Third Way study from 2018--
30% of jobs are "hardship jobs," not allowing a single adult to make ends meet,
32% are "living wage jobs," making enough to get by but not enough to take vacations, save for retirement, or own a home,
23% are "middle class jobs," allowing for some dining out, taking vacations, sending your kids to college, and saving for retirement,
15% are "professional jobs," paving the way for more eating out, bigger vacations, and a more expensive home (or homes).
The ratio of CEO to average worker pay, in double digits as recently as the 1980s, is over 300 to 1 last I heard. In the European Union they have the ratio capped at 20 to 1 or something like that by law.
Why not forbidding even 2 to 1 before every employee is paid at least a living wage? A millionaire or billionaire CEO paying less than a living wage is a grotesque example of predatory capitalist excess.
But then what if "living wages" don't cover health care or education, etc? The gov will have to tax wealth enough to pay for the public infrastructure the rich depend on in building their personal fortunes but are always trying to get out of paying for, because you know they earned every penny on their own and don't need the gov or anybody else. (Or until they need to be bailed out of financial trouble, anyhow.)
Captains of Industry! Too Big to Fail!
And then if you want more middle class jobs the gov has to encourage or even require labor union representation in all medium to large scale industry. We know this: more union jobs = more middle class jobs.
But Big Biz will have none of it and will do anything they can to defeat any such reforms. And, besides, it's less likely any of their economic tyranny catches up with them before their environmental destruction takes us all down.
The Dems get at least some of this; some Dems anyway, Biden better than any potus since maybe LBJ. But the MAGA Repugs would like to take us back to the old plantation economy and whipped labor. Sure I'm exaggerating but not by much.
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