Study Reveals DEPRESSING Truth About U.S. Workers 

Labour law in the US is appalling. The richest country in the world, side by side with mass poverty and homelessness. Awful and shameful.

I'm not sure how much longer the average American can continue to survive in this corporate greed

Every EU country is still capitalistic, but we have provisions not to abuse workers, social democracy is not socialism.

People who have never worked a blue-collar job have no clue how horribly they are treated. I worked as a blue-collar man for 45 years and thankfully I survived better than most. Often, the oppression is not seen from the outside because it is more hidden than it was in the gilded age, but it's still there in the underlying attitudes of management and the sneaky ways in which they try to bamboozle the workers. But it gets worse. In my last few years of work, I have also noticed how this oppression is being extended toward lower-level white-collar workers and even middle management. So when we blue-collar workers were complaining to our bosses, we were unknowingly preaching to the choir, and their hands were tied because their livelihood depended on lying to us and carrying the company flag.

My currewnt "American dream" is to not die of old age at a job that barely covers my bills.

It's not that Corporate Democrats are 'embarrassed' by all the economic issues they 'could' easily run and win on, it's that, if they 'talked' about those issues, they would be expected to 'do something' about the problems they discussed and ran on. They would rather run on 'Republicans very bad', so they don't 'actually' have to 'do anything' which would reduce the ever-growing profits of their 'owner-donors'.

I worked at the same job for 34 years. I got hurt on the job and while getting pt, they made me work “light duty” where they made do construction projects that hurt the hell out of me. The doctors finally decided I needed back surgery and a shoulder surgery. One week before the surgery, the company fired me with no notice and then their insurance company denied my claim and I was on the street. Some day, I hope, the brain washing will wear off and realize we are living a third world country.

Why I moved to Spain 🇪🇸🇪🇸 Paid month off for work ,works for me. And Public health service,no medical debt. Don't need 2-3 jobs to try to survive.

To be fair, America is the BEST at being the WORST!

I knew this shit since the 90's when I was in college. Going to France, Mexico, Amsterdam and Costa Rica also educated me. They all said the same thing. "How do you live in America?"

The GOP screams about socialism but they love their socialized wages and free health care and perks just fine...

While the UK is far from perfect we have a minimum of 2 weeks paid holiday a year, Easter ,Christmas and bank holidays also paid, health care free at the point of use for everyone rich or poor and we don’t have to worry that our children are going to annihilated at school.

The beautiful thing is that most OECD countries are trying to actively improve the quality of life of their populations while the US is actively doing the opposite. It's pretty incredible how compliant the US worker is.

If you don't like the company you work for the answer is simple. Join a union and fight for workers' rights.

We have poor working conditions, terrible food, healthcare and education... we are the haiti of the industrialized world

The USA is the perfect example of why unrestricted capitalism does not work. The best compromise is a socialist capitalist democracy. A government must place its people over corporate profits but allow companies to bargain with their workers for wages and benefits. The biggest problem with the USA is its lack of a properly funded and designed public health system. Everyone needs access to health care. The second biggest problem with the USA is its lack of a proper social security system, Australians who are unemployed receive just enough money to live and training to improve their job prospects. There is no point just giving unemployed people money without helping them to get the training needed for the constantly changing job market. In the USA, profits are more important than human lives, but money is just a figment of the human imagination and doesn't actually exist, but people are real and do exist. Just a little fact that Americans struggle with is that the average middle-class Australian earns around 6 times what the average middle-class American earns plus Australians get public health care and subsidised private health insurance. Having the world's largest economy doesn't mean much if the majority of the population doesn't benefit from it.

Just yesterday these 2 guys from a hydraulics equipment service contractor were installing a new pump system. They were drilling holes in and through the walls, cutting and installing many feet of pipes, laying out hoses and draining and removing the old equipment. Somebody that I work with had talked to them and the topic of wages came up and then later on he asks me what I think these contractors get paid. I thought like $40/hr but he said they only make like $18/hr and had been working that job for at least 5 years. I said man that's ridiculous.

An Englishman who lived in Illinois for twenty years said that in the US You have to work until you drop. and you have no rights as a worker

Something about working hard, and not being able to purchase your own home, but instead help to make someone else rich doesn't sit right with me

The USA is a Capitalist Oligarchy. We aren't workers, so much as we are wage-slaves. The vast majority of people in the Capitalist system, are enslaved to working till they are discarded as broken shells of people. Can the average person get health insurance without a job? Not really, it's so bloody expensive because of our "competitive" market. The laws around how insurance is sold, causes the price to go up considerably. Think about how much money is being wasted on advertising, and that advertising money is pulled from the wages of regular people.

