Opinion | Why Do We Pay So Many People So Little Money? - The New York Times

Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C. on politics, demographics and inequality. With notable abruptness, thanks to the advent of the coronavirus, much of the public has become aware of its dependence on hospital orderlies, cleaners, trash collectors, grocery workers, food delivery drivers, paramedics, mortuary technicians, and postal, shipping, maintenance, wastewater treatment, truck stop and mass transit employees — on what, to many, had been a largely invisible work force. As Tony Powell, a 62-year-old hospital administrative coordinator, told Molly Kinder, a fellow in the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, in a taped interview in May: People are not looking at people like us on the lower end of the spectrum. We’re not even getting respect. That is the biggest thing: we are not even getting respect. Nobody is listening to their voices. Maybe they’ll wake up and see: Oh, these are the people that are actually taking care of the people that need to be taken

Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C. on politics, demographics and inequality. With notable abruptness, thanks to the advent of the coronavirus, much of the public has become aware of its dependence on hospital orderlies, cleaners, trash collectors, grocery workers, food delivery drivers, paramedics, mortuary technicians, and postal, shipping, maintenance, wastewater treatment, truck stop and mass transit employees — on what, to many, had been a largely invisible work force. As Tony Powell, a 62-year-old hospital administrative coordinator, told Molly Kinder, a fellow i