Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Carol Masser and I'm Jason Kelly. It's time
Speaker 1: for one of the big features in the magazine this week. Well,
Speaker 1: in the almost three months since isolation measures were put
Speaker 1: into place to slow the spread of the coronavirus in
Speaker 1: the United States, the economy has all but collapsed, and
Speaker 1: the damage it has been swift. It certainly has Jason,
Speaker 1: and while the virus has devastated almost every economy it
Speaker 1: has touched, Americans entered the crisis in an especially vulnerable position.
Speaker 1: By June and estimated one in four American workers was
Speaker 1: out of a job. Forty million people have filed for
Speaker 1: unemployment so far. The world's wealthiest country, home to more
Speaker 1: than two fifths of all millionaires. Let that sit for
Speaker 1: a second, has one of the widest wealth gaps of
Speaker 1: any developed nation, And Jason, the country's middle class, presumably
Speaker 1: the bedrock of the economy, was in a weekend position,
Speaker 1: and things were especially bleak for minority groups when the
Speaker 1: shutdown began, especially Black Americans. A big takeaway the US
Speaker 1: also has a weak social safety net, one that is
Speaker 1: failing its workers. So here they are stories from a
Speaker 1: country that was widely unprepared for a pandemic fallout. The
Speaker 1: pandemic has sent American workers plummeting into a safety net
Speaker 1: that wasn't prepared to catch them. By Claire Steth. Chrissie
Speaker 1: Ormand de Swart was having a cookout when she learned
Speaker 1: she'd lost her job. She and her husband, Benny de
Speaker 1: Swart had spent the first week of March in Indian Wells, California,
Speaker 1: setting up for the BNP Paraba Open, a two week
Speaker 1: tennis tournament expected to draw half a million spectators. Chrissie
Speaker 1: works in event production, overseeing players walk out routines, award presentations,
Speaker 1: and other minute Benny, a camera operator and supervisor, make
Speaker 1: sure the matches look good on TV. On March eighth,
Speaker 1: the night before the qualifying rounds were set to start,
Speaker 1: the couple invited some colleagues over to the house where
Speaker 1: they were staying for a barbecue. Benny grilled salmon and
Speaker 1: steak as people debated whether Raphael nadal Or or Novak
Speaker 1: Djokovic would beat the defending champion Dominic team. Chrissy was
Speaker 1: inside getting napkins when her phone buzzed with the text
Speaker 1: from a friend. B n P is canceled. What does
Speaker 1: that mean for you, and Benny. Confused, Chrissy checked the
Speaker 1: event's website. A banner appeared announcing that because of confirmed
Speaker 1: cases of COVID nineteen in Coachella Valley, the tournament wouldn't
Speaker 1: be held. It was the first professional sports event to
Speaker 1: be canceled in the US. We were so naive about
Speaker 1: what would happen, Chrissie recalls. We thought we'd still be
Speaker 1: able to work. At the time, there were only five
Speaker 1: and fifty confirmed cases in the US. There were no
Speaker 1: stay at home orders, yet no shuttered businesses. The couple
Speaker 1: assumed they just move on to their next job, a
Speaker 1: golf tournament. For years, they had traveled the world, helping
Speaker 1: produce everything from the World Cup to the Olympics. Like
Speaker 1: almost everyone they worked with, they were freelancers, with no
Speaker 1: paid vacation time, no sick leave, no employer backed health insurance.
Speaker 1: Their only job security was that a sport was always
Speaker 1: in season Somewhere. Over the next ten days, all their
Speaker 1: gigs through August were canceled. It just kept coming and
Speaker 1: coming and coming, event after event. Chrissie says it was brutal.
Speaker 1: On the flight home to Chicago, the couple listed their
Speaker 1: monthly expenses on a cocktail napkin. Property taxes and utilities
Speaker 1: were non negotiable, but they could cancel cable the thousand
Speaker 1: dollar monthly premium they paid for health insurance through the
Speaker 1: Affordable Care Act marketplace. The pandemic wasn't the time to
Speaker 1: drop that. To keep some money coming in, Chrissy would
Speaker 1: fall back on her side job as a substitute teacher.
Speaker 1: No sooner do we land in Chicago than I see
Speaker 1: that schools are shutting down too, she says. Freelancers didn't
Speaker 1: yet qualify for unemployment. They were out of options and
Speaker 1: staring down six months with no income. They only had
Speaker 1: enough savings for two as Benny and Chrissie tallied their finances.
