Dear John,
Yesterday, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon wrote in his annual letter to shareholders, "This can be a moment when we all come together and recognize our shared responsibility, acting in a way that reflects the best of all of us."
In 2017, the self-proclaimed "patriot before CEO" aggressively lobbied for a $2 trillion tax cut for corporations like his and rich executives like him. Since then, America’s largest bank has spent 98 percent of its savings on buying back stock to boost shareholder value and executive pay — barely a trickle made it down to Jamie Dimon’s workers.
How’s that for shared responsibility?
Our latest video explores this core contradiction about corporate executives: In the business of making a profit, they rig our system, then expect to be applauded when they make grand statements about solving the problems they helped cause.
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The first step toward fixing this broken system is to stop buying CEOs’ lies.
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How can we believe that Jamie Dimon’s platitudes about “shared responsibility” and “coming together” are anything other than public relations? Why should we think that he or his fellow CEOs are concerned about anything other than making more money for themselves and their firms?
We can’t and we shouldn’t.
For instance, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was recently applauded for donating $100 million to the country’s food banks.
That’s what he makes in a little over 11 hours.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s Whole Foods encouraged frontline workers to donate their paid time off to each other and Amazon still hasn’t guaranteed every single worker hazard pay and paid sick leave. While Bezos is profiting off this pandemic, his workers are putting their health at risk with minimal protections.
Even in the midst of a global pandemic, CEOs don’t have America’s best interests at heart — they’re making millions to be CEOs, not patriots.
Corporations are already gearing up to escape the minimal oversight of their $500 billion slush fund and get away with doing the bare minimum for their employees. They aren’t organized to promote the wellbeing of Americans, and Americans cannot thrive within a system run largely by corporations.
Oligarchy is only good for the oligarchs.
Thanks for watching,
Robert Reich
Inequality Media
P.S. Anything you can give will help us ramp up our remote operation, from quarantine, to expose corporate America’s hypocrisies and the Trump administration's failures in addressing this crisis.
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