JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon loves America—but that doesn’t mean he won't highlight its faults. Among Uncle Sam’s issues, the Wall Street veteran says, is the notion that the country is drifting away from its can-do roots.
Speaking to Spectrum News NY1, Dimon said there were a raft of changes America could make to increase its growth, adding that it’s “deeply frustrating” when these don’t happen.
Among the changes the 68-year-old suggests are initiatives he’s mentioned previously. They include teaching financial literacy and health care in schools, as well as targeting educators on whether their pupils land jobs after graduating, as opposed to college admission rates.
In the interview released Thursday, Dimon made it clear he wants to see red tape reduced and opportunities made more available.
“There are all these things we can do to improve our society, and it’s deeply frustrating to me that we don’t,” said Dimon—who has led the 240,000-strong workforce at America’s biggest bank since 2006. “You can talk about permitting and schools, health—but a lot of things we do we’re just not doing a great job at them anymore.
“I always say we used to be the can-do nation, and now we’re as bureaucratic as big parts of Europe.”
Focusing on growth
Dimon, who was paid $36 million for his work last year, believes more focus should be put on growing the economy instead of bureaucratic barometers.
It’s a point he raised in his 2023 letter to JPMorgan shareholders, highlighting that growth over the past two decades has sat an an “anemic” 2%.
“We should have strived for and achieved 3% growth,” he wrote. “Had we done so, GDP per person today would be $16,000 higher, which would, in turn, have paid for better health care, childcare, education, and other services.
“Importantly, the best way to handle our excess deficit and debt issues is to maximize economic growth.”
Yet growth still isn’t being talked about “enough,” Dimon added, with focus being put on the wrong metrics.
“We should be as a nation [thinking], ‘What do you do to grow?’” Dimon continued.
“Your growth actually helps everybody, but you can make it very healthy by having inner-city schools do better, focusing more on outcomes—not the outcome: ‘Did you go to math?’ The outcome: ‘Did you get a job, and what did it pay?’”
The U.S. is a ‘beacon of light’
It is this land of growth and opportunity that Dimon wants to share with others.
The billionaire banker is a self-professed “full-throated, red-blooded, patriotic, unwoke, capitalist CEO”—a point he reiterated this week.
Dimon’s grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Greece having not graduated from high school because they saw America as a “beacon of light and freedom.”
This is a fact their grandson still believes to be true, saying: “We have to explain that to people.
“Our nation may have done some terrible things, but that beacon of light, that power of freedom, the fact that billions of people would move here if we opened up our borders—and they would move here to be American and to benefit from that under the auspices of the United States of America—we should tell that story.”
The father of three previously said the dream which brought his grandparents to the U.S. is disappearing for many.
In an opinion piece for the Washington Post published in August, Dimon wrote: “The American dream is disappearing for many because opportunity is not shared equally. Many inner-city and rural schools do not teach students the skills they need to get good jobs. Some of these problems aren’t necessarily intractable.”
A couple of months on and Dimon wants to not only see the American dream made attainable, but shared globally.
“America is still this unbelievable thing,” Dimon added. “We should be extolling that and disseminating best practices—and fixing the policies that don’t work.”
