The Importance of Trade Unions in the Economy

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If we can get wages moving again I think it would lead us to a much more productive politics. Can we really reinvent a moment in the United States where trade unions were as important as they were when most people were in manufacturing employment. There is now some legislative movement towards making it much harder to enforce non-competes but it's not clear how big a difference that is going to make right.

Michael Lind is a writer and professor of the practice at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the co-founder of the think tank New America and the author of The New Class War: Saving Democracy From the Managerial Elite and, most recently, Hell to Pay: How the Suppression of Wages is Destroying America.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Michael Lind discuss whether one’s stances towards free trade, taxation, and workers’ rights are still a reliable predictor of voters’ broader political identity; why Lind, though he supports many economically progressive policies, is often classed as a conservative; and whether efforts to rebuild labor power and reinvigorate national industrial policy will succeed in improving the economy for ordinary people.

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

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