Why we can’t recover without a thriving care economy
Economic policy-making has, over the past hundred years or more, stripped out caring from our understanding of what makes the economy tick. Caring – for children, for elders, for the planet – sounds to many like a distraction from the main attraction, especially during the pandemic, when what we need are jobs and robust economic growth.
But as the COVID-19 pandemic brought the global economy to a grinding halt, locking down working parents and idling activity in many sectors, it became clear that if we don’t put caring back into the economy, we can’t achieve economic recovery. The pandemic has revealed economic fault lines that must be addressed. We can’t “get back to normal”; we need to create a better normal. And we certainly won’t be able to build back better without making the caring economy a critical component of federal recovery plans.