Union Perspectives

Our country is on the brink, balancing on the precipice of feast or famine. If we don’t fix things as they are, we will fall completelyinot an oligarchy. We need to understand what needs fixing in order to know about the wrongs and what they are. Also how we, the U.S., stacks up against the rest of the world. Do you know that 50 percent of all 25 years olds still live with their parents, and a total 47 million of our citizens and one out of five children live in poverty, which places us 36th among the 41 wealthiest nations? If you have no debt and $10 in your pocket, you are better off than 25 percent of your fellow citizens. The average family’s credit card debt is $16,000. Sixty-two percent of our citizens live from paycheck to paycheck, which 21 percent have no savings. Forty-three percent of households spend more than they earn. Median wealth of middle class households dropped 28 percent from 2000 to 2014. Today, 51 percent of workers make less than $30,000 a year. The U.S. now ran...