The Hidden History of Neoliberalism by Greg Palast

The Hidden History of Neoliberalism by Greg Palast

Author:Greg Palast
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers


Employment

Neoliberalism views wages as just another piece of the mosaic that makes up an economy. Any government involvement in wages, be it setting minimum wages or protecting workers’ right to unionize, is a “market interference” that will, they say, produce market dislocations and thus diminish freedom.

Here in the real world, about two-thirds of all jobs in America when Reagan took office in 1981 were “living wage” jobs. A third of American workers had union protections, and another third got pretty much the same wages and benefits because their employers had to compete with union shops for workers.

Reagan went to war with unions, and by the end of the Reagan/Bush/Clinton 1980–2001 era, we lost all but about 6 percent of unionized jobs in the private sector.

Arguably, today that means that only 12 percent of American workers have living-wage jobs. While the actual number is higher, we’ve seen how the middle class ceased to be in the middle around 2015, when more than half of American workers were earning a “middle class” wage.

Similarly, neoliberals believe that minimum wages are inappropriate interferences in the free market, which is why today’s $7.25 federal minimum wage is, in inflation-adjusted dollars, actually several dollars lower than the purchasing power of the 1980 minimum wage.

The trend line—interrupted by the dislocation of the pandemic but still generally on track unless or until union protections are restored by law—continues toward replacing the American middle class with a working class hanging on to their lifestyle and their future by their fingernails.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.