Post-pandemic economy comes into view

Just maybe, the last year's "Racial Reckoning" is having the material effect of putting systemic racism front and center of our descriptions of our reality. Consider this from Binyamin Appelbaum, lead writer on economics and business for the New York Times editorial board. 

He's writing about the 23 Republican governors who are cutting off the $300-a-week federal boost to unemployment benefits which was part of the recovery package passed by Congress. This mean spirited crew insists we must starve poor people back into taking low paying jobs, typical Republican policy.

... A lot of people are going to get hurt, and the pain will not be distributed randomly.

States administer unemployment benefits because racist Southern senators in the 1930s and the 1940s prevented the creation of a federal system. Almost a century later, Southern states still operate the stingiest unemployment programs. In recent years, for example, unemployed workers in New Jersey have been roughly five times as likely to qualify for jobless benefits as those in North Carolina. The benefits in New Jersey are larger and last longer, too. 

The legacy of the racism that infected so many of the New Deal’s achievements is particularly bitter for Black workers, who continue to live disproportionately in the states that provide the least aid to those who lose their jobs. During the last recession, only 23.8 percent of unemployed Black workers received benefits, compared to 33.2 percent of white workers, according to a 2012 analysis by the Urban Institute. Those who qualify for benefits also get less money. On average, the 11 former Confederate states replace just 40 percent of lost wages, compared to an average of 46 percent in the rest of the United States. 

The supplemental federal payments have temporarily lifted all boats, raising the average weekly payment in the stingiest state, Mississippi, above the pre-crisis average payment in the most generous state, Hawaii. But in the coming weeks, as blue states continue to accept federal funds while red states stop, the gap will yawn wider than ever. 

Although Americans generally agree that government should not act with racist intent, the unemployment safety net was designed with racist intent. And it continues to work in the way that it was designed, allowing Mississippi to badly serve Americans who live there. ...

This comes from the NY Times lead business writer, not some Occupy critic. Awareness of racial impact has moved to the center -- and the GOP is desperate to cancel it ... as well as to silence  the people who need the $300-a-week ...

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Here's what these bigoted unemployment policies mean for the economy at large, also from the Times.

The chronic problem we face as we put Covid-19 in the rearview mirror is that the U.S. economy before the pandemic was incredibly dependent on an abundance of low-wage, low-hours jobs. It was a combo that yielded low prices for comfortably middle-class and wealthier customers and low labor costs for bosses, but spectacularly low incomes for tens of millions of others. This dynamic was first brought into stark relief by the discourse about “essential workers” during the worst of the pandemic. Now it will be highlighted by the frustrating, unequal outcomes of this Great Reopening.

If, in this summer interim, the remaining federal benefits for those without jobs pressures some employers to increase wages and offer a more full-time hours to their employees, then that is all to the good for them and the sturdiness of our economy. The good news for workers is that wages tend to be “sticky” and hard to reverse. ...

 If Congress won't vote the $15 minimum wage, workers of all races will force it themselves, insofar as they are able.