I want to read this book!

There’s a new book out that I want to read but I’m not sure I’ll have time though – I’m reading other books. The title is The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America — and How to Undo His Legacy, written by David Gelles. Finally, finally, finally, somebody has written about the devastating impact of Jack Welch’s style of management. He always received these hagiographies that I felt were wrong and finally someone is calling out something different – Jack Welch had an immense deleterious impact on the business world and the middle class.

I even went to a webinar and the speaker brought out a slide of the book, telling us that this man is the reason workers are suffering from anxiety, depression and burnout. He brought us the world we are currently living in. That was surprising. Usually, everybody thinks Jack Welch was the greatest CEO and we all should emulate him.

I haven’t gotten the book yet, but I believe the book discusses the history of business, capitalism and Jack Welch and the grievous impact on workers. Here are three articles, all originating from New York Times, although I did try to find other sources so others can read the articles.

1. “The Jack Welch Effect” by David Leonhardt, New York Times, June 5, 2022.
2. “How Jack Welch Revolutionized the American Economy” by Kurt Anderson, New York Times, June 2, 2022.
3. “How Jack Welch’s Reign at G.E. Gave Us Elon Musk’s Twitter Feed” by David Gelles, New York Times, May 21, 2022.

“Under Welch, G.E. unleashed a wave of mass layoffs and factory closures that other companies followed. The trend helped destabilize the American middle class. Profits began flowing not back to workers in the form of higher wages, but to big investors in the form of stock buybacks. And G.E. began doing everything it could to pay as little in taxes as possible.”

“The Jack Welch Effect”, New York Times, by David Leonhardt, June 5, 2022

Most of the descriptions about Jack’s effect on business and capitalism are not surprising to me because I have felt the same way on more or less the same lines. The focus on returning money to the shareholders to the exclusion of everyone else, the financialization of businesses and managing the profits, and the aggressiveness of cost cutting all contributed to the income inequality we have today. Jack Welch was the personification of that.

So that is not surprising.

What surprised me was the idea of him being an Internet troll.

I do vaguely remember him declaring the labor numbers from the Obama’s administration as being fudged to make the administration look better and I thought that was a weird thing for an ex-CEO to say. I didn’t realize that was the start of the conspiracy theories or maybe the beginning tremblors. Now looking back, I think, “What a disgusting guy! Contributing to conspiracy theories!”

Hopefully, the book will be the start of a reassessment of Jack’s contribution to the capitalism from 1980s through today and start changing people’s mind on how to conduct business.

Note: the other books I’m reading right now are The Digital Mindset and Disrupting Finance.