What is dragging down the country and how to fix it

The fight between Democrats and Republicans to me is one of the biggest factors preventing this country from being in a better state. This particularly applies to the lower income bracket of the country, but is affecting everyone. I don't see governments from either party making any significant improvements to the overall situation. Looking around for what politicians, professors and economists say I found one publication that is by far the best analysis of the current situation and that also proposes intelligent solutions. I am talking about the 2018 Annual Report by Jamie Dimon.

You can find it at jpmorgenchase.com, but below is the section that I am referring to in particular. It is brilliant, and having studied economics and political science from history to current, I find that no one else has summed up the political philosophy and practical solutions better than Jamie here below. To me this a modern-day take on what our founding fathers (specifically Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Adams) conceived.

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Section III: Public Policy

There are many critical issues roiling the United States and other countries around the world today – just to name a few: capitalism versus other economic systems, the role of business in our society, how the United States intends to exercise global leadership, income inequality, equal opportunity, access to healthcare, immigration and diversity. Many people have lost faith in government’s ability to solve these and other problems. In fact, almost all institutions – governments, schools, unions, media and businesses – have lost credibility in the eyes of the public. In the meantime, many of these problems have been around for a long time and are not aging well. Politics is increasingly divisive, and a number of policies are not working. This state of affairs is unlikely to get better without thorough diagnosis, thoughtful policy solutions and a commitment to a common purpose.

In this section, I attempt to analyze and offer some views on what has caused this situation and then suggest some solutions. Neither the diagnoses nor the proposed cures are purely my own. These issues have been studied intensively by many people with deep knowledge. And given the space and other constraints of this letter, I may be about to violate the Einstein maxim, which I love: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” One of the main points I am trying to make is that when you step back and take a comprehensive multi-year view, looking at the situation in its totality, it is the cumulative effect of many of our policies that has created many of our problems. And whatever the solutions, I think they are unlikely to be achieved by government alone – civil society and business need to be part of the equation. To start, we must understand our problems.

1. The American Dream is alive — but fraying for many.

Before I talk about our problems, I think it’s important to put any negatives in context, so first a paean to our nation. America is still the most prosperous nation the world has ever seen. We are blessed with the natural gifts of land; all the food, water and energy we need; the Atlantic and Pacific oceans as natural borders; and wonderful neighbors in Canada and Mexico. And we are blessed with the extraordinary gifts from our Founding Fathers, which are still unequaled: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise, and the promise of equality and opportunity. These gifts have led to the most dynamic economy the world has ever seen, nurturing vibrant businesses large and small, exceptional universities, and a welcoming environment for innovation, science and technology. America was an idea borne on principles, not based upon historical relationships and tribal politics. It has and will continue to be a beacon of hope for the world and a magnet for the world’s best and brightest.

Of course, America has always had its flaws. Some of its more recent issues center on income inequality, stagnant wages, lack of equal opportunity, immigration and lack of access to healthcare. I make it a practice when hearing complaints to strive to understand where people might be right or partially right instead of rejecting or accepting their views reflexively.

Middle class incomes have been stagnant for years. Income inequality has gotten worse. Forty percent of American workers earn less than $15 an hour, and about 5% of full-time American workers earn the minimum wage or less, which is certainly not a living wage. In addition, 40% of Americans don’t have $400 to deal with unexpected expenses, such as medical bills or car repairs. More than 28 million Americans don’t have medical insurance at all. And, surprisingly, 25% of those eligible for various types of federal assistance programs don’t get any help. No one can claim that the promise of equal opportunity is being offered to all Americans through our education systems, nor are those who have run afoul of our justice system getting the second chance that many of them deserve. And we have been debating immigration reform for 30 years. Simply put, the social needs of far too many of our citizens are not being met.