Speaker 1: Andrea Lockhart is working out how to pay rent on
Speaker 1: her house in Taos, New Mexico. She'd lost her job
Speaker 1: as admissions director of a local school in December after
Speaker 1: a toxic mold discovery closed the building indefinitely. As a
Speaker 1: single mother with three children under age seven, she'd taken
Speaker 1: the first two gigs, both part time that had come
Speaker 1: her way, selling women's clothing at one store and Southwestern
Speaker 1: jewelry and gifts to tourists at another. The fifteen dollars
Speaker 1: an hour she made plus six hundred and seventy six
Speaker 1: dollars in food stamps each month kept her afloat or
Speaker 1: not afloat exactly. She also owed one point five million
Speaker 1: dollars in medical bills from the birth of her youngest child,
Speaker 1: two year old Abbey, who arrived prematurely and spent a
Speaker 1: month in a neonatal intensive care unit. Lockhart let those
Speaker 1: bills go to collections. Things were tight. It was paycheck
Speaker 1: to paycheck, but I'm super diligent about my budget, she says.
Speaker 1: On March fifteen, both stores closed. Lockhart could have filed
Speaker 1: for unemployment, but the owner of the store she worked
Speaker 1: at most discouraged her from doing so. She said if
Speaker 1: I did that, it would financially ruin her. Lockhart says,
Speaker 1: I don't know how unemployment works, so I didn't. With
Speaker 1: no money coming in, she stopped paying bills and cut
Speaker 1: back on groceries. The little ones used to go through
Speaker 1: about a gallon of milk a day. Now they're only
Speaker 1: getting one cup at naptime and sum at dinner, and
Speaker 1: that's it. She says. There's a lot of crying in
Speaker 1: the almost three months since isolation measures were put in
Speaker 1: place to slow the spread of the coronavirus. In the US,
Speaker 1: the economy has all but collapsed, and the damage has
Speaker 1: been swift. A quarter of small businesses and two fifths
Speaker 1: of restaurants have closed at least temporarily by June, and
Speaker 1: estimated one in four American workers was out of a job.
Speaker 1: Forty million people have filed for unemployment so far, more
Speaker 1: than the population of California. And while the virus has
Speaker 1: devastated almost every economy it's touched, Americans entered the crisis
Speaker 1: in an especially vulnerable position. The world's wealthiest country, home
Speaker 1: to more than two fifths of all millionaires, also has
Speaker 1: one of the highest poverty rates and widest wealth gaps
Speaker 1: of any developed nation. Despite the booming stock market and
Speaker 1: robust job growth of recent years, more than thirty eight
Speaker 1: million Americans live in poverty. In January, the Federal Reserve
Speaker 1: reported that almost forty of US adults would struggle to
Speaker 1: come up with four hundred dollars in an emergency. Things
Speaker 1: were especially bleak for minority groups when the shutdown began.
Speaker 1: Black Americans have less than three percent of the country's wealth,
Speaker 1: despite making up at least of the population. They're more
Speaker 1: likely to lack access to healthcare and nutrition, which left
Speaker 1: them more exposed to the virus, and the jobs they
Speaker 1: and Latino workers tend to hold were more susceptible to
Speaker 1: layoffs than ones held by white workers. These jobs are
Speaker 1: also disproportionately consumer facing, putting minority workers at greater risk
Speaker 1: if the country reopens too quickly and infections spike again.
