Every person in prison, every person marginalized, trivialized, left behind, suboptimized, disenfranchised, underutilized, disengaged, distracted from, and otherwise lessened weakens our great nation.
There's are some societies around the world with a lot less diversity (racial, religious, ethnicity) and a lot more cultural cohesion (Japan and Korea, Scandinavia), and they reap some of the advantages. They have their own problems, to be sure, but their countries work more like "well-run machines" than does ours.
America, on the other hand, is way more diverse, and we are anything but culturally coherent these days. But there are certain things about America which have powered our excellence, and diversity, our independence, our entrepreneurial spirit and fearlessness (in business, et al.) which have worked to our distinct and spectacular advantages for a century and more. Every silver lining has a dark side, and the dark sides of those positive attributes have been an indisputable drag on what could have been an even more productive and satisfying epoch.
You want to supercharge the full economy? You want to energize the masses? You want to help America reach its potential? Then you have to fight for a system that makes every person believe they are in this together, that every person is inherently worthwhile and will reap a fair benefit for their hard work and willingness to step up and take a risk. That means fighting against every form of discrimination, from the blatant racism to more subtle institutional (both intentional and unintentional) racism, sexism and harassment, religions and all-gender discrimination, agism, etc. Whose a better part of your work team: Someone being belittled or criticized for their sexual orientation, or that same person surrounded by people accept and support who they are? Who's going to try harder to make it to work when things get tough: someone who is payed a living wage with medical benefits, or someone who is being shortchanged because they're women?
I struggle with many union policies and mindsets, but when I think of how the rich and powerful take advantage of the workforce, and when you can just look at the way wages have fallen compared to management and C-suite compensation, I see how critical they are to the strength of our economy. Left to their own devices, the economical forces will continue to widen inequality weakening middle class, and creating a very desperate lower class, which is a cancer to the health of a nation. Not cool at all.
Is it obvious? The health of our democracy is fully dependent on leaders at all levels working constantly to fight anything that defines others as less, that perpetuates a widening wealth inequality, or makes puts up barriers to someone striving to do their best. No doubt, hard work must be rewarded and sloth should be punished, but an unfiltered look are reality makes it clear that we are far from optimum. This will take major work on many fronts from education to social policy to market incentives to financial regulation reform, but if everyone picks part of the problem near and dear to themselves to help improve, it is not (yet) beyond us.
