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Jamie Dimon on Iran, Trump and why he’s optimistic about AI | NPR’s Newsmakers
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- [00:03]
Steve Inskeep
Hi, this is Steve Inskeep with a special episode of Up First, a conversation from our sister program, NPR's Newsmakers. In each episode, we interview some of the most influential people of our time. You can watch the show on NPR's YouTube channel or search for it wherever you get your podcasts. Jamie Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase. This is nation's largest bank. He's also connected to many of the wealthy and powerful in New York and here in Washington, where we spoke with Dimon and the J.P. morgan offices on the occasion of an annual letter in which he gives his opinions about almost everything. Thanks for welcoming us here. It's good to be here.
- [00:47]
Jamie Dimon
Thank you. Thanks for coming here.
- [00:49]
Steve Inskeep
And I read your letter. It's really compelling. Yeah, absolutely. Every page. It is more interesting than the average corporate document because you have opinions on many topics. And that's my first question. Why do you feel you should, as a CEO, be speaking out on topics all across the news when you probably could stay silent?
- [01:08]
Jamie Dimon
Yeah. So it's very important. So when I do these letters, I think to myself, what's important to the company? What's important to our employees? What's important to our shareholders? I actually make a list of questions, talk to people. I want to answer the big, important questions. And the thing you're asking about, most of it's about the company. But the last section, which is about America and the world, I always say it's predicated upon the fact that if America doesn't do well, JP Morgan will have a real hard time doing well, and that we have a deep interest in that. And the second reason is that, you know, policy. We shouldn't. I'm not saying the government can't do it. We shouldn't rely on government alone. Collaboration works. Collaboration works. In Detroit, it worked in World War II, it worked in all these things. So I think it's good for business to get involved, to bring their expertise to bear to help all the citizens of this country. And that helps the country and your company.
- [01:55]
Steve Inskeep
Do you assume that the interests of the country are about the same as the interests of your company?
- [01:59]
Jamie Dimon
No, but I think that we have common interests so that, you know, we all. If all of our citizens do better, we'll all do better. I think a lot of people come to Washington, tons of special interest groups. I think There are like 17,000 lobbying organizations, and they all fight for stuff. I'm kind of more in the camp that we also fight what's good for the country. If the country grew faster, we'd all be better off. And people talk about polarization and things that don't work. I also think it is our job to lift up all our citizens. That is what we should do. We should be civic minded, not just about ourselves. And so. And banks have been doing that for years. You go to. Actually a lot of companies have been doing that for years as part of just the normal culture. Sometimes it's local, sometimes it's national. The Business Roundtable here gets involved in public policy that's good for the country, not the public policy that's good for banks or private equity or chemical companies or pharmaceutical companies or movie companies. And I think we need to do more of that. We need to. What's good for the country.
- [02:52]
Steve Inskeep
One of many things you comment on is the war in Iran. You talk about geopolitical risk. It's right up there. I know that you've said in recent days that you approve generally of the idea of the war to attack a threat in Iran. I'd like to know though what you think of the President's leadership in the war and particularly his recent threats to bomb Iran back to the stone Age.
- [03:13]
Jamie Dimon
Yeah, I'm not gonna comment on that. But I wanna put this in a broader context. The most important thing that we can do is make sure the world is safe for democracy. And it's being challenged today in Ukraine, Iran, North Korea, somewhat by China. I think that is probably the most critical issue. What world are we going to have next 40 or 50 years? This is a part of that. So I'm not supporting and not supporting. What I pointed out in my letter is people talk about being an imminent threat. It's not a threat. They've been killing and murdering innocent people, including innocent Americans. And you know, for 47 years they have missiles, ballistic missiles that can go 3,000 miles. And they clearly are trying to develop nuclear capability. I agree with the concept. They can't be allowed to have nuclear capability. And so that's what I'm saying. I'm not an expert in it. I don't know all the choices they have. I know the military is exceptional. I don't know what their plan B, their plan C is. I'm simply pointing out that you gotta look at that risk as being an enormous risk for mankind. And so I want, I hope we prevail. And so. And I know it causes other problems in society and you know, the cost of fuel, the cost of oil, I completely understand, I'm quite sympathetic to that. But this is a really important subject that has to be properly dealt with eventually.