Speaker 1: Even the country's mid class, presumably the bedrock of the economy,
Speaker 1: was in a weekend position. According to the FED, middle
Speaker 1: class families have the smallest share of US wealth, just
Speaker 1: twenty five percent since tracking of this measure began. In
Speaker 1: the top twenty of income earners, meanwhile, have amassed seventy
Speaker 1: Adjusted for inflation, Median household income is about the same
Speaker 1: as it was twenty years ago, even as the costs
Speaker 1: of housing, healthcare, childcare, and college tuition have skyrocketed. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, middle class families used to have enough
Speaker 1: financial reserves to support about two or three months of
Speaker 1: normal consumption, says Edward Wolfe, a New York University economist
Speaker 1: who studies wealth disparity. Now it's about one week. The
Speaker 1: US also has a relatively weak social safety net, the
Speaker 1: product of decades of political inertia, a widespread belief that
Speaker 1: government is the cause of society's problems rather than a
Speaker 1: vehicle to solve them, and politicians who have railed against
Speaker 1: ex banded benefits using racist stereotypes of minorities seeking handouts
Speaker 1: I think Ronald Reagan's invocation of welfare queens. Some European countries,
Speaker 1: by contrast, were able to rely on existing social programs
Speaker 1: to ease the pain of their shutdowns, for example by
Speaker 1: subsidizing businesses so workers could keep receiving a paycheck while
Speaker 1: sheltering at home. In the US, employers rapidly shed tens
Speaker 1: of millions of people from payrolls, forcing them to apply
Speaker 1: for financial assistance with no guarantee of regaining their jobs.
Speaker 1: In May, the FED reported that almost of people who
Speaker 1: earned forty dollars or less a year, the group least
Speaker 1: likely to have health insurance or enough savings to get
Speaker 1: through the crisis, had been laid off or furloughed. This
Speaker 1: is not something you can address by just fixing the
Speaker 1: markets or pushing a big influx of money, says Sandra Black,
Speaker 1: Columbia University economist. There is something fundamental going on here,
Speaker 1: The US is really behind. The virus has posed an
Speaker 1: essential question for Americans, how will we take care of
Speaker 1: each other now and in the future. The early stages
Speaker 1: of the crisis saw a broad bipartisan support for federal intervention,
Speaker 1: including the two point to trillion dollars provided by the
Speaker 1: Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security or CARES Act. It
Speaker 1: was a staggering amount of money, equivalent to about a
Speaker 1: tenth of the US's annual gross domestic product, but much
Speaker 1: of the aid was designed to be temporary, even though
Speaker 1: the needs had addressed were new only in their scale.
Speaker 1: Because they'd ignored these problems in healthier times, Legislators were
Speaker 1: forced to create entire programs on the fly. They'd essentially
Speaker 1: watched the country fall out of an airplane and only
Speaker 1: later decided to look for a parachute. The result was
Speaker 1: a shifting, friction laden response that sometimes created more problems
Speaker 1: than it solved as it unfolded. I talked to more
Speaker 1: than two dozen workers and small business owners about how
Speaker 1: they were managing. Only two of them, a cybersecurity expert
Speaker 1: in North Carolina who was confident he could find another job,
Speaker 1: and a retired General motors engineer who owned a rental
Speaker 1: property in Detroit, thought they'd emerged from the pandemic relatively unscathed.
Speaker 1: Everyone else spoke of overriding feelings of confusion and uncertainty.
Speaker 1: Nobody knew what was going on, and so I tracked
Speaker 1: the chaos. On March sixteenth, Bob Bernstein called his managers
Speaker 1: in for an emergency meeting. For twenty seven years, he'd
Speaker 1: owned Bongo Java, a collection of six coffee shops and
Speaker 1: casual restaurants in Nashville. Bernstein's sweet potato biscuits and pork
Speaker 1: belly scrambles had inspired a devoted following, and he'd built
Speaker 1: robust wholesale bakery and coffee bean businesses to his one
Speaker 1: and fifty employees could get health insurance, and his managers
Speaker 1: got as much as three weeks of paid vacation every year.
Speaker 1: Aside from one outlet that was destroyed by a tornado
Speaker 1: earlier this year, he'd never closed a store, not even
Speaker 1: after the two thou and seven and eight financial crisis.
Speaker 1: People still drink coffee in a recession, he says. The
Speaker 1: day Bernstein called the meeting, though there were forty hundred
Speaker 1: confirmed cases of coronavirus in the US, twenty five of
Speaker 1: them in Nashville. The city was still a week away
Speaker 1: from closing its shops and restaurants, but he was concerned
Speaker 1: for his workers safety. Do we try to employ people
Speaker 1: or do we shut down to not spread virus, he
Speaker 1: recalls thinking. At first, his managers agreed to stay open.
Speaker 1: Then San Francisco announced a shelter in place order and
Speaker 1: the White House recommended that people stay home for fifteen days.
