"As union membership rates declined in recent decades, wages for most workers stagnated and income inequality grew to levels not seen since 1929. These developments are linked, and, in EPI’s view, will not be reversed without significant reform of U.S. labor laws to restore the rights of workers to form and join unions. Especially during this time of crisis, organized labor must resume its role as a balancing force in our economy.

"A wide body of research has shown that unions are an overall benefit to the economy. They raise living standards for union and non-union workers, make companies more efficient and productive, and balance the interests of owners and investors with those of workers so that profits are shared. A widely-cited EPI study of union benefits can be found here.

"Legislation being considered in Congress would remove some obstacles workers face when they try to organize their workplace. The Employee Free Choice Act would impose real penalties on employers who harass or fire union sympathizers, or otherwise try to scare workers away from a union. If a majority of employees at a workplace sign cards favoring a union, the act would require an employer to recognize it, rather than undertaking a long, costly and destructive battle. The act also would bring in a third-party arbitrator to produce a fair contract if the two sides can’t agree on one within a year.  EPI has prepared a question-and-answer document to explain how the law would work and why it is needed. 

"Thirty-nine prominent economists, including two Nobel laureates, have signed onto a statement in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act written by EPI President Lawrence Mishel, Richard Freeman of Harvard and Frank Levy of MIT. Citing the recent unprecedented growth of inequality in household income and the urgent need to give workers more bargaining power to counter national and global trends, Freeman, Levy and Mishel wrote that the proposal is an essential step toward rebuilding a solid middle class.

"The comment didn't make it on the air - it was only included in video on a PBS Web site - and that was unfortunate. We need more public focus on what our tax dollars are buying.

"As medical providers and patients struggle with low funding and high barriers to adequate health care, the nation's largesse for war continues to soar. Every day, the U.S. Treasury spends close to $2 billion on the military. Such big numbers are hard to fathom, but it's worth doing the math.

"In San Francisco, taxpayers have already sent the U.S. government $2.2 billion for the Iraq war - enough to provide health care to 828,378 children for a year. In Oakland, the figure is $826.7 million, costing out to a year of health care for 309,036 children. In San Mateo County, taxpayers' tab for the war in Iraq has reached $2.6 billion, enough to cover a year of health care for nearly 1 million kids.

"To make matters worse, this money wasn't just squandered. It financed warfare that damaged - often fatally - the health of Americans and Iraqis."

"One lesson not learnt in Washington is that it is a bad idea to become involved in a war in any so-called "failed state". This patronizing term suggests that if a state has failed, foreign intervention is justified and will face limited resistance. But the greatest US foreign policy disasters over the last generation have all been in places where organised government had largely collapsed.

There was Lebanon in 1983, when 242 US marines were blown up in Beirut, Somalia 10 years later, and Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The lesson, which applies to nowhere more than Afghanistan, is that societies with weak state structures devise lethally effective ways of defending themselves.

"The greatest source of error for the Americans in Iraq was not a policy mistake but an abiding belief that they alone made the political weather. Anything good or bad which happened was the result of American action. Thus if the Sunni insurgency against American forces started to come to an end in the second half of 2007 it must be because of the "surge", as the 30,000 extra US troops and more aggressive tactics on the ground were known. The real reason for the fall in violence had more to do with the Shia victory over the Sunni in an extraordinarily savage civil war, a reaction against Al-Qa'ida, and the ceasefire called by the Mehdi Army to which belonged most of the Shia death squads.