We live in an unequal society; COVID-19 is making it worse

We live in an unequal society, and COVID-19 is making it worse.

The pandemic has struck disproportionately at poor people in cities, almost as if it were deliberately targeting minorities. New York’s death rate among African Americans and Latinos is roughly twice as high as among white people.

The economic impact has been unequal too. A new survey by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reported that over 50% of workers who have lost income due to COVID-19 were already below the federal poverty line. Most higher-income workers have kept their jobs.

Now add a third, cruel form of inequality: unequal risk.

Knowledge workers who can work at home are riding out the pandemic in relative safety. First responders, health care workers, bus drivers, grocery store clerks and delivery workers don’t have that luxury.

To keep their paychecks coming, they have to go out in public and risk infection — even though they generally aren’t as well paid as the managers (and journalists) who work at home.

Those are the new facts of American inequality. They’ll persist as long as COVID-19 is at large. The economic impact may continue even longer.

Isabel V. Sawhill of the Brookings Institution, a leading scholar on poverty and class, told me, “It’s quite scary to think about what will become of the country when the effects are so uneven.”

Will this be a moment for Americans to take a searching look at our society’s inequalities, and decide to raise the incomes of the working poor?

Or will we choose to muddle through the Pandemic Recession and try to forget everything we’re suddenly seeing in stark relief?

Congress has passed four economic relief bills with an unprecedented $3 trillion in emergency spending.

But the measures have been short term and top- down. They began with bailouts for big businesses, then added a massive program of loans for small businesses, direct payments to taxpayers and expanded unemployment benefits.

The Federal Reserve has buoyed the stock markets by lending trillions to banks, businesses, states and counties.

The rollout has been plagued with more than its share of problems. States are overwhelmed by unemployment applications;

Florida reported last week it had approved only 20% of applications.

President Donald Trump hopes for a sharp economic recovery before the November election. But the International Monetary Fund warns the recession could last more than a year. So we need to plan for a longer ordeal. Sawhill recommends more spending on the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses, and extended unemployment insurance plus more help for state and local governments.

But the relief packages need several new elements to soften the impact on the no-longer-working poor.

“It’s going to be horrible for low-income families,” Sawhill told me. “The jobs that are hardest hit tend to be low-paid, including retail, food and restaurants. Those are often jobs held by women. I worry about lowincome single parents. They’re mostly women, they have virtually no financial reserves and they often have no other adult to rely on.”

She recommends expanding the low-income safety net with emergency funding for food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, two programs that got similar boosts during the Great Recession a decade ago.

But Congress needs to put automatic triggers on all these programs, so that funding rises along with job losses and the newly unemployed won’t have to depend on Congress voting for round after round of new funding. Want to think bigger? Gene Sperling, a former economic adviser to Bill Clinton, is proposing a $20 “living wage” package that would begin with a $15 minimum wage and add child care subsidies and tax credits.

Other Democrats hope this will be the moment when voters coalesce around their demands for universal health insurance, so workers don’t lose access to medical care if they lose their jobs.

Those proposals will remain stretches unless Democrats win a landslide in November.

But we ought to reach a bipartisan consensus that the “essential workers” we claim to admire as heroic — including grocery store clerks, delivery service drivers and meat packers — deserve a living wage.

They’re risking their lives on our behalf. For their sake, it would be a terrible thing to let this crisis go to waste.