The decline of the middle class has a very clear and present reason for its demise, it coincides with the decline of unionization in the United States. This is because An employee who engages in union organizing campaigns has a one in five chance of getting fired and nearly 60% of employers threaten to close or relocate their businesses if workers elect to form a union. So if we actually want a middle class in this country then we need to revitalize the unions. This will be no easy task, but necessary if future generations are going to be better off than their parents.

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This is how we revitalize the unions:

• Utilize civil asset forfeiture to acquire all companies found guilty of violating workers' right to unionize and other workplace protections, and transfer full ownership of the offending company to the workers at that company.

• Make it easier to form a union, with a simple majority of workers voting in favor via majority sign-up (or "card-check") elections. 

• End all forced arbitration. Workers deserve their day in court.​

• Ban "At-Will Employment" statutes. Pass legislation guaranteeing just-cause employment for all workers.

• Create a progressive overtime pay standard that increases the rate of additional hourly pay on an exponential curve.

• Eliminate all overtime exemptions for jobs that pay less than triple the median US wage. Eliminate all overtime exemptions for farm, transportation, and all other "heavy work" or hazardous jobs.

• Establish a workers’ public investment bank to fund the purchase of companies to transition to worker ownership during “right-of-refusal” situations. 

• Guarantee workers the first right of refusal for any sale, merger, acquisition, outsourcing, or insolvency in their workplace.

• Transition from enterprise bargaining to a hybrid system of state and sectoral bargaining. Historical data are clear on which system is better for workers, and we must adopt that system.

• Expand and enforce penalties on companies that violate labor laws, including firing workers who try to organize a union. These moves are illegal but nowadays are only penalized by forcing employers to repay some wages to the fired workers, a punishment so light that many employers treat it as just a cost of doing business. 

• Companies will no longer be able to ruthlessly exploit workers by misclassifying them as independent contractors or denying them overtime by falsely calling them a “supervisor.”