Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few

by Robert B. Reich

There are several reasons for the growth of America’s working poor. First, wages at the bottom have continued to drop, adjusted for inflation. By 2013, the ranks of the working poor had swelled to forty-seven million people in the United States, one out of every seven Americans. One-fourth of all American workers were in jobs paying below what a full-time, full-year worker needed in order to support a family of four above the federally defined poverty line. The downward trend of low wages continued even in the so-called recovery following the Great Recession. Between 2010 and 2013, average incomes for the bottom fifth dropped 8 percent, and their average wealth declined 21 percent. According to a study by Oxfam America, more than half of America’s forty-six million users of food pantries and other charitable food programs in 2013 had jobs or were members of working families.