- [04:28]
Steve Inskeep
What are the economic risks, which is your area of expertise, of the potential destruction of this war? As we're talking, the President has just had a press conference and talked about destroying Iranian power plants. The Iranians have talked about destroying infrastructure in response to the economic blast radius could even be bigger than it has been.
- [04:45]
Jamie Dimon
Yeah, no. So again, I'm stepping morality from some of economics. I think the morality may be more important than free and safe world may be more important. And that's hard to understand. You know, we did that in World War II. You could pay tremendous sacrifices, but economically, you know, there's tons of uncertainty and I list like tons of them out there, not just these wars, but obviously they can cause help. Cause usually ends up in some form of recession. You know, recession is unemployment, it could be stagflation recession, which is the worst. It could be where it pushes inflation down, it could be short, I don't know, it may not happen at all. So I'm not even saying it's gonna happen. I just think it increases the odds of bad economic outcomes and we should just be clear eyed about that.
- [05:26]
Steve Inskeep
To be clear eyed, is there some way to measure the economic damage of this war so far?
- [05:31]
Jamie Dimon
I think the best way to look at it so far is that, you know, people here pay more for gas and might end up paying more for food and. But if it ends up in the right place, you know, you got to look at that quite carefully. So. I don't know yet.
- [05:45]
Steve Inskeep
You don't know yet?
- [05:45]
Jamie Dimon
I don't know yet.
- [05:46]
Steve Inskeep
Do you have in mind a worst case scenario and a best case scenario?
- [05:50]
Jamie Dimon
No, I think the worst case is that somehow we don't get control of the Straits of Hormuz, that we have to back out, that oil and gas, that Iran doesn't give up and oil and gas prices go even higher today, that's probably the worst case scenario. And the best case is that they, that they negotiate something where they don't build nuclear weapons. The Straits of Hormuz has opened up and we go back to a more peaceful world.
- [06:11]
Steve Inskeep
Listening to your worst case, I think I hear you saying as a citizen, the United States has to win this, that losing it would be.
- [06:17]
Jamie Dimon
I don't want to go that far because you're, that's putting words in my mouth. I don't know what all the potential outcomes are and neither do you. Okay, so fair enough. We all, after the fact, will be having strong opinions and hindsight and even hindsight is not perfect. I say even in Hindsight, you don't know history. I point out my letter. We're still analyzing what happened in World War I.
- [06:38]
Steve Inskeep
Without a doubt, right? Without a doubt. There's a thing that's happening in real time that's particularly interesting and that relates to the financial markets. The President regularly has made statements about this war and other issues that have moved the markets. Now, that's normal. You've been around a long time. Every president moves the markets. But they've been quite sudden, quite frequent, quite dramatic. And sometimes there is news suggesting that someone profited in the moments when that happened. What do you think about when you watch that?
- [07:05]
Jamie Dimon
Look, I have to deal with the world I got, so I don't spend that much time worrying about it. I think if people are profiting, that's bad. I think when the President changes his mind, I don't think it's always a bad thing he wants to do. X doesn't work that well. He tries something different, that's okay. So I don't look at that as a terrible. And I think they've learned, you know, he. He was president years ago, he's president now. I think they've learned what works and what doesn't work. And so I hope. I hope what he does works. You know, some of that causes a confusion. In fact, it's a great lesson for those of you who look at the market like you can see that words of a president matter. And, you know, presidents are careful. This president's less careful. He's also willing to stand up there, take questions and change his mind.
