But don't you find it odd that once Reagan became president and busted up unions and allowed states to rewrite laws for "Right to Work" which is basically "Right to Work for less" that union membership began to decline. And that by the 1990's the middle class income was declining
Unions can be good or bad. I hope everyone here would agree that the natural inclination of every employer is to pay as little as possible. Obviously, because at the end of the day, that money is coming out of their pocket. This is a fight over who gets the profit from making something. Should it go to the owner of the factory or the people who are spending all their time actually making the things which get sold? The answer has to be some and some. A union is just a way for the workers to organise and get their view across. if they are too dominant, they can take too much money and the company suffers because it has no money to buy new plant, and if the union is too weak then all the people of the country suffer, because they are not getting a fair share for their hard work.
Economically, the country will also suffer, because for the company to grow someone must have money to buy what it makes. If you do not pay your workers enough, then they have no money to buy the goods being made! Money is just a fancy way of organising barter. I work in a collective making shoes, and I give you a pair. You work at growing wheat and you give me some. If we both stop working, no one gets any shoes and no one has any wheat to eat. The system must be in balance or it cannot work effectively. having people unemployed is just the same as everyone throwing away something else they might have had, if those people had, say, been busy making chairs then we would all have something to sit on instead of the floor.
The trouble is, this frequently becomes a fight between bosses and unions. If unions demand too much, especially if they demand things like overmanning, then companies WILL go bust, or move abroad because they have no choice. Overmanning is exactly the same as unemployment as far as the efficiency of the economy is concerned.
The inconvenient problem with the modern world economy is that the system in place now was designed to favour developed countries, and the US has been first amongst them for some time. But the rules of the game have shifted. Some of the other countries have been beating the US at the foreign trade game (not just beating the US!) Meanwhile, the factory owner class has been conspiring with both local and foreign governments to maximise their profits, at the expense of national or employee profits. Politicians represent the people who got them elected (normally not the voters!) Doubtful anyone is interested in the nation's interest, never mind the citizens.
If the economic theory which says workers must have big enough wages so they can afford to buy the goods they make is right, then obviously, if their wages are falling they cannot buy so much, business will suffer and EVERYONE will be worse off, including the middle class, whether these are the same people as the working class or different. If wealth is concentrating in the hands of the rich, then obviously it must also be coming away from the others, both the middle and working class. A failure of unions would allow more money to go out of circulation and collect with the rich, so it can never get into the hands of the middle class either. The problem is not per se that the workers are suffering, but that the rich are sitting on a bigger and bigger pile of gold.
WHich is not to say that gold amassing in the hands of the Chinese government is not also an issue, but from whatever remains within the US more is concentrating with the rich.
The only possible solution is to take the money away from the rich. So maybe union power, or national boycotts of certain goods, or the most obvious solution....TAX THE RICH! And, ironically, they probably wouldnt even notice, because a well functioning economy generates growth for everyone, and new fancy consumer goods to make us all happy...including the rich.