You Know Income Inequality Is Bad When an Investment Bank CEO Says It’s Destabilizing the Nation

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein must be spending some quality time listening to protesting fast food workers in Manhattan. This week during an appearance on CBS This Morning, he said he’s come to believe that income inequality is “destabilizing” the United States and is “responsible for the divisions in the country.”

In the above video, Blankfein, whose 2013 Goldman compensation of $23 million and personal net worth of $450 million places him firmly in the upper echelons of the 1 percent, acknowledged that “too much of the GDP over the last generation has gone to too few of the people.” He also expressed concern that America’s “divisions could get wider.”

“If you can’t legislate, you can’t deal with problems. [If] you can’t deal with problems, you can’t drive growth, and you can’t drive the success of the country. It’s a very big issue and something that has to be dealt with,” said Blankfein.

So does this mean Blankfein’s suddenly going to get on board with the push for raising the national minimum wage? Is he going to convince his fellow CEOs—whose annual salary is now 300 times that of the average American employee—that their workers deserve more equitable compensation? While one of his suggestions for ensuring that America stays on the path of peace and prosperity is to “make the pie grow,” Blankfein’s approach to doing that might not serve the interests of the average person.

In October 2008, at the height of the financial crisis that Goldman helped create and when 10.1 million Americans were unemployed, the investment bank received a $10 billion bailout from the federal government through the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Three years later, in 2011, the bank turned around and offshored 1,000 employees to Singapore, where labor costs are cheaper.

As Matt Yglesias quipped over at Vox, “obviously if Blankfein wants to take action on this personally he could start giving away his whole salary.” However, as Yglesias aptly points out, “inequality is a systematic political issue and not something that’s effectively addressed through individual action.” Still, perhaps it’s a good sign that the head of America’s wealthiest financial institution recognizes that income inequality is truly a problem.