- [07:46]
Steve Inskeep
What do you think about people who are in either profiting in those moments or frantically buying and selling based on whatever the President just said?
- [07:53]
Jamie Dimon
I don't know. Profiting illegally should be against the law for us. Any insider information that you trade on whether you trade in securities or trade in the prediction markets, we told our people that is against the law. It's certainly against JP Morgan policy. People who just speculate on this stuff, that's different. That's just some form of gambling. And I defend your right to gamble.
- [08:22]
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- [08:40]
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- [09:31]
Steve Inskeep
you say in this letter and you've said elsewhere, the fact that the United States remains the safest investment in the world, especially in tough times, that seems true to this day. And yet at the same time, I as a layman have observed that the interest rate that is charged on US treasury bonds has gone up and up and up several percentage points in the last few years. Are we collectively doing something that erodes confidence in the United States?
- [09:57]
Jamie Dimon
Yeah. Again, I want to put this in a little bit of context and I really do mean what I'm about to say to your listener viewer. If we opened up our borders, billions of people move here. They want to be American. They want to be American because the values of America, and if you say, and I also mean this true, if you're can only invest all your money in one country, and that's true for anyone around the world, what country would it be? This country is defended by the Atlantic of the Pacific, our military, the rule of law, our courts, our unbelievable innovative system. It doesn't mean it doesn't have flaws. So when interest rates are going up, generally there's two. I mean, I hate to over generalize, but it's because some people think they're inflationary pressures and there are some deficit spending, oil, gas, depending how long this war goes on, if it ends quickly, that can adjust rather quickly. And then also deficit financing. We have a lot of deficit financing and I think the world looks at that and questions it and the whole world is doing it. By the way, our deficit actually happens to be I think the largest in the world, like 6% of GDP. And we're going to eventually have to deal with that. I don't know that's going to be a problem. But I think those are the reasons you have the dollar, the 10 year rate's going up.
- [11:09]
Steve Inskeep
What are the risks if we don't deal with the federal and we're talking here just for the layman the federal budget deficit, the federal government borrowing more every year than they spend.
- [11:17]
Jamie Dimon
So, you know, the best way to deal with the problem is to actually deal with the problem, to acknowledge it, to work on it. You know, years ago we had a solution, the Simpson Balls Commission. It didn't get done. I wish it had gotten done. It would have been a home run for all of Americans and it would have resolved some of these issues. So we have 60% of our spending. I think our spending is like 6 trillion. Almost $4 trillion is set in stone. It's Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. I think we should work on it, but I don't know. And again, I don't think anyone can predict. Does it become a real problem in six months, six years? I don't know. I do know it will become a problem. And the way it would exhibit itself is volatile markets, rates going up, kind of the bond vigilantes. The people not wanting to buy United States treasury will still be the best economy, but they'll be not wanting owning US Treasuries. So we should deal with it sooner than later, maybe. And if it gets done that way, it'll be kind of crisis management, which we'll get through it. It's just not the right way to do it.
- [12:18]
Steve Inskeep
Maybe you're partly answering that question. When are we going to know when we've borrowed too much, when we've gone beyond the point of no return, usually
- [12:27]
Jamie Dimon
rates going up and volatility in the marketplace?
- [12:30]
Steve Inskeep
You come to Washington a lot, you talk with a lot of powerful people. It seems to me as a layman that people, when they're out of power are concerned about deficits. And when they're in power, they cease to be concerned about deficits.
- [12:44]
Jamie Dimon
I think there's truth to that. I mean, this hasn't. Neither Democrats or Republicans have really focused on this for a while. It comes up all the time. And you talk, you walk the halls of Congress. I mean, almost everyone knows it's just we haven't had the will yet to actually deal with it. And it's unfortunate because it can end up with a real problem worse than it would otherwise have been. Good policy is free. And if we grew at 3% and not 2% that number debt to deficit was, the deficit started going down and the debt to GDP would start going down. And yet we're saying if the economy grew at 3%, grew at 3%. I think if we had good policy, which I mentioned in my letter, what that might be, education and immigration and certain regulations, we can grow at 3%. We should aspire to 3%. We could do probably even better than that. You know, this is the most innovative nation the world's ever seen. And so I think we should focus a little bit on that to solve the problem too, not just raise taxes or cut expenditures.
