The continuing gallop of the coronavirus pandemic across cities and towns, suburbia and exurbia, and rural communities throughout the United States ensures our economy will not soon escape the ongoing coronavirus recession. But the ways in which the coronavirus and COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, afflict some people in our nation more than others would seem to indicate this particular recession will be unlike any previous ones in our history in terms of the spark that set it off — a pandemic — and the public health measures required for an eventual economic recovery.

These are hardly the kind of economic determinants that led to the most recent U.S. recessions, which featured asset bubbles of one sort or another collapsing financial markets, with the consequences cascading into the real economy. Think of the home mortgage finance bubble, which led to the Great Recession of 2007–2009, and the dot-com stock bubble and resulting recession in 2001, and the commercial bank and savings and loan lending spree that helped crash the U.S. economy in the late 1980s and early 1990s. What’s more, the measures that need to be taken to corral the pandemic — rigorous public health practices alongside viable therapeutics and an eventual vaccine or vaccines — are hardly economic measures. …

As small businesses across the United States fight to survive the coronavirus recession, and all too many succumb to the extraordinary pressures they are facing, we can see the continuing impact as millions of workers continue to file for unemployment insurance benefits. These small businesses are the lifeblood of their communities, and they are critical to the U.S. economy, employing nearly one-half of those who work in the private sector and providing the dynamism — the continual creation of new businesses — that is vital to productivity and sustained economic growth.

The importance of small businesses is one of the few things on which politicians of all stripes agree. Yet, despite their rhetoric, in this moment of existential threat, the political system has produced far greater support for big businesses, and this will have painful long-term economic consequences. For those small businesses that survive this crisis, the advantages already held by their biggest competitors, suppliers, and purchasers will only get stronger unless policymakers tighten U.S. antitrust laws to prevent more market concentration. …

The voices of protesters on the streets of cities and towns across the United States over the past few weeks reverberate a message Black Americans have spoken out about for generations: They cannot trust and have never been able to trust government to act on their behalf, whether it’s addressing police and state-sponsored violence, a deadly disease, economic inequality, or the day-to-day racism that presses on them throughout their lives. In short, our public institutions have failed Black Americans.

These failures of our institutions of governance pose a fundamental challenge to our nation. In order to have an economy where growth is strong, stable, and broadly shared, we need institutions capable of ensuring that the rules are fair and fairly enforced. We need institutions that can ensure inequality is contained and those at the top of the wealth and income ladders are not allowed to run away with all the gains. We need institutions capable of providing counterweights to concentrated economic power so that it does not transform into concentrated social and political power. …

On March 25, 1911, 146 workers were trapped and killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in New York City. More than a century later, the same callousness that led the owners of that company to lock exits and risk workers’ lives reverberates again across our nation. Millions of workers are returning to work with inadequate or nonexistent protections from a deadly virus that has already killed nearly 100,000 people in the United States.

It is no coincidence that a disproportionate number of the essential workers required to be in their workplaces and highly exposed to the coronavirus — healthcare workers, grocery workers, delivery drivers, and bus drivers — are people of color. Their pay and benefits are generally modest, and they have little power to pressure their employers to improve their conditions. …

This week, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) unveiled a new, comprehensive coronavirus relief bill. It is the first and only of such relief packages that would effectively measure how low- and middle-income families are faring amidst the crisis and beyond.

This provision would support efforts by the federal government to determine how gains — or, in today’s stark reality, losses — are distributed up and down the income ladder. That matters because it’s the only real way we can measure the success of whether the relief packages Congress enacts are actually working.

The measure is based on the Measuring Real Income Growth Act of 2019, which has been endorsed by two Nobel laureates, three former chairs of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, and dozens of other economists. That bill would require the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis to break out estimates of income growth into growth for low-, middle-, and top-income Americans, and it’s grounded in a project the Washington Center for Equitable Growth has named GDP 2.0. In effect, it distributes Gross Domestic Product growth so we can see who wins and loses from changes in the economy. …

As millions of Americans feel the pain of the coronavirus and the unavoidable coronavirus recession, we need to focus on more than just our short-term priorities — defeating the virus and limiting the exposure and economic damage to workers and families. We also need to think about how we restore the economy, end the inequities and instability laid bare by the pandemic, and create a path forward for strong, stable, and broad-based economic growth.

The role played by economic and racial inequality in who has lost their jobs, who has been most exposed to the virus in the workplace, and who has gotten sick and died is so evident as to be blinding. Those with low-paying service jobs are least likely to have benefits such as paid sick days and are most likely to be laid off. Even worse, to keep their jobs, they are forced to work in dangerous conditions. And in cities and counties, state after state, where data have been compiled by race, people of color have died far out of proportion to their percentage of the population. …

Government officials at all levels in the United States are increasingly, almost frantically, calling for a robust testing system with the twin goals of containing the coronavirus pandemic and reopening the economy. Some states, such as Massachusetts, have been ahead of the curve, employing an extensive “track and trace” system. Our economy cannot recover without restoring the public’s confidence that the spread of the coronavirus has been contained and will not surge anew in the weeks and months ahead before scientists develop an effective vaccine.

Contact tracing, or track and trace, is a system that keeps track of individuals who have been infected with the coronavirus through directly interviewing people, as in the case of Massachusetts, or digital methods. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health and member of the president’s coronavirus task force, says the pandemic cannot be contained without a robust test and trace system, which would allow anyone who might have the disease to be found, notified, and monitored for symptoms. …

This piece originally ran in The American Prospect on April 6, 2020 as part of an economists roundtable on the coronavirus crisis.

The coronavirus is, above all, a public-health crisis, and the economic impact could be devastating. But before any of us even heard of COVID-19, our society and economy suffered from deeply-ingrained problems, starting with economic inequality, which this crisis will undoubtedly exacerbate. The need for substantially increased public spending and investment will not diminish once the public-health crisis fades.

What will diminish is the broad political consensus that made possible the recently approved $2.2 trillion burst of federal spending to support families and businesses during this economic shutdown. Indeed, if recent history tells us anything, that consensus will fall apart once the immediate health crisis dissipates and people can gradually return to work. …