kristoff American economy increasingly is structured unfairly to benefit corporation
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Union
featherbedding was real, but it has been replaced by corporate featherbedding
with substantial interference in free markets. Noncompete agreements, which
prevent an employee from getting a job at a competing company (even low-level
jobs at fast-food outlets), constrain some 18 percent of American workers, or
30 million people, and have become a way for large corporations to intimidate
employees, limit their mobility and keep labor costs down. Overall, economists
have estimated that up to one-third of the increase in earnings inequality is a
result of the weakening of unions.
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In
Denmark, partly because of strong unions, workers at McDonald's earn $20 an
hour, have paid maternity and paternity leave, overtime, work schedules four
weeks in advance, pension plans and five weeks of paid vacation each year.
(Note also that while taxes are high, the average Dane works one-fifth fewer
hours in a year than the average American.)
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We
once asked Alan Krueger, the late Princeton University economist who was
previously chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, about our
perception that the American economy increasingly is structured unfairly to
benefit corporations and hurt ordinary citizens. We thought he might push back,
but he agreed completely. "The economy is rigged," he said.
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Nicholas Kristoff "Tightrope:
Americans Reaching for Hope" (2020)
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