Like what's even the point anymore? No matter how much money i make im still struggling, never gonna get to retire. I'm not trying to work another 30+ years. I don't even live beyond my means. I really go out cause i can't afford it, don't have a car, don't make big purchases, don't have kids. I make $17 am hour, i should be able to live comfortably but live in a run down apartment and have been increasingly tightening my budget but it really isn't helping. I lived better 13 years barely making over minimum wage with a better apartment in a nicer area. There is no hope

I just walked out on a 12 year serving job at a state park. Management, and especially corporate was nothing but shit!

*And yet we have millions of poor people that defend billionaires everyday.*

I'm only a couple minutes in, but I do want to mention that Belgium, number 1 in wages, has wage indexation where they link wages to the consumer price index so when inflation hits, wages automatically adjust maintaining worker buying power.

*AS A EUROPEAN* growing up in the 1970's - we genuinely admired America, we wanted our countries to succeed like America - but then you started, collectively, to *WORSHIP MONEY* When Reagan arrived you switched from worshiping opportunity and freedom to worshiping GREED and MONEY. Every decision became about money and we watched you make one dumb decision after another, when we mentioned it you mocked us, pointed to your V8 Truck and your GDP. But it was OBVIOUS where this was leading - *WORKER MISERY*

This is what happens when we live in an oligarchy that disregards the will of the people.

I make over 25 per hour and I can't afford to buy a house. How tf is someone on min wage gonna buy a house? Shits wild

Worker protection. That’s funny. Since Greg Abbott just took away, water breaks for people working outside in 100+ degree heat. He actually decided that there had to be a law passed about this not about improving infrastructure or energy, but taking away water breaks.

If you talk to people in other countries they will tell you they're not stupid enough to give up what they have and move here. The US is in a major decline. We should all be in the streets trying to take our country back.

Some more fun statistics. The US is 46th in life expectancy and 52nd in both infant and maternal mortality. All three are also in a downward trend.

Great nations don't have to tout that they're great... actions speak louder than words.

Unfettered capitalism will always exploit. Duh

don't call them socialist. Ana is right, mixed economy.

Robin Williams had a perfect line in the man of the year the movie that he was in her he stated we should make our politicians dress up like NASCAR drivers and come out in suits with all the their sponsors so we at least know who we voting for

The Citizens elect them, the Corporations own them.

Whenever I hear about the opiod problems in the US I also think of the treatment of workers, homelessness. and the lack of public housing and other supports for those on poverty incomes. Which makes me remember hearing about the Republican candidates, for about 40 years now, promising NEVER to support tax increqses. It all ties together.

Finally! Someone else said that the "American dream" is dead! I've been saying that for the last 30 years! And I just turned 50.

I work for a company that does more for their employees than most and it could still be better

It's horrible when you call your job to say you can't walk cause you have a pinched nerve in your back and they say, I will get you an uber so you can get to work. I'm on my feet the whole day, how does getting me an uber make my back pain go away.

As an American who moved to Netherlands and will never return I can attest to there is a much better way to run a society...

the super sad part THE ABSOLUTE SADDEST PART of this is that you will still get people down below and elsewhere defending this system with their lives and denying that there's anything wrong with it.

Also, both Norway and Sweden, per capita, create more NEW millionaires than the United States. So that argument that Scandinavian social policies stifles entrepreneurs isn't quite accurate.

Horrible. I feel for the U.S. workers.

American workers are GETTING SCREWED,

I'm betting that the Republican solution to ranking so low among OECD countries will be to withdraw from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Problem solved.🤦‍♀

Hey say what you will but we are number one in guns and prisons, oh and mass shootings and obesity, oh and stupidity...now im depressed.

Fun fact, slaves were valued at average of 30k-50k which is interesting because it seems like now we've just become subscription based slaves where companies pay us those wages per year 🤔

The US *is* the best -- at marketing itself as the best.

Hi everyone, I'm a business owner. I've been looking for some guidance on how to invest my money wisely and plan for my retirement.

I'll make a guess before I watch any further: Where we rank Dead Last is workplace safety, isn't it? If not that, it has to be job satisfaction.

Just joined a union for this very reason. I hope the workers start rising up en masse to push back because these corporate officers are out of control.

In Scandinavian countries, everyone belongs to a union, and pays into it, so when they lose a job, the union pays unemployment until you find another job. That doesn't come from the government.

you know there is such a thing as social democracy...and that's what we should be striving for.

The American dream is to keep dreaming while the world passes by you.

THIS is why fascism creeps forward here. Because cash is speech and corporations are people.

One problem that isn't talked about is the number of workers that go thru temp agencies, and the number of temp agencies in the US. These temp agencies don't provide any real benefits, and the vast majority of temp jobs pay less.

