sandmansleepy

So if we were to take it as a given that in most places the minimum wage won't be raised, would you like to see unions grow?

Just a few years ago, I was confident that within a couple years the national minimum wage would rise at least a couple of dollars a year. That seems unlikely to me within the next four years. Historically, unions predated most advances in worker rights. Do you think that unions can make up for the lack of advances we will see on the national scale, or will it have to happen on local levels, which in most states are still dominated by the republican party?

How much do you attribute increasing income disparities to the decline of unions? The republican party has been attacking unions for 50 years, so it is hard to disentangle, and changes occur pretty much simultaneously with international trade, but do you think that increasing union membership/bargaining power could reverse some of the decline in the wealth share of the working/lower class in the US?

(This is cheating. I asked you this a few years ago in person. I now get to see if you answer in a similar way...)