Philanthropists From The United States

"To fully understand what these trade agreements are all about, we should remember what Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, said back in 1998. "Ideally," he said, "you'd have every plant you own on a barge to move with currencies and changes in the economy." What Mr. Welch was saying is that in the CEO's perfect world, companies like his would effortlessly move from country to country, wherever labor was cheapest, taxes were lowest, and environmental protections were weakest. In other words, if the U.S. increased its minimum wage, a company could simply pull up anchor and ship its jobs to Mexico. If Mexico strengthened its environmental laws, no problem, that company would simply move to China. If China banned sweatshops, then the company could just move to Vietnam. Until Vietnam decided to increase taxes, in which case... Well, you get the idea. This is the essence of what the "race to the bottom" is all about, and why millions of Americans are rejecting unfettered free trade. Mr. Welch's analogy of a company on a barge was brutally honest. In this era of free trade, he basically acknowledged that corporations have absolutely no loyalty to the countries where they are based or to the workers they employ. That's exactly what these corporate-backed, corporate-written free trade deals are all about. They really aren't about trade at all. Trade, when structured in a fair manner, can be a driver of increased wages and widely shared prosperity. But free trade agreements aren't fair. Rather, they are all about increasing the profits of multinational corporations that have allegiance only to their bottom line."

"It is time, as a nation, that we stop worshipping corporate greed and businessmen like Jack Welch, the former head of General Electric. While in corporate circles, and in the corporate media, Jack Welch is regarded as a brilliant and successful businessman, the truth is that he represents almost everything that is wrong with contemporary capitalism. As the CEO of General Electric, Welch moved dozens of GE factories abroad, outsourced hundreds of thousands of jobs, and slashed benefits for many of his employees. To add insult to injury, after destroying the retirement dreams of so many of his workers, he received a $400 million golden parachute for himself. This type of greed and ruthless capitalism is not an economic model we should be embracing. We can do better; we must do better."

"CEO of General Electric for 30 years, Jack Welch was declared the greatest manager of the 20th century. Focusing firmly on results, he revolutionized management to achieve phenomenal growth for his company."

"Clearly for most Americans, everything is getting worse and worse. The only beneficiaries are the Chainsaw Dunlaps and Neutron Jacks."

"Most Americans today take it for granted that the workplace is unbearably stressful, fearful, and organized to transfer much of the wealth up to a tiny, privileged class of executives and shareholders at the expense of the many. But it wasn't always that way. Long before Neutron Jack, General Electric's stated relationship to their employees was deliberately paternalistic, respectful, secure, and symbiotic. In 1962, right around the time that young Jack Welch joined GE, Earl S. Willis, the manager of employee benefits at General Electric, wrote, "Maximizing employment security is a prime company goal." Later, he wrote, "The employee who can plan his economic future with reasonable certainty is an employer's most productive asset. Contrast this to Jack Welch, who bragged after one hundred twenty-eight thousand firings, one hundred twenty-eight thousand potentially ruined families, that "only the buildings remained standing." Oh, and his billion dollars in savings, his $15 million annual pension, and his company 737."

"In spite of his loathsome, King George personality, what is most appalling is how Jack Welch managed to become absolutely adored by corporate America's white-collar suckers. His minions who stood absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose by worshipping his philosophy of destroying tens of thousands in order to enrich a few, called themselves "Welch-heads" in another example of our Reagan-era peasant-like behavior."

"Welch retired just a few days before the terror attacks of 9/11 and was awarded a severance package worthy of a Saudi prince. GE gave Neutron Jack an annual pension of $9 million, health and life insurance, a $15 million Manhattan penthouse, unlimited use of the company's private Boeing 737 jet, a limo, country club memberships, VIP seats at New York Nicks and Yankees games, $7.5 million in furnishings and decorations for his four homes, and more. All this for a man who amassed a personal fortune thought to be close to a billion dollars during his years at GE, while firing one hundred twenty-eight thousand workers. The extent of Neutron Jack's pillage was only revealed after his wife busted him sleeping with another woman. She filed for divorce and sued when Welch offered her a typically Neutron Jack settlement of $15 million, a sum her lawyer termed "offensive." The ensuing Clash of the Gargoyles in the cracked Welch mansion exposed the grotesque size of his compensation, leading to a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and eventually a pledge by Welch to pay back to GE a part of his retirement package."