Over the last 10 years, the U.S. economy has grown cumulatively about 20%. While this may sound impressive, it must be put into context: After a sharp downturn, economic growth would have been 40% over 10 years in a normal recovery. Twenty percent more growth would have added $4 trillion to GDP, which certainly would have driven wages higher and given us the wherewithal to broadly build a better country. Key questions that keep arising – and remain unanswered are: Why have productivity and economic growth been so anemic? And why have income inequality and so many other things gotten worse? Included among the common explanations is that “secular stagnation” is the new normal. I’ve also heard blame placed on institutional greed and “short-termism,” bad corporate governance, job displacement from new technologies, immigration or trade and a lack of new productivity-enhancing technology. Another common refrain is that capitalism and free enterprise have failed. As you’ll see, I think some of these arguments miss the mark.

1. We must have a proper diagnosis of our problems — the issues are real and serious — if we want to have the proper prescription that leads to workable solutions.

Slogans are not policy, and, though simple and sometimes virtuous-sounding, they often lead to policies that fail. Well-intentioned but poorly designed policies generally have large and unintended negative consequences. Policy should always be extremely well-designed.

In my view, too often we don’t perform the deep analysis required to fully understand our problems. One of the reasons is that we often have too short term an orientation; i.e., looking at how things have changed year-over-year or even quarter-over-quarter. We frequently fail to look at trends over a multi-year period or over decades – we miss the forest for the trees. It’s also important to point out that many economic models that are used to design policy have a hard time incorporating or accounting for the effect of certain factors that can be pivotal but are too complex or qualitative to model.

I have tried to come up with a list of critical factors that greatly affect the health of an economy over many years (such as education, infrastructure, healthcare, etc.). The list is below, and when you look at how we have performed in these areas, it’s rather condemning. Our shortcomings in these areas clearly have impeded the prosperity of the U.S. economy and have failed many of our fellow citizens over the past two decades or so.

Our problems : What’s holding back our nation’s productivity and economic growth and reducing opportunity

Ineffective and out-of-touch education systems Many of our high schools, vocational schools and community colleges do not properly prepare today’s younger generation for available professional-level jobs, many of which pay a multiple of the minimum wage. We used to be among the best in the world at training our workforce for good jobs, but now we are falling short. This is a huge reason for both inequality and lack of opportunity. Our inner-city high schools are failing their communities and are leaving too many behind. In some inner-city schools, fewer than 60% of students graduate, and of those who do, a significant number are not prepared for employment and are often relegated to a life of poverty. Proper training and retraining would also help in our rapidly changing technological world. Finally, skills training has become increasingly important over time, and the negligence of our education systems to be responsive to employers’ current needs has to have reduced GDP growth.

Soaring healthcare costs These now represent almost 20% of GDP — more than twice the cost per person compared with most developed nations. While we have some of the best healthcare in the world, our outcomes are not twice as good as those of the rest of the world. Some studies say that gains in life expectancy in the last 50 years were a significant contributor to U.S. national wealth (and health), possibly equal to half of GDP growth, as people were healthier and lived longer, which generally improved the quality of the labor force and productivity. This may no longer be true. Obesity costs our country $1.4 trillion a year because it drives so many illnesses (i.e., heart disease, diabetes, cancer, stroke and depression). Even worse, 70% of today’s youth (ages 17–24) are not eligible for military service, essentially due to poor academic skills (basic reading and writing) or health issues (often obesity or diabetes). And out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for the average American have skyrocketed over the last 20 years, causing huge anxiety, particularly for low-income families who have been hit with the highest increases in healthcare costs.

Excessive regulation and bureaucracy Excessive regulation for both large and small companies has reduced growth and business formation without making the economic system safer or better. The ease of starting a business in the United States has worsened, and both small business formation and employment growth have dropped to the lowest rates in 30 years. By some estimates, approximately $2 trillion is spent on federal regulations annually, which is about $15,000 per household. We need good regulations, and we have to get better at effectively implementing them – accomplishing the desired good outcomes – while minimizing unnecessary costs and bad unintended consequences.