- [13:36]
Steve Inskeep
I want to ask about another kind of borrowing by private companies. Five giant tech firms that are called the hyperscalers. They're building out data centers and other things for more and more AI. You note in your letter they borrowed $450 billion last year. They're borrowing 750 billion billion this year. When would we know when that is too much and leading to a crisis?
- [13:59]
Jamie Dimon
Yeah, it's hard to tell. So we have, you know, we've had huge investments like that before. This may be the largest ever if you compare it. You know, some of our economists have done that to other, you know, the interstate highway program and Internet or electricity, railroads and the, these are fast. Now the total capex in the country is like two and a half trillion. So it's a big part of that. It's not unbelievable. Capital expenditures, capital expenditures, how much companies invest in the United States. And so I don't know. I don't look, I look at it. If you look at AI in total, okay, we're not going to know who all the winners are, how much is too much. We might overspend a little bit. But AI itself has huge potential and the use of it is going up very quickly, very dramatically and the greater context of stuff. And I think this is important for the younger viewers here. I think it's going to cure certain cancers. I think it'll save a lot of people highway deaths. I think it'll come with composite materials that make planes safer. It may come up with solutions for pollution and climate. So that is the good thing. And it may reduce the work week 20, 30, 40 years from now. So there's good things. And you can also focus on the potential negative ones. There's both.
- [15:05]
Steve Inskeep
It's not just one of those things you mentioned. The most interesting one to me was your suggestion that we might have a three and a half day workweek someday as opposed to firing a lot of people, which is the other scenario that people would work less and maybe still be paid or paid the same amount or paid more. But the firing scenario seems like the most obvious one to a lot of people. What makes you think the shorter work week would be the way that companies would work?
- [15:30]
Jamie Dimon
Yeah, I wouldn't make that the solution. I think that people are Going to adopt AI to do a better job for the customers. And if it does a better job for the gdp, the country will grow. I think the risk you're talking about is that. And there are a lot of jobs out there today, okay, well paying blue collar jobs, well paying white college, which are open cyber and AI and welding and electricity and all things like that. So I think the question we should ask is what and most other major technology innovations came in slowly. It took 10, 15, 20 years for cars and electricity and even the Internet. The Internet in total paid off. It's just, you don't know who the winners and losers were. But it didn't change jobs that much. If, and I'm saying if this changes jobs too much, here's what we all should do. We in government, business and government relocate, income assistance, early retirement, maybe reduce the work week a little bit, not mandate it. Let the system work. The system will adjust eventually. I just think if you look at the history of developed nations, we went from working six and a half days a week to six days a week, to five and a half days a week, to five days a week, to 12 hours a day, to 10 hours a day, to eight hours a day. I do think that there's a good chance to be three and a half days a week. And in many years they'll be living wonderful lives. And you could say that in Europe they're already working four days a week.
- [16:47]
Steve Inskeep
What do you think about when somebody says on npr, as they did the other day, one of the risks here, one of the goals here is to replace almost everybody's job?
- [16:54]
Jamie Dimon
I don't like that. I don't think that's gonna happen. And there are a lot of jobs that are not replaceable. And you're gonna wake up in the morning, you're still gonna have to eat something and go somewhere and go hiking and talk to people and need shrinks and other things? Tons of jobs. I mean I just. And even to build these data centers, you're talking about tons of labor, engineers, people who are building this stuff, cement, steel, servers. So there's a lot of jobs building
- [17:22]
Steve Inskeep
whole towns next to new data centers.
