# An Economy of Dignity | A World Transformed | Moshiach Life

> The pandemic also throws in sharp relief the life-giving importance of many workers we never paid much attention to. The supermarket stockers…

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# An Economy of Dignity

![Farm workers harvesting a crop in a field](https://moshiach.life/assets/archive/a-world-transformed--an-economy-of-dignity.webp)

*Written June 2020*

In the wake of a global economic meltdown caused by the pandemic, we are still groping our way towards understanding what the recovery will look like. Is it possible that many of the lost jobs are never coming back? How will the millions left jobless and displaced provide for themselves and their families? What role should the government play in getting them back on their feet, if any?

The pandemic also throws in sharp relief the life-giving importance of many workers we never paid much attention to. The supermarket stockers. Agricultural workers. Home health aides. These are some of the lowest paid employees doing what, until now, had been considered lowly, menial labor. Now we realize that these workers are essential, performing vital services that not only keep our economy humming but protect our very lives. Yet has the pandemic caused us to rethink the way these workers are treated, and paid? We call them “heroes,” but they are still paid less than $15 an hour, often with no sick leave or healthcare benefits.

Economist Gene Sperling, in a recently released book entitled “Economic Dignity,” muses that too often, our economic debate focused on the wrong metrics: We measure economic success by looking at GDP rather than whether the economy is succeeding in lifting up the sense of meaning, purpose, fulfillment, and security of people. He recommends sweeping policy changes that provide paid sick leave, maternal and paternal leave and bereavement leave. We need to place workers’ abilities to care for their families and participate in life-cycle events above economic productivity. What’s the point of an economy bubbling along if millions of people are shut out of every activity that makes life meaningful?

Sperling proposes not only an increase in the minimum wage and expansion of benefits for workers, but also more government subsidies for jobs that he calls “double-dignity”--jobs that provide a stable career path in fields that directly help other people. Even when many jobs are rendered obsolete by mechanization, we will still need people to care for our sick and needy and to teach and nurture our children (particularly those with special needs). If we have a huge unemployed workforce, they can be retrained to provide support to people currently struggling with disability or mental illness.

Sperling’s thoughts on economic dignity call to mind the words of our prophets regarding the Messianic era, when each of us will dwell “one under his vine and one under his fig tree.” We will experience an outpouring of Divine blessing allowing us to live a life of leisure, and, in the words of Maimonides, “The sole occupation of the world will be to know G-d.” An economy built on dignity, on supporting one another with love and compassion, is a step towards that goal, as the prophet Isaiah (1:27) says, “Zion will be redeemed with justice and its captives with charity.”