On March 18, 2019, Hugh Son writes on CNBC:
- J. P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon points to two Americas: one that is benefiting from thriving U.S. corporations, and another that is struggling.
- “It is absolutely obvious that a big chunk of [people] have been left behind,” Dimon says.
J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said that the U.S. economy has essentially been split into those benefiting from thriving corporations and those who are left behind.
“I don’t want to be a tone deaf CEO; while the company is doing fine, it is absolutely obvious that a big chunk of [people] have been left behind,” Dimon said. “Forty percent of Americans make less than $15 an hour. Forty percent of Americans can’t afford a $400 bill, whether it’s medical or fixing their car. Fifteen percent of Americans make minimum wages, 70,000 die from opioids” annually.
“If you travel around to most neighborhoods where companies live, they’re doing fine,” Dimon said. “So we’ve kind of bifurcated the economy.“
Dimon was speaking at an event at the bank’s New York headquarters to unveil a new $350 million program to boost job prospects for people in under-served communities. The J.P. Morgan chairman and CEO has frequently voiced concern about the declining labor force participation rate and the shortfalls of the educational system in preparing people for emerging roles.
Making progress against these issues involves companies working with local organizations to provide skills outside of the university context, he said.
“Companies have to be involved,” Dimon said. “Businesses can bypass all these parts of society that have been suffering a little bit because they do it themselves. They have their own schools, their own training, their own everything.”
Dimon added that “we made a mistake by ignoring some of these things. If we don’t [act], society is going to get worse, because these problems aren’t aging well.”
The bank’s new five year plan, announced Monday, includes $200 million to develop training programs for in-demand digital and technical roles and $125 million to boost collaboration between employers and the educational system. It also has $25 million to help spread labor market data and analysis to enable companies to focus on ways to lift people out of low-wage positions.
“It’s not about a college degree,” said Dimon, who graduated from Tufts University and Harvard Business School. “Having gone I know just how worthless a college degree is sometimes.”
Dimon called the education system “broken” and said his bank stopped giving philanthropic dollars to colleges years ago. Instead, the company is focusing on community colleges and training programs.
“Harvard and Princeton are not a philanthropy,” Dimon said. “Helping these kids is.”
Gary Reber Comments:
While it should be obvious to all Americans that most of America is being left behind by our rigged economy, an economy structured to benefit those in the top 10 percent of the population, all of the proposed solutions by politicians, academians, and businessmen are focused solely on improving the skills of American workers for future jobs, rather than making it a priority to provide equal opportunity for EVERY citizen to gain an ownership stake in the economy’s future.
While Jamie Dimon has reminded Americans just how bad it is for a “big chunk” of Americans who “have been left behind,” the solution has to entail more than job training or a minimum wage boost to $15 per hour. Most importantly it must entail empowering EVERY American––children, women, and men––to share as owners in the formation of the future productive capabilities that for-profit corporations will bring about.
Restoring our powerhouse manufactory capabilities in an age of sophisticated non-human physical capital “workers” will be comprised of advanced robotics, artificial intelligence, and technology. We need to rapidly adopt production, accomplished with human and non-human collaboration. These technologies are being developed in other countries––and the speed at which this is occurring has put us at a disadvantage.
No one, including the Jamie Dimon’s of our world, ever addresses, Who will own our future productive capabilities?
This is where a successful man or woman, such as Jamie Diamond, who can command national media attention, should advance the debate and advocate for a national “Own The Future” Deal, which would empower EVERY child, woman, and man to contribute productivity through owning a stake in the economic capital wealth assets to be created, which will most efficiently produce goods, products, and services of the highest quality, and through the full-earnings payout of corporate dividends become the “customers with money” who will consume what is produced and create demand.
We need to finance responsible and environmental enhanced future growth using financial means that do not require savings, speculation or risk. We need to provide insured, interest-free capital credit equally and annually to EVERY child, woman, and man to share in the formation of future productive capital assets and renewal of capital assets now in production, which is solely repayable out of the earnings of the investments in our future capabilities to produce. And after they pay for themselves within a reasonable capital cost recovery period, they will go on producing income indefinitely to their new owners with proper maintenance and with restoration in the technical sense through research and development.
The central enabler for this transformation and restoration of our manufacturing prowess is the necessity to enact 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/.
