The richest people in the world are enjoying the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. This year’s annual get-together began with an Oxfam report detailing how the five richest men in the world have more than doubled their wealth in the last three years. NBC reports that the 2024 presidential election has been one of the topics of conversation at the conference.
It turns out that while European elites are leery of another disastrous Trump administration, their wealthy counterparts in America seem unaffected, and in some cases supportive, of the possibility of a real-life fascist coming back into power. One anonymous “prominent U.S. business executive” told NBC, “I’m not sure Europeans understand how weak executive orders are. We have a justice system. Congress will probably be divided. It’s right to be cautious, but it won’t be the end of the world.”
Others were more oblique in their responses. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff gave Bloomberg’s Brad Stone this nothingburger of an answer about the potential ramifications of a Trump presidency, “Obviously the U.S. government is a large customer of Salesforce, and depending on who’s in office creates a whole stir with a different part of our employee base. But the reality is, hey, we are the same company, regardless of when that election is going to occur. And regardless of who that president will be.”
J.P. Morgan’s Jamie Dimon, whose company received billions of dollars in tax break profits under Trump, told CNBC that while he didn’t “like how [Trump] said things about Mexico,” in the end people voted for Trump because “he wasn’t wrong about some of these critical issues.” Excuse me? It’s hard to know which racist thing Trump said about Mexico and Mexicans Dimon didn’t “like,” but according to the CEO of J.P. Morgan, Trump is “kind of right about NATO. Kind of right about immigration. He grew the economy quite well. … Tax reform worked. He was right about some with China.”
Grew the economy? Tax reform worked? For Dimon, it did. Since those Trump tax cuts, C-suite executives have enjoyed record bonuses while most Americans have watched their finances slump. Since the tax cuts, corporations are basically paying nothing in taxes, and almost all of the money not pocketed by the rich has been used to buy back stock to inflate their stocks and put more money into their pockets.
Republicans, who admitted that their tax cuts blew out the deficit, have moved on to pretend that everything worked out great. As recently as this past summer, the only piece of policy being offered up by Republicans was cuts to social safety net services and new rounds of corporate tax breaks.
On Thursday, J.P. Morgan’s board announced that Dimon would be getting a 4% increase in pay, bringing his annual haul up to $36 million. J.P. Morgan made that announcement less than a week after reporting $49.6 billion in profit for 2023, the largest single year profit of any bank in the history of banks.
Surprise surprise! The people who benefited the most in corporate tax breaks and wealth under the Trump and Republican Party’s control feel like another round of Trump would be just fine.
Once again, here is a historian reminding the rich that all of their philanthropy means nothing if they continue to avoid paying taxes.
