23 Top Takeaways From “Tightrope”

“It is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself up by his bootstraps.” 

Sound familiar? 

Every American has heard the words of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., but many people don’t know that in addition to being one of the most important figures in the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. King was also a staunch advocate for the poor and oppressed. He fought for the rights of poor and working-class Americans. He championed a better future for all people — a future where we stop criminalizing poor communities and start supporting them instead. 

This blog isn’t actually about Dr. King. It’s about the injustices he spoke up about that are still some of the most pressing issues facing America’s workforce today — rising inequality and poverty, middle-class struggles and workers’ rights, and government failure to support those most in need. 

These often neglected topics have recently resurfaced in the book Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, the latest novel from New York Times reporters and Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.

Tightrope is a book every worker needs to read, because it’s about the crisis in working-class America. The authors describe it as an exploration of the “unraveling,” of the white working class. NPR aptly called Tightrope “a call to arms that warns that America is in deep trouble and needs to make big changes if it is to save itself.” 

So why am I, the CEO of a workforce tech company, highlighting some of the darkest issues facing America today? Why am I writing about a book that focuses on the opioid crisis and America’s failed incarceration system instead of picking a book from the Barnes & Noble business section?

I’m writing this because our mission at 1Huddle is to power every worker, and we can’t lift up any worker unless we lift up every worker. 

One quote from this book that really stuck out to me came from the British historian Arnold Toynbee who said “civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” If you’re reading this, chances are you’re an innovative talent leader who’s looking for new ways to support your workers and uplift your organization. And that means you’re in a position to help make sure our society doesn’t die by the kind of “suicide” referenced here. 

It’s our responsibility to work together to create a better, more equitable America that truly raises up all workers. Because if you’re someone with the power to make decisions in our workforce, then you can choose to make decisions that uphold the status quo or decisions that challenge it. So if you’re a leader who’s serious about DEI, increasing access and opportunity, and creating a workforce where everyone has the ability to show up every day and be their best, then you have to understand the biggest problems that millions of working-class Americans face every day. 

So with that, here are my top 23 top takeaways from Tightrope: 

My top five highlights:

1. The United States only spends one-fifth as much on job training and assistance programs compared with the average among other industrialized countries. Moreover, the United States has significantly cut spending on these programs in recent decades while significantly increasing spending on prisons instead.

2. Nearly 40% of Americans do not have the resources to cover a $400 emergency expense.

3. In 1965, the average chief executive earned about 20 times as much as the average worker. Now the average CEO earns more than 300 times as much. A Walmart employee earning the median salary at the company, $19,177, would have to work for 1,188 years to earn as much as the chief executive does in a single year. 

4. Many companies subject hourly workers to unpredictable job schedules, sometimes working late one evening and then early the next morning, in ways that interrupt sleep and make it impossible to plan childcare, doctor’s appointments or parent-teacher visits. A 2019 study found that this kind of scheduling caused workers even more unhappiness and psychological distress than low wages, and often seems unnecessary and callous.

5. Almost 33% of American 15-year-olds performed below the baseline that’s necessary to thrive in the modern world. The only area where American students really excel is in overconfidence. They are more likely than pupils in other countries to believe they have mastered topics, even ones they don’t perform well in.

All of my highlights:

• If the federal minimum wage in 1968 had kept up with inflation and productivity, it would now be $22 an hour instead of $7.25. But in recent decades, government authorities too often side with companies over workers by undermining unions and weakening wages, particularly for blue-collar workers. 

• Globally, America ranks #41 in child mortality, #46 in internet access, #44 in access to clean drinking water, #57 in personal safety, and #30 in high school enrollment, according to the Social Progress Index, which is based on research of 146 countries that is conducted by three Nobel-prize-winning economists.

• The White House estimates that the opioid epidemic costs the U.S. half a trillion dollars a year — more than $4,000 per American household annually.

• 76% of American adults expect their children’s lives to be worse than their own, because America doesn’t adequately invest in its children. 

• Working class communities have collapsed into a miasma of unemployment, broken families, drugs, obesity, and early death. There’s a brittleness to life for about 150 million Americans who face a constant risk that sickness, layoffs, or a car accident will bankrupt them. 

• 1 in 7 Americans live below the poverty line.

• “If you are lucky enough to do well, send the elevator back down.” – Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist

• Early childhood programs for at-risk kids pay for themselves seven times over and reduce spending on juvenile detention, special education, and policing.

• In the U.S., 70% of criminal sanctions involve incarceration; in Germany only 6% involve incarceration — the sanction is more likely to be a fine, community service, or obligatory job training. Punishing and imprisoning the poor is the distinctively American response to poverty in the 21st century.

• “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” – Franklin Roosevelt in his second Inaugural Address.

• The Wall Street bonus pool at the end of each year exceeds the combined annual earnings of all Americans working full-time at the federal minimum wage.

•  For every man aged 25-54 who counts as unemployed, three more don’t have jobs but aren’t looking for work (meaning they aren’t considered ‘unemployed’ in government calculations).

• When decent jobs disappear the loss is not just economic. It has consequences for self-esteem, family structure, substance abuse, hopelessness, and even child abuse. One study found that for each percentage point increase in the unemployment rate, instances of child neglect rise by 20%.

• The United Nations official in charge of extreme poverty visited Mozambique and Mauritania in Africa, but also visited Alabama. He warned that the U.S. now has the lowest rate of social mobility in the rich world and that, “the American dream is rapidly becoming the American illusion.”

• “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.” – President Dwight D. Eisenhower

• Children from the richest 1% of households are 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy League college than children from the bottom 20%.

• America has gone astray by classifying poverty and drugs simply as a choice or as the consequence of personal irresponsibility. Yet in another sense, poverty is a choice. It is a choice by the country. The United States has chosen policies over the last half century that have resulted in higher levels of homelessness, overdose deaths, crime and inequality — and now it’s time to make a different choice.

• My final highlight is…

My 23rd and final takeaway from Tightrope is about the solution part of this book. Tightrope ends with eight actionable steps that workforce leaders and politicians can take to help save America from itself and raise up the workers who need it most. But if you want to unlock these eight steps, then you have to answer this question from the 1Huddle game Nelson Mandela, which has just been added to our on-demand Game Shop.

Here’s your question:

Why does the United Nations ask people to spend 67 minutes doing something good for others in honor of Nelson Mandela each year?

1. Nelson Mandela died at age 67
2. It represents the 67 years he spent working toward change
3. To honor the 67 years he spent behind bars
4. As a reminder of the 67 years of apartheid in South Africa

Think you know the answer?

The first 10 people to email the correct answer to dana@1huddle.co will unlock my 23rd highlight with the eight solutions outlined in Tightrope, plus you’ll get early access to 1Huddle’s new Tightrope game. So what are you waiting for?

Email Dana for your chance to win!