Why Union Busting Is Only Good for the Rich

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http://www.cheatsheet.com/business/why-union-busting-is-only-good-for-the-rich.html/?a=viewall

Sam Becker March 11, 2015

We’re a long way out from America’s oft-romanticized Gilded Age, when roughly one-third of the country’s working population belonged to unions in one shape or another, tax rates were much higher than they are now, and when a lot of people tend to think that things were, well, just plain better. So, what’s changed? Well, after 50 or 60 years, a handful of wars, and an almost-unrecognizable new economy, just about everything.

Also, union membership has declined substantially, which has been a major factor in the widening income inequality gulf. That’s according to a new release from The International Monetary Fund, which points a finger at the world’s wealthiest as the main cause.

“Inequality has risen in many advanced economies,” write Florence Jaumotte and Carolina Osorio Buitron, authors of Power From The People, which digs into the relationship between union membership and inequality.

“Largely because of the concentration of incomes at the top of the distribution. Measures of inequality have increased substantially, but the most striking development is the large and continuous increase in the share of total income garnered by the 10% of the population that earns the most.”

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