Speaker 1: That was it, Bernstein says. We had to close Bongo
Speaker 1: Javas chefs cooked all the perishable food and packed it
Speaker 1: up for their coworkers. Bernstein wanted to keep everyone on
Speaker 1: his payroll so they wouldn't lose their health insurance, but
Speaker 1: his policy stipulated that covered employees had to work at
Speaker 1: least thirty hours a week. He contacted his insurer to
Speaker 1: see if the rule would be suspended, then tried calculating
Speaker 1: on go Java's share of the premiums. He soon realized
Speaker 1: that the company couldn't afford to cover everyone even if
Speaker 1: his insurer waived the thirty hour rule, and that he
Speaker 1: definitely couldn't keep paying their salaries. He had to lay
Speaker 1: off all but four of his employees. I couldn't even
Speaker 1: do it in person, Bernstein says, I would have, but
Speaker 1: we weren't supposed to meet in large groups. His manager
Speaker 1: spoke with staff who were in that day. Everyone else
Speaker 1: got an email. I told them they have to go
Speaker 1: on this Cobra thing, which I don't totally understand. He says.
Speaker 1: He was referring to the federal program that allows the
Speaker 1: newly unemployed to temporarily extend their health coverage by paying
Speaker 1: the full premium plus a two percent administrative charge. Only
Speaker 1: one of the many workers I spoke to considered Cobra
Speaker 1: a viable option. The rest said it was too expensive.
Speaker 1: In the early days of the pandemic, several House Democrats
Speaker 1: proposed subsidizing Cobra premiums, as Congress did in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: but the proposal didn't make it through the House. The
Speaker 1: god did little to address that millions of Americans were
Speaker 1: losing their health insurance. A study published in the Annals
Speaker 1: of Internal Medicine on April seven, just two weeks after
Speaker 1: the law passed, put the number of Americans who had
Speaker 1: lost employer provided coverage at seven million. The for profit
Speaker 1: hospital system Health Management Associates estimated that the number could
Speaker 1: top thirty five million by the time the pandemic has
Speaker 1: run its course. Even a reduction in hours was enough
Speaker 1: to make people lose coverage. Jessica Hodge, a behavior specialist
Speaker 1: who works with autistic children in Virginia, had this happened
Speaker 1: to her. She's pregnant, and when she told her employer
Speaker 1: she was uncomfortable making house calls without protective gear, the
Speaker 1: company said it couldn't provide any. She was given the
Speaker 1: choice of quitting or dropping to part time and losing
Speaker 1: her insurance. She chose the latter. It's scary, Hodge says,
Speaker 1: who wants to lose their insurance when they're pregnant. Those
Speaker 1: who lost their jobs didn't find the exchanges created under
Speaker 1: the Affordable Care Act to be much help either. The
Speaker 1: plans I found came out to about a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a month. Who has an extra thousand dollars a month
Speaker 1: right now? Asks Marie O Bauschon, who was laid off
Speaker 1: from her job hauling sand for a Texas fracking company.
Speaker 1: Oh Buschon has Lupus and Eller's Danlos syndrome, both of
Speaker 1: which caused severe joint pain. I'm just taking tail in
Speaker 1: all and trying to muddle through. As Bernstein was closing
Speaker 1: down Bongo Java Briggs, Anderson was having a different problem
Speaker 1: in Montana. Three of his employees had gotten sick, two
Speaker 1: of them with symptoms consistent with COVID nineteen. Anderson owns
Speaker 1: seven Jiffy Lubes that collectively employ about forty eight people.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't have to close up automotive repair shops have
Speaker 1: been declared essential businesses, but people weren't bringing in their
Speaker 1: car unless they absolutely had to. In the first week
Speaker 1: of Montana's shutdown, his sales dropped thirty percent. Anderson isn't
Speaker 1: sure if his workers actually had the virus. No one's
Speaker 1: getting tested out here, he says. He offers health insurance,
Speaker 1: but given that his employees make twenty five thousand to
Speaker 1: forty thousand dollars a year and premiums are expensive, only
Speaker 1: about a fifth of them opt for coverage. The rest
Speaker 1: either qualify for Medicaid or go without. As a result,
Speaker 1: just one of Anderson's sick employees sought medical attention a
Speaker 1: tell a health visit with a nurse who told him
Speaker 1: he couldn't get tested, but to go ahead and self
Speaker 1: quarantine for two weeks. Twelve u estates have paid sick
