The pandemic is forcing America to confront its epidemic low-wage problem

Groshen and Holzer describe possible reforms, but their tone is pessimistic:

The forces of automation and globalization are not likely to subside any time soon, potentially leading to further flat wages, rising inequality and lower labor force participation.

And, “all else equal, these forces suggest ongoing rising wage inequality in the future.”

Or, for example:

The high and uncompensated costs borne by U.S. displaced workers suggest that current policy and employer actions are insufficient to manage the likely future pace of job destruction without harm to families and communities.

Could things look up?

Wendy Edelberg, also a director of the Hamilton Project, noted in an email that reform will require changing the thinking of some key players. “Economists have seemed to take as inevitable the gap between wages for low and high-skill jobs,” she wrote. But “that gap has, at least in part, been driven by policy decisions.” Adverse policies, she wrote, range from those “making it more difficult for private-sector workers to unionize; to weakness in our education system and technical training; to massive incarceration rates; to a failure to raise the minimum wage.”

All are subject to change by elected officials and, she argued, “fixing some of those policies would help right away.”

Edelberg makes the case that

the pandemic has shone a spotlight on the critical importance of low-skill work. As a society, we must choose to value all workers — particularly those who are keeping essential services going right now on the front lines while so many others work remotely in the safety of our homes.

The reality, as Michael Podhorzer, the assistant for special research to Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, told The New Yorker, is that “We are in a moment of extreme crisis if you’re a working person.”

This is the kind of crisis that can push the nation to the right or left, or, back to the anxious and unsatisfactory normalcy of a country locked into inaction by polarization. Even more threatening is what happened in Georgia on June 10, where Democrats saw a systematic effort to disenfranchise the electorate.

The state’s voting system “suffered a spectacular collapse, leading to absentee ballots that never got delivered and hourslong waits at polling sites,” The Times reported, noting that

Georgia is being roiled by a politically volatile debate over whether the problems were the result of mere bungling, or an intentional effort by Republican officials to inhibit voting.

Donald Trump and the Republican Party clearly see Georgia as a model, and they are determined to capitalize on the pandemic to suppress the vote and conduct an overtly anti-democratic election on Nov. 3. If they have their way, one of the first targets of suppression will be the essential work force that has learned better than anyone the severity of the damage than can be inflicted by a Trump administration.

from Hacker News https://ift.tt/3hPS1me