Courtesy of EPI,
Since 2000, labor’s share has declined by about a trillion dollars. If you’ve become jaded by numbers this huge and have no idea what they mean on a human scale, it’s simple: this works out to something in the ballpark of $7,000 per worker. If we could just get back to the level of 80s and 90s, we’d all be making about $7,000 more per year.
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Workers making about $7,000 more per year. $7,000/52 = $134.61 per week. In three weeks, that’s just over $400. Y’know, $400. That’s what 40% of Americans cannot come up with to cover emergency expenses.
$7,000 is a BFD to the vast majority Americans. Getting that plus universal, affordable health care and we’ve gone along way in helping radically changing for good the lives of working people of this country. And, as we all know and Drum points out,
This is not a huge ask. It’s not like trying to bring back the postwar Golden Age. We’re talking about something that was common as recently as 20 years ago….
Before, y’know, the Bush Tax Cuts and the Trump Tax Cut.
We all know raising the marginal tax rate to 70%, and taxing the investor class are popular ideas that make good economic sense. That is, good politics and good policy.
This is something that Democratic presidential candidates ought to share when they’re out on the campaign trail.
Hear, hear!
One might go so far as to argue this is something we ought demand our presidential candidates to pledge. Just like Grover Norquist’s pledge, only it’s the Taxpayer Pledge For Americans,™ because it protects the American tax payer, not the multibillionaires and the CEOs — oops, I mean “the donor class”-- who have robbed us all of a trillion dollars by not paying their taxes!