Care work needs to be treated as as important as it gets

The way things are now is not indicative of a well-functioning economy or society.

Care isn’t a burden for women and families to shoulder alone. It’s the foundation of our economy, and it deserves to be treated as such. For the tens of millions of workers with care responsibilities related to, for example, young children or elderly parents, having stable, high-quality care services available is what makes it possible for them to hold a job. Put simply, care services are needed for the functioning of our modern labor market.

Workers with care responsibilities need a strong care system in place in order to participate in the workforce. As it stands, our care infrastructure is fragmented and inadequate, which cuts off opportunities for millions of workers. The burdens of our inadequate care infrastructure disproportionately fall on women, who still perform the bulk of care work in this country. Those care burdens are a primary cause of low labor force participation among prime age women in the U.S. relative to our peer countries around the world, even before the pandemic. Poor care infrastructure comes at great economic costs.

While workers with caregiving needs rely heavily on care services, care jobs are historically underpaid and undervalued. And because of things like occupational segregation, discrimination, and other labor market disparities related to structural racism and sexism, women and people of color are concentrated in these jobs. - EPI

The Fed is worsening inequality

This is actually the latest manifestation of what's been going on for a long time. Especially the part about interest rates.

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the Federal Reserve has gotten plenty of kudos for moves that have helped stabilize the economy, kept house prices from tanking and supported the stock market. But those successes have obscured another effect: the inadvertent impact the Fed’s ultra-low interest rates and bond-buying sprees are having on economic inequality.

Longstanding inequality in the U.S. has been exacerbated by the Fed’s role in touching off a multi-trillion-dollar boom in stock markets — and stock ownership is heavily skewed toward the wealthiest Americans...

“Inequality is a cumulative process,” said Karen Petrou, author of “The Engine of Inequality: The Fed and the Future of Wealth in America” and managing partner of the Washington-based consulting firm Federal Financial Analytics. “The richer you are, the richer you get, and the poorer you are, the poorer you get, unless something puts that engine in reverse,” she said. “That engine is driven not by fate or by untouchable phenomena such as demographics but most importantly by policy decisions.” - ProPublica