- [17:23]
Jamie Dimon
Whole towns. And this will adjust over time. The real question, if it goes too fast to have the adjustment we had in prior large technological advances, that's the real question. And we're just starting to really think about which society should do to deal with that if it happens.
- [17:36]
Steve Inskeep
Is AI going to eliminate a lot of entry level jobs?
- [17:39]
Jamie Dimon
I don't know yet. I don't know. Because we're still going to need people who bank clients. So what it may very well do is change what that entry level job is. A lot of those entry level jobs are a lot of paperwork. They'll be eliminated. And you can say, well, then you can do it. Less people maybe, but I also need those people to call in clients. So that job may change. The job may. IBM is doing something really neat. They're hiring as many young people, but a lot more of them are AI experts. They've been using AI, kind of AI native. They started with AI. So there may be jobs that we're doing so they can train people and one day they can go, you know, be the client exec, you know, covering a large global client.
- [18:17]
Steve Inskeep
Is something like that happening at J.P. morgan?
- [18:19]
Jamie Dimon
A little bit. We've always done what I call redeployment and we've always been, you know, jobs are going up and going down. We always say, hey Steve, we really like you. You know, here's some. A whole bunch of other jobs. You know, sometimes there's no fit or you don't want to, you want to retire. Other times, yeah, we retrain you move to another job. So there are people in our branches who are in the mortgage business. There are people in the mortgage business, used to be in the branches. There are people who want to do different things. And so one of the things that Jay Morton Duville is offer you great opportunities in life, you know, in the United States, sometimes around the world. And I think people, the next generation will probably have a lot more jobs changes in their career than we've had in ours.
- [19:00]
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- [19:38]
Steve Inskeep
in your letter that I want to try to decipher for someone like me. I think you're telling me that asset prices, things like stocks and real estate and so forth are grossly overpriced. The actual language is that they're more valuable relative to the economy than they were before the 2008 financial crisis. So what's happening?
- [19:57]
Jamie Dimon
Yeah, there are a lot of ways to measure asset prices. So you know, one is PE ratio price to earnings ratios. One is the total. Warren Buffett's favorite one is the total value of stocks, the gdp. I put something like that in my letter. Yeah, what I said is they're at the hot. They're. They're not as high as they've ever been, but they're in that upper 15% or something like that. And then credit spreads for debt are kind of low. They're not the lowest they've ever been. So what I'm pointing out is that that is not in and of itself bad, but it creates a risk if things go south. That's what I'm pointing out, that you can have a quicker adjustment asset price.
- [20:31]
Steve Inskeep
Do I need to be prepared for my pension fund or my home value?
- [20:35]
Jamie Dimon
I think you should always be intelligently invested. I mean if you're 100% in stocks, I'd say yeah, you should have something that's something more conservative. I'm a little more conservative. I have short term investments and obviously have a lot of JP Morgan. But you should always be thoughtful about how you invest your money and you should always not assume it's going to go up forever or go down forever. People make mistakes and they overreact when they over concentrate, like buy five stocks.
- [21:01]
Steve Inskeep
You also say cities need to compete. And you've said this before, but what is distinct here is that you name exactly one city, it's your hometown, New York City. And you talk about their high tax rates. What, if anything, is your message to your mayor, Zoran Mamdani?
- [21:20]
Jamie Dimon
Yeah, it wasn't meant just for him. It was answering a question I get asked by a lot of people. We just built a new headquarters there, which is extraordinary. And we try to take very good care of our people. Individuals compete, cities compete, companies compete, countries compete. That is not me guessing. That is the truth. And when I grew up, when I was younger, you know, Singapore isn't a great city. London wasn't a great city. You know, Nashville wasn't a great city, Detroit was. And I was reminded that in New York City, 60 of the Fortune 500, they had 120, 60 left in the 70s.
- [21:55]
Steve Inskeep
This is a bad time for this.
