Did you know that on Labor Day 1974, President Ford signed the 1974 ERSIA act into law.  What is ERISA?  The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) is a federal law that sets minimum standards for most voluntarily established retirement and health plans in private industry to provide protection for individuals in these plans.  ERISA was the first official codification of ESOPs into US Law.

The ESOP provisions of the law were the brainchild of Louis Kelso.  These were championed by Senator Russell Long.  At a 1973 dinner with Louis Kelso, a San Francisco investment banker who had been promoting the ESOP idea since the 1950’s, Long became convinced that employee ownership would realize his father’s dream to “ share the wealth” and “ make every man a king.”

In the below interview (13 Minutes) with Mike Wallace Lawyer-economist Louis Kelso lays out the case for the importance of widespread capital ownership, starting with workers through employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). Speaking on this interview are champions like Senator Russell Long, as well as one of Kelso’s major detractors, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Samuelson.

As Louis Kelso said… “If capital ownership is good for the rich, it is a thousand times better for the middle class and the poor.”

I wonder, over the course of the last 45 years, how many workers lives have been positively impacted by share ownership from their ESOP?  How many workers have retired financially secure from the wealth ESOPs helped to create?

-Rick