The US has not on top of anything for so many years that at 50 I can't remember when we were in the top 10 in anything

Forget windfall taxes we need a return of the old top Marginal tax of 90% on annual income above $30 million or so but it had NOTHING to do with tax revenue from the 1% as they were *_supposed_* to avoid paying it. The point was to force the 1% to keep money in the actual economy and in this country rather than hoarding it away hurting everyone else by literally slowing the economy they trapped so much wealth. Corporate tax has always topped out no higher than 50% or so but the CEO, owner or shareholder that decides to wring out every dime and cash out that profit for themselves never used to not when it cost them 90% of that haul in individual tax. So they'd leave most of it in and grow their profit by growing the entire business and enrich everyone along the way just as the top marginal rate was intended to cause. This meant no 1000 to 1 ratio of CEO pay vs their average employees. This mean an equal share of productivity gains without any profit motive to gouge prices but in fact an incentive to keep prices low while wages were very high. So no forty years slide in buying power of stagnant wages. Wages were so high a Boomer could buy a new car, a house and start a family on one "entry level" janitor job. So high that Boomers could actually afford to pay their own four year college bills on a measly *6 hours a week of a **_minumum wage_** job.* Part of that stemmed from the fact that the 1% with no company to reinvest in or who cashed out way too much for it not to hurt society would need to do ate around half of what was over the limit to get the write off. But they had to give it to a real nonprofit library, college or hospital. That semi voluntary donation combined with the fact the top rate made greed 90% less profitable made education and healthcare far more affordable than today. That's what was different. It ALL comes back to the effect of that top Marginal rate with few tightly regulated loopholes. Too bad the 1% spent the 1970s adding loopholes that let them give that money to BS and for profit colleges like Liberty U or think tanks they set up solely to sell the absurdity of Supply Side economics via the "Chicago" theory of economics setting up Trickldown. A few unfortunately timed oil crises that "only coincidentally" helped the oil men dominating the GOP made people scared enough to buy Reagan's magic beans. Overnight it became ten times as profitable to break a union, gouge prices or to ship your job off overseas. Fun facts but Citizens United would hardly even matter if suddenly there were up to 90% less money available to taint politics or bribe the SCOTUS with. You want to know how to fix a hundred separate problems all going the wrong way these last forty years just focus on getting that top Marginal tax back in place and this time make sure we don't let the 1% sabotage it again. Every other one of those issues go from nearly impossible climbs to us all pushing downhill with the wind at our backs. Which is exactly why you will never hear the MSM mention one word of it.

So how many decades of voting will it take to change this? At this point does awareness even matter? Thanks TYT. Appreciate your work.

You 100% laid out America's root problems. We're being lied to by some in government and media, and far too many Americans have lost the will to seek the truth, even when it's not that hard to find. They believe whatever is most expedient to believe.

I have no problem with social security, i mean socialist.The government workers all seem to be in a union or gov.package . I have worked non union 10 years and union 30 years .Organizing is how you get a better deal.THE CEOs have no trouble paying theirself $25 million a year but $ 15 an hr will just bankrupt the place ,not the $25 million for 1 person in a Dunder Mifflin Office.

It also treats the people with disabilities badly because the US want to pay subminimum wages. Economic Opportunity and upward mobility is a myth for most people.

It's not that they don't care about their workers here. It's that they care about money waaaaay more.

we are back to the days of the robber barons. history repeats itself when forgotten.

Wish I had been born in Australia or the UK. Mercia is NOT the best or freest country in the world.

You left out the most important list life expectancy. USA ranked number 55. 76.3 years Japan 84.5 years.

And of course you’re gonna have Americans out there, saying what were the freest country in the world. But we’re not. and these countries are also free.

Big surprise!!! NOT!!!!! I hate grocery shopping at Walmart. But, I can't afford the Publix price tag. Aldi's is nice, but don't sell what I eat. I now cook daily as I am on the carnivore diet. No more processed food so have to shop more frequently. But, my gripe is that because Walmart employees aren't paid well and overworked they are miserable and that resentment gets passed on to the customer, which means its unpleasant to shop there. A self fulfilling prophecy. Publix is a much more pleasant shopping experience because they are paid better and have plenty of checkers. If price tag wasnt 35 to 60% more per item bought, I would never go to Walmart. A crappy business model and it means more turnover and a less satisfying experience shopping. My state is doing everything to bust up unions. No union is worse than lousy union.

Commenting for the algorithm. I'm still waiting for my fellow Americans to wake up and realize just how badly we are all getting shafted.

Slavery never ended. Taylor swift tickets are 3000 dollar each There paying $13 an hour to clean up after. Cincinnati

Didn't mention USA lack of: paid Public holidays, maternity & paternity leave, paid vacation & sick days.

Some American needs to realize that when people talk shit about America it’s not because the hate America but it’s because they want to improve it and also because they care.

There's only so long you can spend on a plantation, before you realise you're working on a plantation.

