But those workers are the exception. In this column on June 24, Fred Gaboury showed that 40 percent of workers don't earn enough to meet the basic requirements for their families. For them, life is a constant game of catch-up. And even for better-paid workers today, the chances are very small that all the conditions will come together to enable them to get rich in the stock market. Recently, a high school student was telling me about his class project.
Few workers get rich playing the stock market.
On the other hand, many studies have shown that having a union is the best way of winning better wages, benefits, and working conditions. I wonder why the high schools don't have classes in labor history and union organizing. Still, there are those who insist that if we could only learn to save our money, everyone could be rich. Whenever I hear that, I think back to something that happened 35 years ago. In the 1960s, my high school Spanish teacher returned from a summer in Mexico.