Reviewing Where We’ve Come So Far
When Steelworkers ask why we keep enacting more job-killing free trade agreements, why we aren’t doing more to ensure a decent environment, or why wages aren’t keeping up, the answer all has to do with economics.
Economics is about the decisions on three questions: How do we allocate resources? How do
we produce things? And, who benefits?
Over time, the answers have changed.
In the 1930s, workers won great battles, establishing Social Security, unemployment and
other pro-worker reforms. We were taking control of the economy and making it work for us.
Post World War II, workers and employers shared power, and we saw productivity and worker
wages rise and the start of programs that benefit workers such as OSHA and the
establishment of the minimum wage. At that time people realized that some rules for an
imperfect free market were a good thing to ensure all benefited. Since the 1970s, that power
has flipped in favor of a different way of thinking that wants to loosen the rules for business
and allow the “market” to operate with as few rules as possible. Workers are being left
behind, and anti-worker policies are taking over.
What is specifically happening to workers? The next post will deal with the growing gaps between the wealthy and everyone else.
Until then, here are a few facts to consider:
Economics is about the decisions on three questions: How do we allocate resources? How do
we produce things? And, who benefits?
Over time, the answers have changed.
In the 1930s, workers won great battles, establishing Social Security, unemployment and
other pro-worker reforms. We were taking control of the economy and making it work for us.
Post World War II, workers and employers shared power, and we saw productivity and worker
wages rise and the start of programs that benefit workers such as OSHA and the
establishment of the minimum wage. At that time people realized that some rules for an
imperfect free market were a good thing to ensure all benefited. Since the 1970s, that power
has flipped in favor of a different way of thinking that wants to loosen the rules for business
and allow the “market” to operate with as few rules as possible. Workers are being left
behind, and anti-worker policies are taking over.
What is specifically happening to workers? The next post will deal with the growing gaps between the wealthy and everyone else.
Until then, here are a few facts to consider:
- Over 1⁄2 of all female workers still earn less than $8.70 an hour ($18,000 a year).
- 25% of all U.S. workers still work in jobs paying $8.70 or less an hour.
- More than 1 in 5 children still live in poverty, the highest among 17 industrialized nations.
- We are still the only industrialized country in the world without some system of universal health care.
- Our health care system is leaving 47 million Americans a year without care.
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