C.E.O. Pay

JPMorgan C.E.O Jamie Dimon Says It’s Pointless to Slash C.E.O. Pay

By Chip Somodevilla

Cutting C.E.O. pay wouldn’t do much to close the nation’s wealth gap and income inequality, according to a theory from billionaire JPMorgan C.E.O. Jamie Dimon.

Dimon told Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press that lowering executive pay wouldn’t do much to solve the problem.

“If you took all the compensation of all the C.E.O.s of the top 500 companies in America it wouldn't make a dent in this problem,” he said on Sunday, when Todd told him that he would get a bunch of viewer e-mails saying that Dimon is paid too much.

The comments come at a time where C.E.O.s are making 300 times more than typical workers, the Economic Policy Institute found. Since 1978, compensation for chief executives has increased by 997 percent.

Simon himself became a billionaire in June, and took home $20 million last year.

With that in mind, it’s no wonder that presidential candidates have been hurling a whole lot of vitriol Wall Street’s way on the campaign trail. Simon, for his part, said on Sunday that he gets it.

“You know, we had a crisis. A lot of people got hurt. And the average American looks at what happened and they kind of blame Wall Street which I would—it's generally true.” He noted, though, that Wall Street has owned up to its mistakes and has done a lot of “great stuff,” too.

Dimon made it clear that he wants lower and middle-income households to do better, and that more jobs and education would help with growth.

"I think it's one of the great shames in America that in a lot of low income areas, half the kids don't graduate high school," he said. "And I also say among those kids, there might have been an Einstein or a Steve Jobs or a Barack Obama and we will never know."

Dimon did acknowledge that income inequality has gotten worse while speaking at an event in Detroit last week, according to a report from Bloomberg. Despite this, he said things are looking up, things are pretty darn good.

“If you go back 20 years ago, cars were worse, health was worse, you didn’t live as long, the air was worse. People didn’t have iPhones.”

Sure, the typical American family income may have been $53,657 last year. Nearly 47 million Americans are in poverty, and the federal minimum wage is $7.25. But we have smart phones. They're even coming out with the iPhone 6S. And cars, they’re cooler too. What a time to be alive.