- [21:56]
Jamie Dimon
Bad time. They're going bankrupt. But today New York City's got some wonderful. And if I was any mayor, I'd make a list of strengths and weaknesses. You know, it's got arts, it's got Broadway, it's got restaurants, it's got It's a melting pot. It's got brains, it's got financial, it's got media all great. It also has the highest individual rates, the highest corporate rates, the highest estate tax rates. And that tends to drive people out if you want to be competitive. So it's. People vote with their feet. And then I point out in there that this happened before. It's happened to other cities. It's happened to California in general today. And that's not. Because that's not a moral statement. That's an actual. What's actually happening and why is it happening. And so, you know, that's what people should do, is think about those things. And any mayor should think about how you fix that. And most of what mayors have to worry about is sanitation, crime, schools, hospitals, things like that that make living standards better for the people of the city.
- [22:47]
Steve Inskeep
Have you spoken or had the opportunity to speak with Mayor Mamdani about this? He wants to raise taxes further.
- [22:52]
Jamie Dimon
Yeah, let him do what he wants. I mean, he can try. He can do whatever he wants, whatever his rights are. I'm not going to worry about it.
- [22:57]
Steve Inskeep
Does he say hello to you? Does he reach out to you?
- [22:59]
Jamie Dimon
I have not. I spoke to him right after he got elected. You know, if he wants to call me, I'd be happy to help figure out how he can do things. It doesn't mean I'm gonna agree with
- [23:09]
Steve Inskeep
him, but I'm interested in what you think of the results so far in that Mamdani has not raised taxes. He's certainly tried. He just hasn't gotten it done yet. But it seems that services are getting done. There are all kinds of stories about potholes being filled. How's he doing?
- [23:22]
Jamie Dimon
I don't know yet. I'm gonna reserve my judgment in that. And I just also, I wanna point out I'm. My real loyalty is to my country, not to my city. Okay. So I'm a New Yorker by birth. I'm a Yankee fan. But I'm not going to do bad things for my country because of my city. I just want to be a little careful about that. Because very often people say, how come you're not more loyal? Well, there's a lot of reasons. I'm much more loyal to my country.
- [23:46]
Steve Inskeep
You also point out that you now, as a company, have more employees in Texas than in New York.
- [23:51]
Jamie Dimon
Yeah. White. Because they're hugely hospitable. And, you know, Florida is going on. You see a lot of people moving to Texas and Florida, both individuals and companies. And so Texas is. It's a melting pot. When I first started working in Texas, it didn't have opera, it didn't have the restaurants it has today. It didn't have, you know, it's got some wonderful universities, and then it's conducive to business. The mayor calls you up, they, you need a big plot of land, they'll change the bus lanes for you. They do a whole bunch of things, and I think their tax rates are very low, both corporate and individual. So people want to work there, and so that's why.
- [24:27]
Steve Inskeep
Could you envision your company doing as Elon Musk has and relocating the headquarters to Texas?
- [24:34]
Jamie Dimon
I would do whatever's right for my company.
- [24:37]
Steve Inskeep
You would abandon that tower?
- [24:38]
Jamie Dimon
I would do whatever's right for my company. I'm not saying I'd abandon the tower. I'm just saying I don't think our headcount is going to that dramatically that we wouldn't fill that tower. But it could in 10 or 15 years. You know, people, bad things happen. I mean, you know, we had, you know, I remember, you know, Detroit, the unemployment hit 25%. You know, the population went from 2 million to 700,000, you know, and again. And this new mayor has done an unbelievable job. Mayor Duggan, you know, what he did to save that city is extraordinary. And it was all collaboration. Business, civic society, schools, teaching people, advanced manufacturing, getting anyone who could help him. It's. It should be studied. They should write case studies about it. He turned the city by that attitude. I was running for a governor of Michigan and an independent ticket.
- [25:24]
Steve Inskeep
You recently put out a thing about the American dream.
