At a private lunch in Davos, Jamie Dimon was asked about the elephant in the room

Most Davos events are off the record unless speakers agree otherwise. After the lunch, Dimon kindly gave us permission to share the remarks below.

INTRODUCTION: There’s an elephant hanging over Davos, which is Donald Trump. Jamie, you actually know Donald Trump. How do you see the US economy under Donald Trump?

JAMIE DIMON: I’m going to take a longer term view. Because every time I come here, everyone gets very depressed about the local things [that people are worrying about at the moment]. There are legitimate concerns long-term, in my view, about nuclear war and policy and stuff like that. But the world has become a better place every 20 years for the last 2,000 years. Murder by mankind including war is coming down. When my grandfather was born, there was no healthcare. There were no airplanes. There were no boats. There were no trains. There were no communications. No Internet. No widespread knowledge. It will be a completely different world but a much better place in a hundred years. I’m not surprised that China is rising up. That’s happened every year since we’ve been here, so I’m surprised people are acting like it’s a tectonic shift.

The big thing I hear here all the time is that the problem we all missed — that the elite missed — is that we weren’t listening well, and people were suffering, and we didn’t know it. I just don’t think that’s true. We’ve always known that jobs, medicine, and healthcare matter and that we’ve had a problem with wealth inequality and lower-income wages. What I haven’t heard about is the solutions. And there are solutions. The reason it got so bad is bad public policy. People talk about productivity in America. We spent $2 trillion on war. We have an unbelievable regulatory policy. We’ve had two government shutdowns, sequestration… just bad policy…

America is going to be better in 10 years than it is today. And there are solutions. I think negative income tax is a big solution for the low-skilled, to give people a living wage and the dignity of a job. I think that technology is the best thing that ever happened to mankind. It’s an absurd notion that somehow, ‘My God, what are we going to do when driverless cars come along?’ It’s going to save lives on the road. And maybe one day we’ll all be working four days a week and not five or six days a week. In fact, I think in Europe they’re already down to four days a week. [Laughter.]

So I think people should take a deep breath and think more about what’s going to happen long-term and not just tomorrow.

Donald Trump has put some professional people around himself. Experienced. Successful. I know a lot of people seem to think that success and experience are reasons you shouldn’t serve in public office. But they are knowledgeable and smart and they’ve been around the world. And hopefully when we go from one-liners — forget the one-liners and tweets — to serious policy, maybe we’ll do the things that help America grow better and help the average American.