopolies, and special privileges). “Hogism” is about the ability of greedy rich people to manipulate the livesof people who struggle with declining labor worker earnings and job opportunities, and then accumulate the bulk of the money through monopolized productive capital ownership. The rich and politically powerful sell every capital project on the basis that it will create jobs,when the real wealth-building benefits are vested in the already wealthy capital ownership class who seek to own more capital wealth.
If Jamie Dimon and Professor Robert Reich really wanted to raise the income levels of ordinary Americans, they would be commissioning a study on how to empower EVERY child, woman and man to become an owner of wealth-creating, income-producing productive capital assets, without the requirement of past savings.
Some would argue that the rich are not greedy and yet there is plenty of evidence that the wealthiest refuse to share their secrets to acquire productive capital with the self-financing earnings of capital, and without the requirement of past savings (or past reductions in consumption). While the rich, innately, are not any greedier as a group than other people, however much they have better and more opportunities to indulge that vice, they have failed to focus any discussion on what policies and system reforms are necessary to create inclusive prosperity by universally broadening the ability to generate income through personal ownership of productive capital and the inclusive opportunity to become a capital owner.
Sadly, academia, including Professor Robert Reich, the wealthy capital ownership class, and politicians have failed to educate the American people through our schools, even university levels, and the national media dialogue to teach effective financial means to acquire productive capital with the earnings of capital, simultaneously with economic growth. As a result, the vast majority of readers of this paper will not initially understand and comprehend the free-market, private property rights concepts and financial mechanisms proposed as related to an understanding of money, credit, banking and finance.
Unfortunately, the vast American majority only understand earning an income via employment and are unable to make reductions in consumption to accumulate savings and speculate via purchasing existing stocks (legalized gambling), hoping for a financial gain when they sell the stock. They are excluded from purchasing new stock issues, representing new capital asset formation, with the earnings generated by the investment, without the requirement of past savings.
While the national focus is always on job creation instead of ownership creation, our scientists, engineers, and executive managers who are not owners themselves, except for those in the highest employed positions, are encouraged to work to destroy employment by making the capital “worker” owner more productive. How much employment can be destroyed by substituting machines for people is a measure of their success — always focused on producing at the lowest cost. Only the people who already own productive capital are the beneficiaries of their work, as they systematically concentrate more and more capital ownership in their stationary 1 percent ranks. Yet the 1 percent is not the people who do the overwhelming consuming. The result is the consumer populous is not able to get the money to buy the goods, products, and services produced as a result of substituting “machines” for people. And yet you can’t have mass production without mass human consumption made possible by “customers with money.”
Abraham Lincoln said that the purpose of government is to do for people what they cannot do for themselves. Government also should serve to keep people from hurting themselves and to restrain man’s greed, which otherwise cannot be self-controlled. Anyone who seeks to own productive power that they cannot or won’t use for consumption are beggaring their neighbor — the equivalency of mass murder — the impact of concentrated capital ownership.
Jamie Dimon and Robert Reich and any study team would not have to investigate far as the solution to creating new productive capital owners, without the requirement of savings using insured, interest-free capital credit, repayable solely out of the earnings of the investments, has already been figured out and is now ready for legislative action.
Jamie Dimon and Robert Reich should support the enactment of the proposed Capital Homestead Act (aka Economic Democracy Act and Economic Empowerment Act) at http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/, http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for-getting-ownership-income-and-power-to-every-citizen/, http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-summary/ and http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ch-vehicles/. And The Capital Homestead Act brochure, pdf print version at http://www.cesj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/C-CHAflyer_1018101.pdf and Capital Homestead Accounts (CHAs) at http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ch-vehicles/capital-homestead-accounts-chas/
And, as well, Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice.