- [25:26]
Jamie Dimon
Yeah.
- [25:27]
Steve Inskeep
Saying that your company wanted to support that. I don't want to make you talk all about it again, but it's everything from homeownership to improving healthcare. But I'd like a basic definition from you.
- [25:36]
Jamie Dimon
Yeah.
- [25:37]
Steve Inskeep
What is it? What is the American dream?
- [25:39]
Jamie Dimon
Yeah. And I also point out to kind of a universal dream. Homeownership, health, jobs, skills, wages, less crime. That's the American dream. That's the dream for most people. Have a good life and a safe life. And we've always been financing the American dream. Small business formation. There are 30 million small businesses in this country. We bank 7 million. So fostering that. And the reason it's so important is that it has frayed for a lot of people. And I think it's wrong. I mean, I think it's part of our job to say, what did we do wrong? A third of the population of 25%, their wages effectively didn't go up like everybody else's for years and almost for 15 or 20 years, depending how you look at it. And a lot of those folks also go to neighborhoods where their schools don't work. So most of the people in a lot of neighborhoods, their schools work fine. Their neighborhoods have more crime, they have less social outcome. So what do you do? And so what I try to be is here's what we are going to do, here's what we're going to do for small business. But I give three really important suggestions there. Okay? One is schools. I think schools should be evaluated. I'm talking about high schools, community colleges, and even colleges on outcome, the outcome being what job do you get and kind of what does it pay? And because you could teach kids, I give one example, but there are hundreds around the country where there are kids not far from where I grew up in Jackson, Ice Queens, their kids go to aviation high school. They teach you high school. They also teach you how to maintain a Cessna aircraft. They travel sometimes one or two hours each way by subway. Their mom and dads want them to go. And they learn how to maintain the hydraulic system, electrical system, the engine system of Cessna. 95% graduate making 75,000 plus a year. They could be 17 years old. That's what they should be doing. So way, way back when a school taught you how to read and write, that kind of was the ticket. So now it's not. So we have to. And there's schools in cyber and aviation, program management, hotel administration, tons of these things that people are going to need. So outcomes, they should be certificates. They should count for degrees. They should do all those various things that would be an unbelievable thing to drive jobs, skills and wages.
- [27:49]
Steve Inskeep
Is the economy almost moving too quickly for education to be organized that way?
- [27:53]
Jamie Dimon
No, because I think if you were. We already spend a trillion dollars of something in K to 12. So I would. So every high. If you were a principal of a high school, you should be thinking every year, what should I add and what should I subtract. So now you may be saying I need less coding, but I need more cyber. I need more AI because of all these building we're doing. We need more skilled trades. Unions do an excellent job teaching people skilled trades those jobs. 100,000 a year, $120,000 a year. And they're not, you know, they're not pounding just nails in. They're actually managing equipment. If you go to these, I've been to some of these advanced manufacturing schools, you know, you and I would have to spend the 12 weeks how to manage that piece of machine tooling thing. And so, no, that's what they should be doing. That is their job. And so the second thing I suggest in there is the earning of tax credit. If you are a single parent making, I think $18,000 a year, the government gives you 7,000 at the end of the year. And if you, with two children, if you have no children, they give you like 600. I would get rid of the child requirement. I would probably double the earned income tax credit. If you were making 18, the government will give you 14. I would make it like more like a negative income tax. It comes in monthly. And the reason I like it so much is you give the money to the people directly who need it. It's not going through government programs lecturing you what you should be doing with it. For the most part, it's going to be used to help their families. Schools, health, tutoring, you know, fixing the car, all those things. It'll be spent locally, so it'll actually be spent in those neighborhoods that need some of the help. And it has great social outcomes. So every study ever read, less recidivism, less crime, less suicide, less depression, more household formation, and you're incenting people to work. So I think it would actually be a home run. And Paul Ryan supports it. Democrats support Republican support. I just, I think it would be better than most other programs.