Inability to plan and build infrastructure It took eight years to get a man to the moon (from idea to completion), but it now can take a decade to simply get the permits to build a bridge or a new solar field. The country that used to have the best infrastructure on the planet by most measures is now not even ranked among the top 20 developed nations, according to the World Economic Forum’s Basic Requirement Index, which reflects infrastructure along with other criteria. We are falling behind on airports, bridges, water, highways, aviation and more. One study examined the effect of poor infrastructure on efficiency (for example, poorly constructed highways, congested airports with antiquated air traffic control systems, aging electrical grids and old water pipes) and concluded this could all be costing us more than $200 billion a year. Philip K. Howard, who does some of the best academic work on America’s infrastructure, estimates it would cost $4 trillion to fix our aging infrastructure — and this is less than it would cost not to fix it. In fact, a recent study by Business Roundtable found that every dollar spent restoring our infrastructure system to good repair and expanding its capacity would produce nearly $4 in economic benefits. What happened to that “can-do” nation of ours?

Previously uncompetitive tax system for business Over the last 20 years, as the world reduced its tax rates, America did not. Our previous tax code was increasingly uncompetitive, overly complex and loaded with special-interest provisions that created winners and losers. This was driving down capital investment in the United States and giving an advantage to foreign companies, thereby reducing productivity and causing wages to remain stagnant. The good news is the recent changes in the U.S. tax system include many of the key ingredients to fuel economic expansion: a business tax rate that will make the United States competitive around the world along with provisions to free U.S. companies to bring back profits earned overseas.

Capricious and wasteful litigation system Our litigation system now costs 1.6% of GDP, 1% more than what it costs in the average OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) nation.

Frustrating immigration policies and reform Forty percent of foreign students who receive advanced degrees in science, technology and math (300,000 students annually) have no legal way of staying here, although many would choose to do so. Most students from countries outside the United States pay full freight to attend our universities, but many are forced to take the skills they learned here back home. From my vantage point, that means one of our largest exports is brainpower. We need more thoughtful, merit-based immigration policies. In addition, most Americans would like a permanent solution to DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and a path to legal status for law-abiding, tax-paying undocumented immigrants — this is tearing the body politic apart. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the failure to pass immigration reform earlier this decade is costing us 0.3% of GDP a year.

Inefficient mortgage markets The inability to reform mortgage markets has dramatically reduced mortgage availability. In fact, our analysis shows that, conservatively, more than $1 trillion in additional mortgage loans might have been made over a five-year period had we reformed our mortgage system. J.P. Morgan analysis indicates that the cost of not reforming the mortgage markets could be as high as 0.2% of GDP a year.

Dramatic reduction in labor force participation Wages for low-skilled work are no longer a living wage — the incentives to start work have been declining over time. Add to this the education issues already mentioned above. Two other contributing factors are that many former felons have a hard time getting jobs, and an estimated 2 million Americans are currently addicted to opioids (in 2017, a staggering 48,000 Americans died because of opioid overdoses). Some studies show that addiction is one of the major reasons why many men ages 25–54 are permanently out of work.

Student lending (and debt) Irrational student lending, soaring college costs and the burden of student loans have become a significant issue. The impact of student debt is now affecting mortgage credit and household formation – a $1,000 increase in student debt reduces subsequent homeownership rates by 1.8%. Recent research shows that the burdens of student debt are now starting to affect the economy.

Lack of proper federal government budgeting and planning This inevitably leads to waste, inefficiency and constraints on multi-year planning. One striking example: It may cost the military at least 20% of its spending power when budgets are not approved on time and continuous spending resolutions are imposed. And we don’t do some basic things well, like account for loans and guarantees properly and demand appropriate funding of public pension plans.

It is hard to look at these issues in their totality and not conclude that they have a significant negative effect on the great American economic engine. My view is if you add it all up, this dysfunction could easily have been a 1% drag on our growth rate. Before I talk about some ideas to address these issues, I would like to discuss one major debate currently in the echo chamber.

Is capitalism to blame? Is socialism better?

There is no question that capitalism has been the most successful economic system the world has ever seen. It has helped lift billions of people out of poverty, and it has helped enhance the wealth, health and education of people around the world. Capitalism enables competition, innovation and choice.

This is not to say that capitalism does not have flaws, that it isn’t leaving people behind and that it shouldn’t be improved. It’s essential to have a strong social safety net – and all countries should be striving for continuous improvement in regulations as well as social and welfare conditions.

