What they don’t tell you is that wages have remained flat since the 1980’s and that the selling prices of the products/services we produce have gone up — so only the employers are benefiting from the high unemployment rate. That a company that can’t afford to pay it’s employees at least $15 per hour (cost of living wage is probably $20 by now) isn’t solvent enough OR they are raking in more profit at the expense of their workers. These stolen (wages) profits go towards large executive salaries, political lobbies and elections. They use this influence to buy the laws & legislation in order to weaken unions (who can afford to take time off to strike anyway at this point?), and to get lucrative tax-breaks, subsidies and deregulation. Not content with off-shoring the jobs to lower paying countries, they have found a way to keep us down & on short leashes by paying us just enough to keep our heads above water — always treading, but never getting ahead. The newspapers don’t tell you that we have to work 2-3 jobs just to stay afloat.
Income inequality is the number one detrimental issue affecting EVERY American — we can’t strike, we don’t have political clout (although we are the majority), we can’t afford basic necessities — much less health insurance, we don’t have enough to buy a home and/or accumulate generational wealth (our pensions are being ransacked by Wall Street anyway), and we worry about our kids bleak futures since higher education is practically unobtainable. Not to mention that our cities and towns are being poisoned or environmentally abused and no one wants to be responsible for that — just the benefits and profits is all they want.
The 1% balks at the cost of beneficial social programs — everything is so expensive now that these cost in the trillions. Yet, they keep asking to get their taxes cut — short-changing the very things that we as a society need to prosper and function properly.
The “American Dream” is out of reach — they greedily broke the rungs of the upward mobility ladder. This was Reagan’s Trickle-Down brain fart — but the only thing that has rolled down hill is sh~!. Something has got to give...