- [29:46]
Steve Inskeep
So I'm thinking as you're talking of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, your fellow New Yorker, who has been on npr, it was last year and she said a lot of people feel increasingly that everything is a scam, that they're being ripped off. What would you say to people who think that the people you deal with, people in your class, the very successful wealthy people in this country, have lost sight of the national interest, are not taking care of the country?
- [30:12]
Jamie Dimon
Yeah, I think that's a kind of a broad statement.
- [30:15]
Steve Inskeep
It's a broad statement, but it's made both parties, but in different ways.
- [30:18]
Jamie Dimon
Well, I think there are people who don't care. I mean, there are people who don't care who are not wealthy and people who don't care who are wealthy. I personally don't like those kind of people. So, you know, I don't think that proportion is that different than it was 10 years ago or 40 years ago, 80 years ago. And the other thing which I always point out is that it's very often people look at capitalism and say, well, these are bad, greedy people, but there are bad, greedy people in communism. Sure, in socialism, they're in every institution. I'm not supporting it. I think it's bad. It's not the reason. We have flaws. We have a lot of flaws. Like, I can point out policy flaws. I already mentioned education. You know, I can. I make. I make a whole list. Permitting certain regulations hurt mortgages. The regulations hurt mortgages. And I would agree with aoc. I hope she can help me on this. And if we fix those regulations, mortgages would be a lot more affordable. For $200,000 home. If we fix some of the affordable housing stuff and you could build more affordable homes, you'd create a lot more homes, starter homes. The people would buy, buy those homes, would be able to get a mortgage and they'd leave. Be leaving rental units, you know, which would reduce the price of rental for the people who need the rental. And so there are so many things we can do to make this country better, faster, healthier, and help everybody.
- [31:30]
Steve Inskeep
I want to note that you turned 70 recently.
- [31:33]
Jamie Dimon
Yeah.
- [31:33]
Steve Inskeep
Is there something you've learned in those many years that you wish you knew when you were 30? Say
- [31:42]
Jamie Dimon
I grew up with the same values. My grandparents were Greek immigrants, didn't finish high school. The values was to have a purpose in life, treat everyone well, do the best you can, leave the world a better place. And that hasn't changed. Obviously, I've learned some stuff, like when I was 30, like, anger doesn't help. Okay. Like, making big decisions on a Friday when you're tired is a really bad idea. So I could give you tons of lessons like that. I always call them lessons learned and relearned because I still make some of those mistakes, unfortunately.
- [32:12]
Steve Inskeep
You said a purpose. What's your purpose?
- [32:15]
Jamie Dimon
To make the world a better place. And purpose. When they say on the COVID Annual report this year, it's the 250th anniversary. The statue of Liberty, American flag, Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When they said the pursuit of happiness, they didn't mean happiness. Like, we mean happiness. Oh, are you happy? Do you feel good? They meant purpose. That purpose could be an artist, politician, reporter, you know, business person. It could be just a caregiver, a mother. You know, there's a great op ed that someone wrote that would receive the medal of honor, saying 50 years later, they realized that some of those people who day in and day out helped other human beings, that they are the real heroes, that they never gave up. And they did it through, you know, health and sickness and things like that. So that's the purpose. You've made the world a better place in the way you can contribute.
- [33:06]
Steve Inskeep
Jamie Dimon, it's a pleasure talking with you again. Thank you so much.
- [33:08]
Jamie Dimon
Thank you. Pleasure was mine. Thank you.
- [33:10]
Steve Inskeep
All right. For more newsmakers from NPR News, you can search for the show wherever you get podcasts or watch it on NPR's YouTube channel. And remember, newsmakers like up first relies on supporters who value independent journalism and a free press. Join NPR today to support our work and get perks from the podcasts you trust. Go to plus.NPR.org I'm Steve Inskeep. Thanks for listening to Up FIRST from NPR News.
- [33:42]
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