"United for Fair Economy, an advocacy group, described Welch's feudal wealth this way: "If Mr. Welch's $83 million total compensation in 1998 were represented by the height of the Empire State Building, how tall would the buildings represented by other GE workers be? The typical factory worker, earning $40,000 a year, would be represented by a building just eight inches tall. A well-compensated General Electric manager, earning $100,000 a year, would be represented by a building less than two feet tall. Considered globally, a typical employee working in a GE factory in Mexico and making $4,500 a year would be represented by a building less than one inch tall- smaller than an anthill.""

"One of the office world's most celebrated plutocrats was General Electric CEO Jack Welch, who coined the famous Welchism that employees have unlimited juice to squeeze, and who loved to tell people to "face reality." He earned the nickname Neutron Jack for having fired one hundred twenty-eight thousand of his employees and later boasting that all that was left after his mass firings were the buildings. That, and an enormous amount of cash for Jack and his happy shareholders. Yuk-yuk-yuk. Some people may not find his kind of humor to their liking, but it probably bowled 'em over in Kennebunkport, or the Hamptons, or the Berkshires, or any number of corporate billionaire hangouts... Of course, this doesn't mean that Jack Welch doesn't have a heart. In his autobiography Straight From the Heart, a New Age-infused ego-romp that sold like hotcakes to the credulous masses, Welch did manage to share his thoughts with us on the importance of friendship... buried in the section "A Short Reflection On Golf." Just in case you didn't think he was, uh, human, you see."

"Business success is less a function of grandiose predictions than it is a result of being able to respond rapidly to real changes as they occur."

"Business has to be fun. For too many people, it's "just a job.""

"Arrogance is a killer, and wearing ambition on one's sleeve can have the same effect. There is a fine line between arrogance and self-confidence. Legitimate self-confidence is a winner. The true test of self-confidence is the courage to be open—to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source. Self-confident people aren't afraid to have their views challenged. They relish the intellectual combat that enriches ideas."

"Getting the right people in the right jobs is a lot more important than developing a strategy."

"Getting every employee's mind into the game is a huge part of what a CEO job is all about. Taking everyone's best ideas and transferring them to others is the secret. There's nothing more important."

"Being a CEO is the nuts! A whole jumble of thoughts come to mind: Over the top. Wild. Fun. Outrageous. Crazy. Passion. Perpetual motion. The give-and-take. Meetings into the night. Incredible friendships. Fine wine. Celebrations. Great golf courses. Big decisions in the real game. Crises and pressure. Lots of swings. A few home runs. The thrill of winning. The pain of losing. It's as good as it gets! You get paid a lot, but the real payoff is in the fun."

"If you like business, you have to like GE. If you like ideas, you have to love GE. This is a place where ideas can flow freely from and through more than 20 separate businesses and more than 300,000 employees. Boundaryless behavior allows ideas to come from anywhere. We formalize our freewheeling style in a series of operating meetings that blend into one another."

"At the heart of this culture is an understanding that an organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive business advantage."

"There are advantages to being the chairman. One of my favorite perks was picking out an issue and doing what I called a "deep dive." It's spotting a challenge where you think you can make a difference—one that looks like it would be fun—and then throwing the weight of your position behind it. Some might justifiably call it "meddling." I've often done this—just about everywhere in the company."

"Change has no constituency—and a perceived revolution has even less."

"In manufacturing, we try to stamp out variance. With people, variance is everything."

"In GE every day, there's an informal, unspoken personnel review—in the lunchroom, the hallways, and in every business meeting. That intense people focus—testing everyone in a myriad of environments—defines managing at GE. In the end, that's what GE is. We build great people, who then build great products and services."

"I wanted to change the rules of engagement, asking for more— from fewer. I was insisting that we had to have only the best people...If you wanted excellence, at a minimum, the ambience had to reflect excellence."

"The best way to support dreams and stretch is to set apart small ideas with big potential, then give people positive role models and the resources to turn small projects into big businesses."

"To his direction, Mr. Carnegie and others entrusted a fund for certain studies among Negroes. This is standard American procedure; if there is a job to be done and a Negro fit to do it, do not give the job or the responsibility to the Negro; give it to some white man and let the Negro work under him."