Speaker 1: leave laws, but Montana isn't one of them. Anderson knew
Speaker 1: what a burden it would be for his workers to
Speaker 1: stay home. I told them I'd make sure they were okay,
Speaker 1: he says. He wound up paying about four thousand dollars
Speaker 1: so they could take twenty five days off combined. How
Speaker 1: many people can I realistically do that for, he asks,
Speaker 1: The lack of testing exacerbates the problem. You stay home
Speaker 1: for two weeks and I pay you for two weeks,
Speaker 1: but I don't even know if you have it. That's
Speaker 1: an expensive way to do things. There has to be
Speaker 1: a better way. Workers can't just rely on getting paid
Speaker 1: out of the goodness of my heart. The goodness of
Speaker 1: an owner's heart approach doesn't scale well either. For years,
Speaker 1: the Cheesecake Factory gave its restaurant workers the option to
Speaker 1: have money set aside from their paycheck for a help
Speaker 1: fund that would provide as much as a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to cover shelter, food, utilities, and or childcare in the
Speaker 1: event of an emergency. On March nineteenth, the company furloughed
Speaker 1: forty one workers, which left it facing tens of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars in potential payouts. The same day, the chain
Speaker 1: sent an email telling employees that loss of income due
Speaker 1: to the pandemic does not meet help Fund grant requirements. Instead,
Speaker 1: it was establishing a two and a half million dollar
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen assistance fund, which would pay up to five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars to those most impacted. So many people applied
Speaker 1: for the assistance fund that the company had to temporarily
Speaker 1: pause the application process. After four days, it was briefly restarted,
Speaker 1: then shut down again. I've been paying into the help
Speaker 1: fund for seven years. I couldn't even tell you how
Speaker 1: much I've contributed, says caid Stone, a server at a
Speaker 1: cheesecake factory outside Dallas. What was the point? A spokesperson
Speaker 1: for the company said it had distributed almost two and
Speaker 1: a half million dollars, but otherwise declined to comment. Other
Speaker 1: countries have been managing to keep people at home without
Speaker 1: mass unemployment and all the problems that come with it. Denmark,
Speaker 1: for example, poured the equivalent of an eighth of its
Speaker 1: GDP into a program that guarantees sevent of workers salaries
Speaker 1: for at least thirteen weeks. Germany relied on a similar
Speaker 1: century old program that pays the majority of salaries when
Speaker 1: there's a temporary shortage of work. When the pandemic hit,
Speaker 1: the program was already so well funded that officials didn't
Speaker 1: need to do much beyond relaxing the rules for applying.
Speaker 1: One advantage of this approach is that when the economy restarts,
Speaker 1: workers and employers don't have to scramble to find or
Speaker 1: fill new jobs. It also reduces paperwork. In Arch, Germany
Speaker 1: had to process only the four hundred and seventy thousand
Speaker 1: applications filed by companies rather than nine million unemployment claims
Speaker 1: from their employees. That helped money get out faster. I
Speaker 1: haven't had to do anything, says Liliya Prelevich, who manages
Speaker 1: a clothing store in Denmark. I didn't miss a paycheck.
Speaker 1: In general, I felt quite calm about the whole situation.
Speaker 1: The Cares Act did include temporary provisions meant to keep
Speaker 1: Americans employed, notably a paycheck protection program that offered three
Speaker 1: hundred forty nine billion dollars and potentially forgivable loans, but
Speaker 1: it implemented all sorts of restrictions. Companies had to hire
Speaker 1: back of their workforces and use the money within eight weeks,
Speaker 1: for example, and was designed to end on June. The
Speaker 1: rest of the CARES Act focused on what to do
Speaker 1: once millions of people were already out of work, adding
Speaker 1: six hundred dollars to states weekly unemployment payouts and creating
Speaker 1: the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance or p U, a program which
Speaker 1: allowed fifty seven million self employ a freelance, and contract
Speaker 1: workers to qualify for unemployment insurance for the first time.
Speaker 1: It also sent a one time twelve check to adults
Speaker 1: whose income was below a certain threshold last year, plus
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars per child. There was a big difference, though,
Speaker 1: between what the CARES Act offered and what many people experienced.
