• How do we define the "American Dream"? What is it and what is it not?
• Who is entitled to the American Dream? Just Americans? Foreigners? H1Bs?
• Why should the American Dream be everyone's dream?

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Jamie Dimon has been warning since March that "the American Dream is alive, but it's slipping out of reach for too many peopleand for future generations."

Six months later, JPMorganChase is pointing to a specific, dollar-quantified reason why: Millions of aging small-business owners are approaching retirement with no real plan for what happens to the businesses they builtand the dysfunction is only getting harder to ignore.

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A new report set for release Monday, Powering 10 Million Small Businesses, puts a hard number on the problem. Chase surveyed 1,000 business owners and found that while 70% are in the early stages of succession planning, just 8% say they've reached an advanced stage. The bank frames that gap against a wave it says is already underway: Roughly 12 million businesses, representing nearly $10 trillion in assets, are expected to change hands over the next decade. That transition is even more pronounced in industries the bank considers critical to national security, where more than half of firms have an owner age 55 or older.
It's the latest entry in a growing body of research about the Great Wealth Transfer or the Silver Tsunami, which is playing out rather more like a long, reluctant exit, stage left for the baby boomers who hold most of America's wealth.

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Fitch said:

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Farcical to keep repeating that there will be a mass inter-generational wealth transfer. It's gonna be destroyed by draw down for personal healthcare, lifestyle creep, oversupply vs contracting demand and currency debasement.

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HumpitPuryear said:

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All of these established businesses for sale seem like a big opportunity to me. The biggest impediment to small business ownership is government regulation and red tape. The fees (taxes) are over burdensome and the time spent trying to get a permit or license or just a question answered is ridiculous. None of it is designed to protect the consumer or the environment or cut fraud. Its sole purpose is to enlarge and fund government.

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Helicopter Ben said:

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The truth is, people are correct to say the American dream is slipping away. There are quite a few reasons for this, and damn near all of them lead back to the government as primary cause. We're overtaxed and over regulated. It's way too difficult to start a business and comply with everything the government demands. Not to mention that, as we saw with Covid, the government can just shut you down by decree. On top of that, the government is spending and debasing our currency to worthlessness. You never really own your home even when it's paid off. Property taxes are essentially a wealth tax on unrealized gains.

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Millions of aging small-business owners are approaching retirement with no real plan for what happens to the businesses they built and the dysfunction is only getting harder to ignore.

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Fitch said:

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Farcical to keep repeating that there will be a mass inter-generational wealth transfer. It's gonna be destroyed by draw down for personal healthcare, lifestyle creep, oversupply vs contracting demand and currency debasement.

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JWinTX said:

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Guys, don't worry…I've been told that the warm embrace of socialism will finally fix this!!

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YouBet said:

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For all the snark about Jamie, this is a real problem:

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Millions of aging small-business owners are approaching retirement with no real plan for what happens to the businesses they built and the dysfunction is only getting harder to ignore.

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A couple of reasons this is happening but doesn't account for all of them are:

(1) small business owners do not go a good job of building a bench and/or planning ahead what they will do with the business when they are done.

(2) whole lotta kids want nothing to do with the family business so it just dies with the owner.

I've seen these two specially in several cases and I'm quite sure many of you have as well.

The PE thing is real too. Their encroachment into seemingly anything and almost everything these days is kind of wild to me. Have seen this one firsthand in our family. PE company came out of nowhere, bought family company, and that part of the family is sitting pretty now. Zero reason to pass it on because now they are all rich.

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Pinochet said:

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Which brings me to my next point - Dimon is just trying to make it ok to sell to PE. Lots of people act like PE is evil but they can't define private equity. It's a great way to cash out the value of something you built. Get a good PE buyer and lots of customers will never notice. Get a ****ty manager/PE/entitled asshat kid, and you just destroy all the value and the business.

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ToddyHill said:

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Bingo.

The public will never know the full extent of how JPM helped to create the financial crisis in 2008. Do a little digging, and one will find out JPM was upside down in their Derivatives trading. The Feds couldn't have the nation's largest bank fail, so Washington Mutual became the sacrificial lamb and was gifted to JPM for 1.9 billion. The interesting part is that WAMU filed two bankruptcies (one corporate, one for the bank), and as it turned out, the spoils Dimon wanted were in Safe Harbor under the corporate umbrella. Even Sheila Bair went to Congress and sought approval for changes in banking regulations that included WAMU. Congress approved the change that would include corporate assets, but they weren't retroactive to include WAMU.

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I didn't truly understand the mess WAMU and JPM created till doing research cause I was curious how the hole financial network collapsed.

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Pinochet said:

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YouBet said:

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For all the snark about Jamie, this is a real problem:

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Millions of aging small-business owners are approaching retirement with no real plan for what happens to the businesses they built and the dysfunction is only getting harder to ignore.

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A couple of reasons this is happening but doesn't account for all of them are:

(1) small business owners do not go a good job of building a bench and/or planning ahead what they will do with the business when they are done.

(2) whole lotta kids want nothing to do with the family business so it just dies with the owner.

I've seen these two specially in several cases and I'm quite sure many of you have as well.

The PE thing is real too. Their encroachment into seemingly anything and almost everything these days is kind of wild to me. Have seen this one firsthand in our family. PE company came out of nowhere, bought family company, and that part of the family is sitting pretty now. Zero reason to pass it on because now they are all rich.

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My dad would be fine passing along his successful local brick and mortar business to my little brother, but my brother that just ran it into the ground in less than a year. I think there's a little bit of a problem with the younger generation being so coddled that they never learned how to execute on anything. Little brother didn't finish his first semester of college, never moved out of my dad's house, and has never had a job. He thinks he is somehow capable of running a business with $1M+ of revenue every year with no experience, never having worked more than 30 hours in a week and averaging around 15-20 of surfing the internet at the computer in the shop. That generation is a ****ing disaster. I'm older and told my dad just sell the business and take the money for himself. Little brother can go get a real job somewhere or live under a bridge.

Which brings me to my next point - Dimon is just trying to make it ok to sell to PE. Lots of people act like PE is evil but they can't define private equity. It's a great way to cash out the value of something you built. Get a good PE buyer and lots of customers will never notice. Get a ****ty manager/PE/entitled asshat kid, and you just destroy all the value and the business.

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