"Your income today is lower than it was in 1970 in terms of what he is able to buy," begins the letter that Robert Reich, former secretary of labor during the first Clinton administration (1993-1997), made to American workers. Reich goes on to mention that currently "almost 30% of you do not have a stable job," and that, therefore, the American worker is living without labor protections.
Then he writes that more than 37% of the American workforce left the market recently because without courage or strength to go looking for a job. "Yet the US economy is now twice higher than in 1970, and as a nation we are richer than we ever were."
Reich then explains that none of this happened by chance and it was only possible because those with large fortunes shifted their economic power to the political sphere.
Having political power, Reich says, they ended up with the unions (now less than 7% of private sector workers belong to a union), lowered the percentage of taxes they pay (which came to be 91% in 1950 and is now 39%), deregulated Wall Street, privatize the economy, expanded the bankruptcy protection for themselves as decreased the same protection for the worker and concentrated market power in order to make workers pay more for drugs, health insurance, tickets , food, internet and more (the list of those made sounds like symphony for neoliberal groups.)
Reich ends asking the workers who do not expect a political leader to be able to change that, "the leaders all of us," he concludes.
The full letter here.