Speaker 1: Take unemployment insurance. It's a complex partnership whereby states administer
Speaker 1: the payouts while the federal government covers some of the
Speaker 1: administrative costs, such as payroll and tech support. In recent years,
Speaker 1: many states have cut unemployment insurance funding dramatically, while federal
Speaker 1: contributions have been funded through a payroll tax stuck at
Speaker 1: the same level six percent of a worker's first seven
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in salary. Since during the two thousand eight recession,
Speaker 1: we had twenty two hundred employees. Right now, we're at
Speaker 1: about a thousand, says Kersher Cartwright, director of Communications at
Speaker 1: George's Department of Labor. We're hiring folks, but we don't
Speaker 1: have time to train them. All of us are helping customers.
Speaker 1: In one month, the state processed one million unemployment claims,
Speaker 1: which worked out to about one in seven working age Georgians,
Speaker 1: but there was a backlog of many more across the country.
Speaker 1: Decrepit state websites crashed. People spend hours filling out forms
Speaker 1: only to lose their work. At one point, Florida's online
Speaker 1: and phone systems were so overwhelmed the state asked people
Speaker 1: to mail paper applications instead. In Illinois, the diswarts spent
Speaker 1: a week trying to get the unemployment website to work.
Speaker 1: We tried for a couple of days, Benny says. I
Speaker 1: finally got up early one morning, six o'clock. Chrissie interjects,
Speaker 1: I clicked and clicked, and at about eight a m.
Speaker 1: I got through the p U, A fund they and
Speaker 1: other freelancers have been applying for, is designed to expire
Speaker 1: on December thirty first. Some states, such as California and
Speaker 1: New York incorporated it into their existing unemployment application process.
Speaker 1: Others asked people to first apply for regular unemployment, get
Speaker 1: formally denied, and then reapply for the new fund, delaying
Speaker 1: payments and causing widespread confusion. Three weeks after the diswards applied,
Speaker 1: Chrissy was notified that she'd qualified for seven dred and
Speaker 1: forty one dollar a week, including the six hundred dollars
Speaker 1: from the Cares Act before taxes. She didn't understand why
Speaker 1: it was so low. There's no explanation, just a deposit
Speaker 1: in the bank account, she says. Benny didn't hear anything
Speaker 1: at all. The forty million people who filed for unemployment
Speaker 1: so far are just a portion of those out of work.
Speaker 1: Tiffany Black isn't counted in that figure, even though she
Speaker 1: was among nine hundred employees laid off by Airbnb on
Speaker 1: May five. Black, who had been a senior marketing manager
Speaker 1: at the company's headquarters in San Francisco, hasn't applied for
Speaker 1: unemployment because Airbnb is paying her severance until July six.
Speaker 1: Once it runs out and she has to rely on
Speaker 1: the state program, she'll be in trouble. California's average unemployment
Speaker 1: payment is three hundred and thirty eight dollars a week,
Speaker 1: not enough to live on in the Bay Area, and
Speaker 1: the six Cares Act bonus ends right around the time
Speaker 1: she'd likely to start receiving payments. You're going to have
Speaker 1: all these tech workers and other salary people needing help
Speaker 1: right as this runs out, she says. I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone realizes that yet. Last year, Black gave up a
Speaker 1: more expensive apartment closer to her former office, but even
Speaker 1: the cheaper one she found outside the city costs two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a month. She's also forty five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in debt from a failed attempt to start her own
Speaker 1: business last year. She plans to look for a new job,
Speaker 1: but if that doesn't work out, I'm going to have
Speaker 1: to pack it up and move home to New Jersey
Speaker 1: and live with my mom. She says. I'm forty years old.
Speaker 1: Also uncounted in unemployment statistics are those who have found
Speaker 1: the system too daunting. I looked into unemployment insurance, but
Speaker 1: I can't tell if it applies to me, says Tabitha Driver,
Speaker 1: a twenty one year old housekeeper and hair stylist in
Speaker 1: New Olm, Minnesota. When the freelancer try to apply for
Speaker 1: unemployment in early April. The website said the state was
Speaker 1: waiting for guidance on p u A from the federal government.
Speaker 1: Because her parents claimed her as a dependent on last
Speaker 1: year's tax returns, she wouldn't be getting a tw stimulus
Speaker 1: check either. Her parents got the five dollar bonus for her,
Speaker 1: but her mom is also out of work now. She
Speaker 1: told her parents to keep the money. Driver is among
Speaker 1: the estimated percent of Americans without savings. I have zero income, none,
Speaker 1: she says. I have rent to bills, I can't pay
Speaker 1: any of it. I'm running low on dog food. She
Speaker 1: started to go fund me page to cover her April rent,
Speaker 1: but no one donated. Then she started tweeting at celebrities.