"Each generation repeats its leaders. Each sees men endowed with superior inventiveness, energy, and genius for business, inspired by love of power and possession, launch selfish schemes-Carnegies, Rockefellers, Goulds…Each generation has had its Henry George, its Bellamy, its Bryan, intent on persuading mankind that he had found the way, could lead men to the good life. In each generation employer and employee have faced the decision-war or cooperation."

"Old-time steel workers who listened to the speeches on June 5, 1936 recalled the relentless war by Andrew Carnegie and his henchmen to preserve the open shop, and the repeated failures of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers to organize the steel industry."

"the great fathers Jefferson, Lincoln and Jackson had given way to Carnegie, Morgan and DuPont."

"in 1901, when Andrew Carnegie offered to augment the Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundation's trust with enough money to fund the construction of sixty-five public library branches for the City of New York, the history of North American public libraries entered a new phase, one that, among other things, led to making library services for children and young adults a priority (Lyndenberg 1972)."

"No, Your Majesty, I do not like kings, but I do like a man be­hind a king when I find him."

"... I came fortunately upon Darwin’s and Spencer’s works “The Data of Ethics,” “First Principles,” “Social Statics,” “The Descent of Man.” Reaching the pages which explain how man has absorbed such mental foods as were favorable to him, retaining what was salutary, rejecting what was deleterious, I remember that light came as in a flood and all was clear. Not only had I got rid of theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution. "All is well since all grows better” became my motto, my true source of comfort. Man was not created with an instinct for his own degradation, but from the lower he had risen to the higher forms. Nor is there any conceivable end to his march to perfection. His face is turned to the light; he stands in the sun and looks upward."

"The sound rule in busi­ness is that you may give money freely when you have a sur­plus, but your name never—nei­ther as en­dorser nor as mem­ber of a cor­po­ra­tion with in­di­vid­ual li­a­bil­ity"

"Salary, (I said, quite offended) what do I care for salary? I do not want the salary; I want the position. It is glory enough to go back to the Pittsburgh Division in your former place. You can make my salary just what you please and you need not give me any more than what I am getting now... Oh, please don't speak to me of money!"

"It is not the rich man's son that the young struggler for advancement has to fear in the race of life, nor his nephew, nor his cousin. Let him look out for the "dark horse" in the boy who begins by sweeping out the office."

"It may fairly be said that no man is to be extolled for doing what he cannot help doing, nor is he to be thanked by the community to which he only leaves wealth at death. Men who leave vast sums in this way may fairly be thought men who would not have left it at all had they been able to take it with them. The memories of such cannot be held in grateful remembrance, for there is no grace in their gifts."

"As to the second mode, that of leaving wealth at death for public uses, it may be said that this is only a means for the disposal of wealth, provided a man is content to wait until he is dead before it becomes of much good in the world."

"Wise men will soon conclude that, for the best interests of the members of their families and of the state, such bequests are an improper use of their means."

"Observation teaches that, generally speaking, it is not well for the children that they should be so burdened. Neither is it well for the state. Beyond providing for the wife and daughters moderate sources of income, and very moderate allowances indeed, if any, for the sons, men may well hesitate, for it is no longer questionable that great sums bequeathed oftener work more for the injury than for the good of the recipients."

"Why should men leave great fortunes to their children? If this is done from affection, is it not misguided affection?"

"[S]urplus wealth should be considered as a sacred trust, to be administered during the lives of its owners, by them as trustees, for the good of the community in which and from which it had been acquired."

"Such, in my opinion, is the true Gospel concerning Wealth, obedience to which is destined some day to solve the problem of the Rich and the Poor, and to bring "Peace on earth, among men Good Will.""

"The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced."

"Thus is the problem of Rich and Poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee of the poor; intrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself. (pp. 663-664)"

"Those who would administer wisely must, indeed, be wise, for one of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity."

"Upon the sacredness of property civilization itself depends—the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions."

"While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of the few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race."

"The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship."

"Did you ever sum up these prizes and think how very little the millionaire has beyond the peasant, and how very often his additions tend not to happiness but to misery!"

"Watch the costs and the profits take care of themselves."

"Three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves."

"To be popular is easy; to be right when right is unpopular, is noble... I repudiate with scorn the immoral doctrine, 'Our country, right or wrong'."