By George Wilson | Globalization and technological changes have worked to eliminate good paying manufacturing jobs in America. Among ordinary men and women this has had a profound change in their lives. Many have tried to adjust by taking the time to get more education and to be retrained; even going into debt with student loans. Many others have taken multiple low paying jobs. What we see is profits at record levels and the rich getting richer. American families face financial hardships at a time “when the average CEO makes about 300 times what the average worker makes.”
Moreover, real wages are stagnant and the middle class is disappearing. All the Republicans running for President are offering up the same old stale bromides with no new ideas. Donald Trump is right; they are all dancing as puppets to their oligarchy masters.
What has happened is an engineered inequality through tax policy that favored the very top income people and corporations. While productivity and profits have gone up, ordinary working people have not participated in this increased wealth. We are out of balance with our national income distribution. The confiscation of wealth by the upper classes has indirectly resulted in a deterioration of some neighborhoods, families, and a national failure of collective responsibility.
Listed below are some solutions and we don’t have to wait for the federal government:
- Raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour;
- Raise the employment rate by investing in badly needed infrastructure, including rapid rail for the entire metro Atlanta area;
- Expand Medicaid in Georgia as the Affordable Care Act intended.
These measures will insure increased employment, come close to a livable wage for Georgians and increase prosperity for everyone.
Finally, other structural solutions could include: make it easier for unions to organize; eliminate “legalized graft” by lobbyists; and have special citizen councils draw political districts, thereby eliminating gerrymandering.
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