Eric Herr: Inequality in America being illuminated by the pandemic

To The Daily Sun,

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, we face immediate, critical personal, economic and policy decisions; matters of life and death, and of economic well being. Yet beyond these choices, COVID-19 is exposing long-existing fault lines in our economic, social and institutional lives that threaten our common future.

Nearly a quarter of a millennium ago Jefferson articulated the lens through which the Founding Fathers judged the fault lines of their time: “that all men are created equal.” Geneticists tell us that across our population our gene codes vary by less than one tenth of 1 percent. Before genetics, the Founding Fathers got it right biologically. We are all created, essentially, equal.

Still, our individual paths diverge immediately after we are born. We may be endowed with a Right to Life, but COVID-19 is teaching us that we do not share the risk of dying from the pandemic equally. Mortality rates for blacks are twice those of whites and almost three times those of Asians. Mortality rates fall significantly as incomes rise. And mortality rates vary significantly with age, putting seniors at significantly higher risk of pandemic-related death. What do our equality and our Right to Life mean when our risks of death from a natural enemy indifferent to our circumstances vary so significantly?

What of our equality and our right to liberty today? In the pandemic, do we all share equal freedom of choice? Are we all truly free to choose to work at home, to shelter in place? Or do some face what amounts to economic conscription having no choice but to work in environments that impose significant health risks for themselves and their families if they are to put food on their tables and provide care for their children? Is that really the natural equality and right to liberty the Declaration signaled and over which the revolution was fought?

And what of equality and the pursuit of happiness? If happiness is ultimately about not pleasure but our opportunity to thrive, then for our children equality means at least some common minimum access to the tools and resources of education. Yet access to digital education is woefully unequal across school systems and households. So, for our children, are we failing the test of equality in the pursuit of the opportunity to thrive?

The Declaration closed with a commitment by the signers: “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor”. That too is a lens through which we can judge our actions. Today, rather than pledging our fortunes, we pile debt on future generations.

The fault lines we face are not new to the time of COVID-19, but their depth and breadth are being illuminated by the pandemic. These fault lines converge to issues of equality. Addressing these challenges will require more than half measures, modest tweaks on the margin. But like fault lines in nature and that fueled the Declaration, we ignore these challenges at our peril.

Eric Herr

Hill