Louis Kelso
| Louis Orth Kelso | |
|---|---|
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| Born | December 4, 1913 Denver, Colorado, U.S. |
| Died | February 17, 1991 (aged 77) San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | University of Colorado at Boulder (BS 1934, JD 1938) |
| Occupation | Economist, Investor |
| Employer | Kelso & Company (founded 1971) |
| Known for | Pioneered use of as a form of corporate ownership |
Louis Orth Kelso (December 4, 1913 – February 17, 1991) was a political economist, corporate and financial lawyer, author, lecturer and merchant banker who is chiefly remembered today as the inventor and pioneer of the (ESOP), invented to enable working people without savings to buy stock in their employer company and pay for it out of its future dividend yield.
He was born on December 4, 1913 in Denver, Colorado.
Kelso began to think seriously about economics in 1931, the second year of the Great Depression. Although not yet 18, he was determined to launch his own investigation into the cause of a phenomenon no one was able to explain to his satisfaction.
This quest took him to the University of Colorado at Boulder, where in 1937 he was graduated with a B.S. degree in business administration and finance; he went on to law school in Boulder, receiving a J.D. in 1938. He then joined a Denver law firm, Pershing, Bosworth, Dick & Dawson from 1938 to 1942.
Then came Pearl Harbor. Kelso was commissioned in the U.S. Naval Service, and assigned to intelligence duty first in San Francisco and then in the Canal Zone. Working tropical hours, Kelso used his free afternoons to work on his seminal manuscript, The Fallacy of Full Employment. With the war over, the completed manuscript in his footlocker, the Navy sent him back to civilian life in 1946. But 1946 was also the year the Congress passed the Full Employment Act. This legislation, still in force, defines economic policy in the United States 170 years after the official birth of the Industrial Revolution as the right to a job. Kelso concluded that the time for his ideas had not yet come.
He then taught constitutional law at University of Colorado at Boulder. He then moved to San Francisco, California. There he became a law partner with Kelso, Cotton, Seligman & Ray.
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