The Wealthy wouldn't be able to get away with most of the crap they do if they didn't have so many eagerly willing "accomplices" among the poor.

Corporations have owned our representatives for so long that our representatives don't even see us as citizens first. Most of the time when they refer to us, they call us workers instead of people or citizens. They see us the way their donors tell them to see us, because for the donors we are all just a necessary evil meant to work for them. They even have us trained to see ourselves that way. When we talk about wages or any socioeconomic issue, we completely forget about our rights as citizens of this country or as humans. We all refer to ourselves as workers, hardly ever as people a community, society, or country.

Spot on, corporations are not equal to people and shouldn't be aloud to donate money at all. They have gained even more rights than individuals, which is insane. Corporations can be owned by anybody like Puten + friends. A corporations number one goal is to make money at any cost. That goal is not the American way, it's to be fair and honest in your pursuit of wealth. We outlawed robber barons more then a 100yrs ago, but their back. Corporations are not supposed to be in charge. The founders never conceive this. It was "We the People. Not "We the Corporations".

...and people her keep thinking we're the greatest country on earth 🙄🙄🙄

In Australia we have several places moving to a 4 day work week for the same pay it’s been very interesting

Minimum wage was the minimum required to buy a house and raise a family. It was so every hard working person could have a piece of the American dream.

The baby boomers were raised in this golden era. Yet these are the same citizens who are now against the same policies that allowed them to live a good middle class living.

Everyone in the USA is so atomized. We need solidarity back, we need to not just care about ourselves, our families, our region, our clique of people, but as workers, lifting each other up. Until that happens, they (the rich) have us.

And our highest court in this country is also owned by the rich. 😑

You'd think being #1 in militarization that it would at least lead to beneficial economic outcomes for the people. What other arguments are there for the United States to force their "free market" policies on other governments in the guise of aid? Out of 38 developed countries, the United States is #36 in wage policies, #38 in worker protections, and #32 in rights to organization. Although this study came out before the corrupt Supreme Court decreased more union rights. A country isn't thriving when the majority of the population is left behind, let alone a global population. I hate that so many working people vote in the very people who pave the way to our exploitation. Voting for economic policies that benefit us all makes some sense to me. Voting solely on cultural policies when you are working class makes absolutely no sense.

The US is a developed country?

What amazes me about the americans i have met - and ive met a lot, especially during my time in the army - is how they all talk about freedom but they are, collectively, the most servile people ive ever met. Ive spent a lot of time in china and i think the chinese are more feisty about standing up for themselves than americans are.

My family came to this country under the notion that if you work hard in this country, you will reach the American dream: a home, a car, and free time with your family.

1930's to 1970's everybody gained but blacks were excluded in all of those benefits and give-aways.

I hope I’m alive to see the corporate zit finally pop.

Unions in the civilized world not North America are not based on adversity, but based on cooperation a partnership. In Europe unions have a seat on the boards of companies. Pure Capitalism is indistinguishable from a dictatorship, persons with the most wealth make the rules to favour themselves.

This should be headline news on every major News Network in the New York times and other major news outlets so that the voters can see just how much better is possible.

Thank you for saying "mixed economy" very true stmt

Corporate greed is rampant here and out of control

We can change things folks. Never ever vote for a Republican for any public office. Next, insist that the serious public officials establish a third party e.g. Progressive Party, that puts forth governance that makes economics, human rights, the environment, justice, health care and equal opportunity a priority over commercialism.

It also treats its veterans poorly

The love of money…evil.

4 Day work week

I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I've worked for the same company since 1992 without a promotion or significant pay raise. You could ask how this is possible? Why didn't you leave?Well, I did... just before the market crash of 2008. I was thrown a lifeline by my former employer, which I've been hanging onto ever sense. I've been tredding water through snow days, holidays, and birthdays. Now at the age of 66 I find myself spending an hour at the gym every night trying to get ready for another 9 or 10 years of employment because there's no way that I can afford to retire. I joke to my coworkers that my retirement plan is to die on the job. Sadly, it's not far from the truth😂.

If you don't pay people, they won't enjoy work. Pretty basic.

My grandparents' generation would be ashamed of our government right now...

*YESTERDAY I WAS READING ABOUT THE END OF SLAVERY IN THE USA* - this amazed me... Towards the end, some southern states increased the regulations on the treatment of slaves. Slave owners very quickly started moving to wage-based employees - especially for dangerous jobs. Cos if you injured a slave you had to take care of him and his family, but if a wage worker got injured you just got another one. And the slave was YOUR property, so why not damage the hired property and hand it back broken instead of risking your OWN property. So you ended up for a short period of time with some states where the chattel slaves did the easy safe work and the “free men” did the hard dangerous work… This woke me up to the attitude of employers SO much.