As most of us know, income and wealth inequality are the most important issues in our country today.
• Squeezing working families out of the middle class
• 40 years of stagnant wages
• Anger in the streets
• Stolen pensions
• Unemployment
• All economic growth going only to the very top
This rampant inequality affects every aspect of our lives, every measure of quality of life from family security, health and healthcare, pensions and retirement, nutrition, education, job, and life satisfaction.
Recently Nobel prize winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman took a critical and analytic look at global inequality.
When assigning blame for inequality Krugman said,
“More important, soaring incomes at the top were achieved, in large part, by squeezing those below: by cutting wages, slashing benefits, crushing unions, and diverting a rising share of national resources to financial wheeling and dealing.
Perhaps more important still, the wealthy exert a vastly disproportionate effect on policy. And elite priorities — obsessive concern with budget deficits, with the supposed need to slash social programs — have done a lot to deepen the valley of despond.”
If you care about working and middle class families and/or the American economy that paragraph is the most important thing for you to know.
Every single one of these factors are tied together with the primary factor being the crushing of unions. Unions are the only institution in America primarily committed to economic justice and the quality of life for the majority of American families.
Image source: @SenSanders