Economist David Cay Johnson just wrote a great
article about shrinking wages for American workers.
"This redistribution of national income away from labor and toward capital flows from policies initiated by President Ronald Reagan and followed to varying degrees by every president since. The decline in compensation for workers at every level below the handful of jobs paying $50 million or more tracks the decline in union membership among private-sector workers. Lacking bargaining power, most workers have had to accept flat to falling pay, a trend that has spurred local drives nationwide to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour… So long as government policy favors the richest among us, shields bankers from criminal and personal civil liability and removes regulatory controls on corporations, the trend line that began 34 years ago is likely to continue even with upswings in the economy.”
The Democrats are gonna have to decide which side they are on. The richest have gotten to greedy, greedy to the point of evil. You can no longer pretend to be on the side of the richest and the rest of us. As much as the Democrats love the Wall Street money, they are gonna have to divorce Wall Street and hold the individuals and institutions accountable for a steadily shrinking and declining quality of life for average workers.
How can anyone not see that?
And this crisis of shrinking incomes and harder lives, more misery, more poverty, more children growing up in poverty has no chance of being being resolved without a growing, vibrant, powerful labor movement.
The entire labor movement has a responsibility to fight for workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain collectively.
As I’ve said before, the labor movement is the engine of social progress in this country and every industrial or post-industrial country in the world.
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