Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)

"America's middle class is in deep trouble," Sen. Elizabeth Warren told the first-ever AFL-CIO Summit on Raising Wages . And, of course, the fact that America's middle class is in deep trouble is one of the reasons to hold a summit on raising wages. In typically Warren fashion, Warren laid out the stark realities , that "The average family not in the top 10 percent makesmoney than a generation ago" and "of the new money earned in this economy over the past generation—all that growth in the GDP—went to the top."

This isn't an accident, and Warren pointed a finger at the economic theory and policies that have rigged the game against 90 percent of Americans:



Trickle-down was popular with big corporations and their lobbyists, but it never really made much sense. George Bush Sr. called it voodoo economics. He was right, and let’s call it out for what it is: Trickle-down was nothing more than the politics of helping the rich-and-powerful get richer and more powerful, and it cut the legs out from under America’s middle class. Trickle-down policies are pretty simple. First, fire the cops—not the cops on Main Street, but the cops on Wall Street. Pretty much the whole Republican Party – and, if we’re going to be honest, too many Democrats – talked about the evils of “big government” and called for deregulation. It sounded good, but it was really about tying the hands of regulators and turning loose big banks and giant international corporations to do whatever they wanted to do—turning them loose to rig the markets and reduce competition, to outsource more jobs, to load up on more risks and hide behind taxpayer guarantees, to sell more mortgages and credit cards that cheated people. In short, to do whatever juiced short term profits even if it came at the expense of working families. Trickle down was also about cutting taxes for those at the top. Cut them when times are good, cut them when times are bad. And when that meant there was less money for road repairs, less money for medical research, and less money for schools and that our government would need to squeeze kids on student loans, then so be it. And look at the results: The top 10% got ALL the growth in income over the past 30 years—ALL of it—and the economy stopped working for everyone else.

The policies that will fix this are not a mystery, and Warren highlighted a few, such as raising the minimum wage; enforcing labor laws; protecting the right to organize; equal pay; investing "in roads and bridges and power grids, in education, in research"; and fairer trade policies and tax codes. The problem is not identifying policies that will level the playing field. It's building the political power to make them happen. American voters want the government to fight inequality —and that's despite the fact that most Americans don't know how high inequality is . This is one where knowledge is outrage, and turning outrage into movement-building is the path to victory.