Many countries are called social democracies, and they successfully combine market economies with strong social safety nets. This is completely different from traditional socialism. In a traditional socialist system, the government controls the means of production and decides what to produce and in what quantities, and, often, how and where the citizens work rather than leaving those decisions in the hands of the private sector.

When governments control companies, economic assets (companies, lenders and so on) over time are used to further political interests – leading to inefficient companies and markets, enormous favoritism and corruption. As Margaret Thatcher said, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” Socialism inevitably produces stagnation, corruption and often worse – such as authoritarian government officials who often have an increasing ability to interfere with both the economy and individual lives – which they frequently do to maintain power. This would be as much a disaster for our country as it has been in the other places it’s been tried.

I am not an advocate for unregulated, unvarnished, free-for-all capitalism. (Few people I know are.) But we shouldn’t forget that true freedom and free enterprise (capitalism) are, at some point, inexorably linked.

Successful economies will create large, successful companies.

Show me a country without any large, successful companies, and I will show you an unsuccessful country – with too few jobs and not enough opportunity as an outcome. And no country would be better off without its large, successful companies in addition to its midsized and small companies. Private enterprise is the true engine of growth in any country. Approximately 150 million people work in the United States: 130 million work in private enterprise and only 20 million people in government. As I pointed out earlier in this letter, large, successful companies generally provide good wages, even at the starting level, as well as insurance for employees and their families, retirement plans, training and other benefits. Companies in a free enterprise system drive innovation through capital investments and R&D; they are huge supporters of communities; and they often are at the forefront of social policy. Are they the reason for all of society’s ills? Absolutely not. However, in many ways and without ill intent, many companies were able to avoid – almost literally drive by – many of society’s problems. Now they are being called upon to do more – and they should.

1. All these issues are fixable, but that will happen only if we set aside partisan politics and narrow self-interest — our country must come first.

We need to set aside partisan politics.

None of these issues is exclusively owned by Democrats or Republicans. To the contrary, it is clear that partisan politics is stopping collaborative policy from being implemented, particularly at the federal level. This is not some special economic malaise we are in. This is about our society. We are unwilling to compromise. We are unwilling or unable to create good policy based on deep analytics. And our government is unable to reorganize and keep pace in the new world. Plain and simple, this is a collective failure to put the needs of society ahead of our personal, parochial and partisan interests. If we do not fix these problems, America’s moral, economic and military dominance may cease to exist.

In my view, we need a Marshall Plan for America. To do this, Democrats have to acknowledge that many of the things that have been done as a nation – often in the name of good – have sometimes not worked and need to be modified. Throwing money at problems does not always work. Recently, a report showed that the federal government wasted nearly $1 billion on charter schools due to mismanagement and lack of adequate oversight – this was money intended to help children. Democrats should acknowledge Republicans’ legitimate concerns that sending money to Washington tends to be simply seen as waste, ultimately offering little value to local communities. Republicans need to acknowledge that America should and can afford to provide a proper safety net for our elderly, our sick and our poor, as well as help create an environment that generates more opportunities and more income for more Americans. And if we can demonstrate that we are spending money wisely, we should spend more – think infrastructure and education funding. And that may very well mean taxing the wealthy more. If that happens, the wealthy should remember that if we improve our society and our economy, then they, in effect, are among the main winners.

Our nation requires strong political leaders to develop good, thoughtful policies, use their political skills to determine what is doable and exercise their leadership skills to lead people toward commonsense solutions.

We need to set aside our narrow self-interest.

We live in an increasingly complex world where companies, governments, unions and special interest groups vie for time, attention and favorable circumstances for their respective institutions. While it is a constitutional right to petition our government, and many organizations legitimately fight for the interests of their constituents, we all may have become too self-interested. I fear that this self-interest is part of what is destroying the glue that holds our society together. We all share a collective responsibility to improve our country.

I would like to give a few examples, which represent the tip of the iceberg (it would be easy to come up with thousands more).

