Down Up

Mickey Friedman
May 1, 2020

If ever there was a time to take a look at what works and what doesn’t, it’s now. What doesn’t work is our healthcare system. What doesn’t work is our economy. What doesn’t work is who we value and reward.

It’s time to turn things over. Make down up.

Not only to appreciate nurses, transit workers, grocery clerks but pay them much more. Now, in pandemic-time, we have an opportunity to see more clearly. Move beyond our usual tendency to take too many things, too many people for granted. When death is impossible to deny, we can see with greater clarity those we need to live our lives.

Used to shopping at our convenience, we are hardly aware of the Smithfield workers who prepare our food. Give little thought to those who stock the shelves. So often distracted, we hardly notice who has scanned our groceries, taken our money, packed our bags.

These people are risking their lives for us.

Last week, the Washington Post reported 50 grocery workers died from COVID. The union representing 1.3 million grocery and food processing workers, suggests 3,000 others have likely been infected. Their April 15 poll notes 85% of grocery store customers are failing to practice social distancing measures and 28% of stores don’t limit the number of customers at any one time. More than 733 immigrants and refugees working for Smithfield tested positive, more than half of South Dakota’s cases.

According to the CDC, eighty percent of the nation’s coronavirus deaths have been adults 65 and older. Nearly one-quarter of retail workers are 55 or older, with 7 percent over 65. And because these workers are underpaid to begin with, and poor compared to most, they have little choice but to continue to work while others shelter in place at home.

Think about the men and women who keep hospital floors clean. Or work in hospital laundries. How is it an average hospital maintenance worker makes $14 an hour when an average hospital administrator earns $442,000. Maybe we can live with this disparity when we don’t take the time to notice. In normal times. But how about now when one is risking his or her life every single day for a salary guaranteed to keep them poor?

Nurses, dieticians, food service workers, nursing home employees, EMTs, those draw blood, who staff emergency rooms, ICU units, your doctor’s office. According to the Washington Post, “the number of American health-care workers with covid-19 has spiraled upward ever since. About 9,000 have had positive coronavirus tests as of April 9, according to a separate CDC analysis released Tuesday that provides an early snapshot of infections in health-care workers across the country. They are mostly white, female and in their 40s, the report found. Although most were not sick enough to be hospitalized, 27 died, the CDC said. As with the rest of the U.S. population, most of the deaths occurred among those age 65 or older.”

Like most of the numbers we’re given, they likely significantly underestimate infections and death. Why? Because millions upon millions of Americans who want to be tested, who should be tested, aren’t being tested. In fact, the Post notes “some regions and institutions are no longer testing health-care workers, reserving kits for the sickest patients.”

In this midst of our corona crisis, David Leonhardt of the New York Times gathered some statistical data about how our economy really works. Who is rewarded and who treads water. I can’t think of a better time to take a good hard look at what’s really going on.

Let’s start with the Gross Domestic Product, a fancy way of describing the value of all the goods and services we produce. GDP has risen 79 percent since 1980, while after-tax income for the bottom half of earners has risen only 20 percent and the very wealthy have seen a 420 percent increase. Time for Down Up.

Leonhardt puts it this way: “One way to think about the rise in inequality is to imagine how different the economy would be if inequality hadn’t soared over the past 40 to 50 years. In that scenario, with the same G.D.P. that we have today but with 1980 levels of inequality, every American household in the bottom 90 percent of income would be earning about $12,000 more — not just this year, but permanently. In effect, each household in this bottom 90 percent is sending a check for $12,000 to every household in the top 1 percent, year after year after year.”

These days, as incredible numbers of American workers risk their lives for us, how about we take a minute to think about fairness. In 1970, the ratio between what a CEO made versus one of their workers was about 20:1. Today, it is just a bit less than 300:1. Time to reward those who keep us alive, not just profit off us. Down Up.

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“Down Up” was previously published in the April 23, 2020 issue of the Berkshire Record.