Monday, January 25th, 2016
Stephan: Everywhere I go as I have been travelling, people tell me stories of how the financial security they once felt as dissipated, and they, as well as people close to them, just hang on month to month. When I ask, "how much do you have in savings they tell me, "I don;t have any savings," or they say, "I don't know I could probably get $1,000 together if I pushed." Here is a very good report on what I have experienced.
I want you to note particularly the linkage of the growth of the unions and the concurrent growth of the middle class in the U.S.. The gutting of the unions has been the passionate work of the Republican Party and no one seems interested in holding them accountable.
A man sits on his car outside the Riverview Baptist Church in Wellsburg, West Virginia April 6, 2011. The city is a part of America’s Midwestern “Rust Belt”, the heartland of the country and home to big unionized manufacturers like the auto and steel industries. Wellsburg, with a population of about 2,500, is located on the Ohio River in the northern panhandle of West Virginia.
Credit: Reuters/Eric Thayer
For the last several months, social scientists have been debating the striking findings of a study by the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton.* Between 1998 and 2013, Case and Deaton argue, white Americans […]