• Governments, both federal and state, fight to keep military bases open that we don’t need and Veterans Affairs hospitals that are broken – making the military more costly and less effective. Our shortcomings are not just about inefficiencies; they border on immoral. In an incredibly depressing story, former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates describes how Congress took years longer than it should have to approve the building of U.S. Army personnel carriers that we needed in Iraq and Afghanistan to protect our soldiers from improvised explosive devices. While we dallied, many of our soldiers died or received terrible lifelong injuries.

Five states (California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey and New York) fight for unlimited state and local tax deductions because those five states reap 46% of the benefit – even worse, knowing that over 80% of the benefits from these deductions go to people who earn more than $320,000 a year.

• Businesses are equally guilty here. Just start digging through the tax code – buried in there are an extraordinary number of loopholes, credits and exemptions that aren’t about competitiveness or good tax policy. Suffice it to say, industry gets its share of tax breaks and forms of protection from legitimate competition. I could add hospitals, schools and unions to this list – none of our institutions is blameless.

While leaders obviously fight for their institutions, we all need to be able to advocate for policies that are good for our organizations without being bad for our country. And as a general matter, we, as citizens, should support policies that are good for our country even if they may not be good for us individually. For too long, too many have fought to use regulation and legislation to further their interests without appropriate regard for the needs of the country.

1. Governments must be better and more effective — we cannot succeed without their help. The rest of us could do a better job, too.

The U.S. federal government is becoming less relevant to what is going on in people’s lives. People have generally lost faith in the ability of institutions to deliver on their mission and meet societal needs. They are demanding change, and we must recognize that change is needed. We need dramatic reform of our global and federal institutions and how we attack our biggest societal challenges. There are signs of progress, particularly in how local governments are starting to attack pressing problems – the ones that directly affect people’s lives, like education, housing and employment. Look at Detroit and see how excellent leadership is fixing a once failing city. We should continue to empower local governments to address the needs of our society, but we should be asking our federal government to do the same.

I have already commented about needing real policies that include thoughtful plans to increase growth and create more opportunity for everyone. Faster growth will raise incomes, generate opportunities and create the wherewithal to fund improvements in our social welfare programs. (On pages 48-49, I describe some possible solutions to the problems previously highlighted on pages 43-44.) These solutions are not my own but are a synthesis of some of the best thoughts that we have seen. Some of these solutions are simple, and some are more complex. And obviously, if they were politically easy to put into practice, that would have been done by now. However, I am convinced that if we could get ideas like these implemented, economic growth and opportunity for all would be greatly enhanced.

Some Solutions to how we might drive growth, incomes and opportunity

Education We know what to do. High schools and community colleges should work with local businesses to create specific skills training programs, internships and apprenticeships that prepare graduating students to be job-ready — whether they go on to earn a credential, to work or to attend college. With 7 million job openings and 6 million unemployed workers in the United States, there is an opportunity for companies to work with local institutions, including community colleges and local apprenticeship programs. Business must be involved in this process, and it needs to be done locally because that is where the actual jobs are. Germany does an exceptional job at apprenticeships. Germany has one of the strongest education and training systems in the world, with about 1.5 million young people annually participating in apprenticeship programs that are paid opportunities to gain in-demand skills along with an education. The vocational schools and apprenticeship programs work directly with local businesses to ensure students are connected to available jobs upon graduation. Germany’s youth unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the world.

Some countries are now implementing mandatory preschool for children at three years of age. This is a wonderful policy. It makes childcare less expensive and has proved to be extraordinarily good for student education short and long term. Parents like it, too. Of course, the benefits may not be seen for many years, but this is precisely the type of long-term thinking in policymaking that we need.

Healthcare This may be our toughest, most complicated problem, but we know there are some things we can do to make the system work better. Some of the solutions may include aligning incentives better; trying to eliminate the extraordinary amount of money wasted on bureaucracy, administration and fraud; empowering employees to make better choices, with upfront transparency in employer plan pricing and options and the actual cost of medical procedures; developing better corporate wellness programs, focusing particularly on obesity and smoking; creating better tools to shop around for non-emergency care and manage healthcare expenses; and reducing the extraordinary expense for unwanted end-of-life care. Another obvious thing to do is to start teaching wellness, nutrition, health and exercise in K-12 classrooms nationwide.

