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Poll: Americans Want Action to Close Income Gap

The deepening chasm between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else is a problem that needs to be addressed now, and government should play a greater role in solving the problem. That’s the consensus of a majority of Americans who responded to a new New York Times/CBS News poll on Americans’ view of income inequality and workers’ rights.
Poll: Americans Want Action to Close Income Gap
By Clyde Weiss ·
Poll: Americans Want Action to Close Income Gap
According to a new poll, the deepening chasm between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else is a problem that needs to be addressed now, and government should play a greater role in solving the problem.

The deepening chasm between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else is a problem that needs to be addressed now, and government should play a greater role in solving the problem. That’s the consensus of a majority of Americans who responded to a new New York Times/CBS News poll on Americans’ view of income inequality and workers’ rights.

Sixty-five percent of more than 1,000 adults questioned by phone in May said something should be done now to deal with America’s growing wealth inequality, and 57 percent said the government should do more to reduce the wealth gap.

“Americans are broadly concerned about inequality of wealth and income despite an economy that has improved by most measures, a sentiment that is already driving the 2016 Presidential contest,” said The New York Times report.

Other findings of the report include:

These results, and others, suggest the issue of income and wealth inequality is a major concern of most Americans, but differences remain over how to solve the problem. One solution is to support collective bargaining rights, through which workers are more fairly compensated.

The decline of union strength over the past several decades because of anti-worker laws such as right-to-work scams, and the efforts of corporate-driven lawmakers like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to undermine workers’ collective bargaining rights, “account in no small part for rising inequality,” according to a report written by Colin Gordon, a senior research consultant and author at the Iowa Policy Project.

“By most estimates, declining unionization accounted for about a third of the increase in inequality in the 1980s and 1990s,” Gordon wrote. Later, financial deregulation played a greater role in lining the pockets of those “at the top of the income scale,” he said.

Listen to former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich about why strong unions are good for America.

 

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