{"id":264392,"date":"2019-02-05T17:36:10","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T22:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=264392"},"modified":"2023-11-08T20:41:20","modified_gmt":"2023-11-09T01:41:20","slug":"at-kennedy-school-rep-joe-kennedy-iii-takes-aim-at-shareholder-first-mentality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2019\/02\/at-kennedy-school-rep-joe-kennedy-iii-takes-aim-at-shareholder-first-mentality\/","title":{"rendered":"A call for a kinder capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t
\"Rep.

U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy III brought his crusade for \u201cmoral capitalism\u201d to Harvard.<\/p>

Jon Chase\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t

\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tWork & Economy\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t

\n\t\tA call for a kinder capitalism\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t
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\n\t\tBrett Milano\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tHarvard Correspondent\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\tRep. Kennedy advocates a new economic agenda that addresses the needs of embattled workers\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n\n\n\n
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Speaking at Harvard Law School, U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D., Mass.) called Monday for a new national economic agenda based on \u201cmoral capitalism\u201d that addresses the needs of embattled workers.<\/p>\n

In recent months, Kennedy has been pushing for a fresh economic sensibility. Speaking at the John T. Dunlop Forum on the topic of \u201cBuilding a Moral Capitalism,\u201d\u00a0he argued that the recent federal government shutdown represented capitalism at its least moral.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a particular honor to be here after the month we\u2019ve had in Washington,\u201d he told a full house at Wasserstein Hall on the Harvard Law School<\/a> campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor 35 days, the president of the United States told 800,000 federal employees to make do without their paychecks,\u201d said Kennedy, a 2009 graduate of the Law School.\u00a0\u201cFull-time workers lined up at soup kitchens; they begged for acts of mercy at their banks. Air traffic controllers put in 10-hour shifts and then went off and worked for Uber. Workers who served government meals are still not guaranteed one cent of the pay they missed.<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cBeneath it all is an administration that sees the livelihood of ordinary Americans as a bargaining chip they are willing to trade away. For our president, it is another notch in the belt of how he has broken every populist promise he\u2019s ever made.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, he said the current problems dated to before 2016, since \u201cDecades of trickle-down has created a tsunami.\u201d He cited some companies for routinely shortchanging workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile this happens, we subject the poor to endless tests of character for their next hot meal,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we dehumanize immigrants with one hand while exploiting their cheap labor with another.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n

\u201cWe live in a country that has made it difficult to be middle class, excruciating to be poor, and downright impossible to be \u2018poor and\u2019 \u2014 poor and black, poor and female, poor and gay, poor and sick.”<\/p>\nJoe Kennedy III<\/cite><\/blockquote>\r\n\n

Kennedy called for legislation to give less rein to corporations and fewer tax breaks to the rich, and for Congress to \u201cfinally flex its muscles and actively dis-incentivize a \u2018shareholder-first\u2019 mentality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must demand a system of fair taxation that demands significantly more from those on top,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He also called for opportunity to be shared more widely. Only 15 percent of last year\u2019s government contracts, he noted, went to female- and minority-owned businesses. \u201cThat is not opportunity-restricting. It is opportunity-hoarding,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\r\n

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