Regulatory reform Starting a small business today generally requires multiple licenses, which take precious months to get. But it doesn’t end there. Talk with any small business owner and that person will describe the mountains of red tape, inefficient systems and a huge amount of documentation involved to operate the business. We need to reduce the number of licenses that are required to open and run a small business. In addition, we should look at the excessive state and local rules affecting small businesses, consolidating and eliminating unnecessary rules and regulations where possible. And all regulations should have a thorough cost-benefit analysis and be periodically reviewed for current relevancy.

Infrastructure investment The 2015 transportation spending bill, Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act), is intended to fund surface transportation programs — including highways — at over $305 billion through 2020. Its aim is to improve mobility on America’s highways; create jobs and support economic growth; decrease bureaucracy in getting projects approved and completed — and we need to finish its implementation. Again, experience from other countries may help. We could learn from Germany and Canada, for example, whose officials endorsed large infrastructure projects and sped through permitting in two to three years by forcing federal, state and local approvers to simultaneously work through a single vetting process. Significantly reducing the time of permitting also dramatically reduces the cost and uncertainty around making major capital investments.

Tax credits and benefits The business tax changes in the 2017 tax law made the United States more competitive, benefiting American workers today and strengthening our economy for the long term. In 2018, nominal wages increased 3.3% — the fastest rate of growth since 2008 — and job openings exceeded the number of unemployed workers for the first time since the federal government started tracking these data in 2000. Beyond this important progress, there is still more that policymakers could do to help working Americans. Of the 150 million Americans working today, approximately 21 million earn between $7.25 an hour (the prevailing federal minimum wage) and $10.10 an hour. It is hard to live on $7-$10 an hour, particularly for families (even if two household members are working). While it would be acceptable to increase minimum wages, this should be done locally and carefully so it does not increase unemployment. Perhaps a more effective step would be to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Today, the EITC supplements low- to moderate-income working individuals and couples, particularly with children. For example, a single mother with two children earning $9 an hour (approximately $20,000 a year) could receive a tax credit of more than $5,000 at year’s end. Last year, the EITC program cost the United States about $63 billion, and 25 million individuals received the credit. We should convert the EITC to make it more like a negative income payroll tax, which would spread the benefit, reduce fraudulent and improper payments, and get it into more people’s hands. Workers without children receive a very small tax credit – this should be dramatically expanded, too.

Litigation While the rule of law and the right of plaintiffs to get their day in court are sacrosanct, there have to be ways to improve this system. One example, which works in many other countries, is to have the loser pay in some circumstances. Clearly, this would have to be done in such a way as to ensure that aggrieved parties are not denied appropriate access to our justice system. But we need a way to reduce frivolous litigation designed principally to extract fees for lawyers. We also need to reduce the time and the cost necessary to achieve justice by adding more judges and creating more specialty courts to deal with complex issues.

Immigration There has been support for bipartisan comprehensive legislation that provides substantial money for border security, creates more merit-based immigration, makes DACA permanent and gives a path to legal status or citizenship for law-abiding, hard-working, undocumented immigrants. We know this is no easy feat, but we should pass and enact legislation to resolve immigration.

Mortgage lending Things can be done to reform mortgage markets, which would increase mortgage availability — as I mentioned in the previous sidebar on pages 43-44.

Labor force participation We have already mentioned two critical solutions that would help improve labor force participation — make work pay more by expanding the EITC and provide graduating students with work skills that will lead to better paying jobs. Remember, jobs bring dignity. That first job is often the first rung on the ladder. People like working, and studies show that once people start working, they continue working. Jobs and living wages lead to better social outcomes — more household formation, more marriages and children, and less crime, as well as better health and overall well-being.

