The Labor Institute’s Les Leopold Discusses Runaway Inequality on The Leslie Marshall Show

The Labor Institute Executive Director Les Leopold discussed his new book entitled “Runaway Inequality: An Activists Guide to Economic Justice” on The Leslie Marshall Show this week. He spoke on the lasting impact of income inequality in America and how the economic crisis is worsening.

“The average worker has not had a real pay raise in terms of buying power. Since 1980, wages have been stagnant and it’s not getting better,” Leopold said. “We’re in a recovering economy and since about 2009, 95 percent of all the new income has gone to the top 1 percent.”

Leopold also mentioned how the Better Business Climate Model, created in the late 1970s, cut taxes, cut regulation and cut social spending. And since then, the deregulation of finance replaced the entire way corporations functioned.

“In 1980, a CEO got paid 95 percent salary and 5 percent stock incentive. Today, it’s the opposite,” Leopold said. “So all corporate hedge funds care about is raising the price of a stock.”

Leopold believes that putting someone in the White House isn’t going to dramatically or instantly solve runaway inequality. Americans need to build something strong and broad that requires people to come out of their own issue “silos.”

“We are comfortable in our silo, we have an identity, and it’s empowering, but we’re not winning,” Leopold said. “And we’re not going to be able to take reverse on runaway inequality until we can come out of our silos and, all from different angles, start to attack inequality.”

Click the audio link below, to hear the conversation. For those on mobile devices, tune into The Leslie Marshall Show here.