Eighty-three years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a new plan for tackling income inequality.
FDR argued companies were intensifying the gap between rich and poor not by showering investors with too much wealth—but rather by paying them too little.
“The evil has been a growing one,” FDR said in a speech on March 3, 1936. “It has now reached disturbing proportions from the standpoint of the inequality it represents and on its serious effect on the federal revenue.”
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This article was originally published on The Wall Street Journal.
Further reading
Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor
Jason Zweig, The Devil’s Financial Dictionary
Jason Zweig, Your Money and Your Brain
Jason Zweig, The Little Book of Safe Money
George E. Lent, The Impact of the Undistributed Profits Tax, 1936-1937
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, speech to the U.S. Congress, March 3, 1936
Michael J. Mauboussin and Dan Callahan, “Disbursing Cash to Shareholders: Frequently Asked Questions About Buybacks and Dividends” (Credit Suisse, 2014)