Union Perspectives

People make a living in one of two ways: labor or non-labor. The people who are at the top tend to live off non-labor activities, such as capital gains, dividends and other forms of property income, which is taxed at a lower rate than labor income. The rest of the people get their income from labor, which is considers Social Security and pensions as deferred wages and salaries. The top 1 percent’s money is earned from non-labor. This is not to say that the bulk of income should come from non-labor, but everyone should get some non-labor income as a birth right otherwise our middle class—what is left of it—will disappear. It will disappear and with it the capitalist system as we know it today and along with it our democracy. Our government will be turned into something that will not work well for the 90 percent. If we want to change the wealth inequality in this country and distribute the wealth more evenly, we need to change the way our economic system is operated. Entrepreneur Andr