Sunday, June 15, 2008

The American Dream in Reverse?



Are we living in a second gilded age?

“We’ve been living the American dream in reverse... Adjusting for inflation, average wages are lower than they were in the 1970s. Our minimum wage, adjusting for inflation, is lower than it was in the 1950s. One of the things going on is that income and wealth inequality have gone back to the 1920s. We are back at levels that we saw right before the Great Depression.” — Holly Sklar

From Friday’s Bill Moyers Journal, Holly Sklar, co-author of Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All of Us discusses what current economic conditions say about the state of the American dream.

Unfortunately, under previous Liberal governments and even more so now under Stephen Harper’s so-called “Conservative” regime, we seem destined to head down the same path in lockstep with our American friends.

Related: Letters to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) from working families across Vermont when he asked people to tell him what was going on in their lives economically.