Reducing recidivism of those who have been incarcerated is not only important to citizens with a criminal record and their families — but it can also have profound positive implications for public safety. Last year, we welcomed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s proposed changes to allow banks more flexibility in hiring citizens convicted of a crime. Our responsibility to recruit, hire, retain and train talented workers extends to this population, and we will support re-entry programs and give convicted and/or formerly incarcerated Americans a path to well-paying jobs. Finally, we should all be gratified that the government now seems to be taking the opioid problem very seriously.

Student lending.  We should have programs to ameliorate the burden of student loans on some former students. We would be well-advised to have more properly designed underwriting standards around the creation of student loans. Direct government lending to students has grown almost 500% over the last 10 years – and it has not all been responsible lending. It would also be helpful for the government to disclose student lending programs as if they were accountable on the same basis as a bank. Addressing these factors would lead to far better, and healthier, student lending.

Proper budgeting and planning. All levels of government should do proper budgeting and planning – and on a multi-year basis. It is particularly important that most federal programs — think military, infrastructure and education — have good long-term plans and be held accountable to execute them. When the government says it is going to spend money, it should tell the American people what the expected outcome is and report on it. It should account for loans the same way the private sector does, and it should be required to do cost-benefit analysis.

Somehow we need to help reinvent government to make it more efficient and nimble in the new world. While the federal government remains somewhat in a stalemate, we have seen governors and mayors at the state and local levels taking active control and framing effective solutions. They are helping to create a laboratory of what works and are often at the forefront with initiatives that restore confidence in the ability of government to deliver. We also call upon CEOs and other leaders to step up and offer non-parochial solutions.

One final thought: If I were king for a day, I would always have a competitive business tax system and invest in infrastructure and education as a sine qua non to maximize the long-term health and growth of our economy and our citizens. I would not trade these issues off – I would figure out a way to properly pay for them.

1. CEOs: Your country needs you!

Despite the fact that CEOs are not generally viewed with high levels of trust, surprisingly, the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer global report – encompassing a general global population of more than 33,000 respondents – shows that 76% think CEOs should take a stand on challenging issues and that 75% actually trust their employer.

We believe CEOs can and should get involved – particularly when they or their companies can uniquely help design policies that are good for America. At JPMorgan Chase, we are strengthening our public policy teams to take our advocacy and ideas to the next level. We believe the best way to scale programs that we have seen work in cities, states and countries around the globe is to develop actionable public policies that allow more people to benefit from economic growth.

We can use our unique capabilities, data and resources to help inform infrastructure policies, corporate governance policies, affordable housing policies, financial education policies and inclusion policies, as well as small business financing and formation, community and economic development, and others. In addition, while almost all companies can help further job skills, training, and diversity and inclusion efforts, each company can also add value where it has distinct capabilities, like expertise around healthcare, infrastructure or technology.

It’s not enough just for companies to meet the letter and the spirit of the law. They can also aggressively work to improve society. They can take positions on public policy that they think are good for the country. And they can decide, with proper policies and regulatory oversight, with whom and how they will do business.

However, this does get complex. What companies cannot do is abridge the law of the land or abrogate the rights of voters and their representatives to set the law of the land. There are circumstances in which JPMorgan Chase is called upon to do things and/or set policies that should have been set by the federal government – in effect, these are decisions that the voter must decide. We work very hard to try to stay on the right side of all these issues.

In any event, things have changed. In the past, boards and advisors to boards advised company CEOs to keep their head down and stay out of the line of fire. Now the opposite may be true. If companies and CEOs do not get involved in public policy issues, making progress on all these problems may be more difficult.

1. America’s global role and engagement are indispensable.

One of the biggest uncertainties in the world today is America’s role on the world stage. A more secure and more prosperous world is also good for the long-term security and prosperity of the United States. And America’s role in building that more secure world has been and will likely continue to be indispensable.

While there are many legitimate complaints about international organizations (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations), the world is better off with these institutions. America should engage and exercise its power and influence cautiously and judiciously. We should all understand that global laws, standards and norms will be established whether or not our nation participates in setting them. It is certain that we will be happier with the evolution of global standards if we help craft and implement them. We should not abdicate this role. To the contrary, it is critical that America help develop the best global standards in trade, immigration, corporate governance and many other important issues.