Made in the USA

May 19, 2008

Lost your job? In debt up to your ears? Feel like the harder you work the worse it gets?

Welcome to the 21st century United States. It wasn’t some poor guy overseas that took your job. It was your boss. He laid off workers and made those remaining do all the work.

This information is from a new book called The Big Squeeze, by Steven Greenhouse. It reports that since 1979, U.S. workers gained only ONE percent in real wages, while bosses grabbed 60% more in productivity from each one left on the job. The book mentions a number of tricks the bosses use to cheat us out of our miserable wages and benefits. And much of the debt we face comes from the loss of benefits, like health care or pensions, that might have helped to offset the cut in wages.

In only a generation of so, 80 percent of the U.S. population is worse off than before. It’s not a mysterious law of nature, it’s not globalization – it’s the bosses.