Steven G. Calabresi (Northwestern University – School of Law) & Sylvia Progressi (Brown University, Students) have posted Originalism and Economic Equality on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Justice Scalia and most other originalists have concluded that Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment does not create a right to economic equality. In their view, one of the chief virtues of originalism is that it demonstrates the "utter absurdity" (in Justice Scalia's words) of the claim advanced by Frank Michelman and others that the Equal Protection of the Laws Clause creates a right to economic equality and a concomitant duty on the states (or the federal government) to provide a guaranteed annual income or an equivalent.
Although we completely agree with Justice Scalia that a legal text’s original public meaning is determinative of its meaning today, we argue that he has not followed his own methodology when assessing the relationship of the Fourteenth Amendment to economic equality. He has ignored the history of the Reconstruction Congress's concern for the economic welfare of the former slaves and clear evidence that the word "equal" in Section One was understood to provide both constitutional power and a constitutional duty to engage in economic redistribution on the model of Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15 and the Freedmen's Bureau Act.
Highly recommended, but I am skeptical of this interpretation of what ought to be called the "Protection of the Laws Clause," which seems clearly limited to guaranteeing to all persons legal protection of personal security, private property, and so forth. If an argument of this kind is viable, a more plausible basis would be found in the Privileges or Immunities Clause.