ABSTRACT
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis fretted about economic disparity during the Great Depression of the 1930s. According to a 2014 report of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank whose mission is “to defend and promote the interests of workers in economic policy debates,” themedian worker’s wages and benefits grew just 7.9 percent between 1979 and 2013. Economic growth is benefiting those at the top, not ordinary workers. Another measure of economic disparity is household wealth. Most immediately, the pandemic highlighted and aggravated the economic disadvantage of low-income workers such as those in restaurants, groceries and some health services, and in basic public services like sanitation and mass transportation. In Chicago, for one, the economic battle was joined even before the pandemic and recession hit.