Speaker 1: She asked YouTube stars for money. She replied to random
Speaker 1: Twitter accounts that claimed to be giving away cash to
Speaker 1: anyone who followed them. When the pop culture writer Sha
Speaker 1: Serrano offered one to anyone who could tell him the
Speaker 1: score of the shooting contest and the movie White Men
Speaker 1: Can't Jump, she got the answer and sent along her
Speaker 1: cash app handle. She didn't win. She tweeted dozens of
Speaker 1: times a day for weeks. One of her favorite accounts
Speaker 1: to solicit was that of Detroit real estate air Bill Poulty,
Speaker 1: who last year started distributing money to needy people online,
Speaker 1: a movement he dubbed Twitter philanthropy. He persuaded some wealthy
Speaker 1: friends to do so too. We're like this shadow group
Speaker 1: of philanthropists who have stepped up to help people in
Speaker 1: the absence of a functional government, he says. Before COVID nineteen,
Speaker 1: Poulty mostly pulled one off stunts, like the time he
Speaker 1: offered to donate thirty thousand dollars to a random military
Speaker 1: veteran if the President retweeted him. Trump did, and Poulty
Speaker 1: kept his promise. When the coronavirus started pushing people out
Speaker 1: of work, though, Poulty began receiving thousands of desperate please
Speaker 1: a new one about every ten seconds. So far, he's
Speaker 1: given out about eighty one dollars, he says, mostly in
Speaker 1: small payments to help people buy groceries or, in at
Speaker 1: least one case, order pizza for dinner. Take a picture
Speaker 1: of you with the box, he tweeted. Driver never could
Speaker 1: get his attention, but someone else saw one of her
Speaker 1: tweets and sent her four hundred and fifty dollars. Other
Speaker 1: strangers chipped in with an additional one. So far, that's
Speaker 1: all the assistance she's received. In Montana, Anderson found himself
Speaker 1: lost in a bureaucratic maze. Sales at his Jiffy Loobs
Speaker 1: were still down, and he'd had to reduce his workers pay.
Speaker 1: In the early days of the shutdown, he'd applied for
Speaker 1: an Economic Injury Disaster Loan, a program originally created to
Speaker 1: help companies affected by natural disasters. Three weeks later, he
Speaker 1: received an email instructing him to reapply. He called the U. S.
Speaker 1: Small Business Administration, which administers the program, and was told
Speaker 1: that he'd have to reapply because the Cares Act had
Speaker 1: changed the rules, and also that he shouldn't bother because
Speaker 1: the fund was out of money and the SPA had
Speaker 1: stopped accepting applications. After the program was refunded and restart
Speaker 1: did Anderson called the s b A and was told
Speaker 1: he was still in the queue. In mid May, almost
Speaker 1: two months after he applied, he received ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: He had better luck with the Paycheck Protection Program. He
Speaker 1: applied on the program's first day, and three weeks later
Speaker 1: he received two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, enough to
Speaker 1: bump his staff back up to full time. I was lucky,
Speaker 1: Anderson says it ran out of money literally the next day.
Speaker 1: In Nashville, Bernstein applied for a p p P loan too.
Speaker 1: Rising wholesale orders from grocers for Bongo Java's coffee beans
Speaker 1: hadn't made up for declining ones from local restaurants or
Speaker 1: for the lost income at his cafes. He deferred some
Speaker 1: of his April rent payments and was in talks with
Speaker 1: the local y m c A to provide lunches for
Speaker 1: kids during the summer. The deal hadn't gone through yet,
Speaker 1: and he was fast running out of money. He and
Speaker 1: his wife tore down their garage, built an apartment, and
Speaker 1: rented it out. They stopped contributing to the retirement funds.
Speaker 1: His p PP money still hadn't come in when the
Speaker 1: fund dried up. After the program restarted with an additional
Speaker 1: three billion dollars, his bank told him he'd been approved.
Speaker 1: In early May. Bernstein received nine and thirty thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: but when he learned what he'd have to do to
Speaker 1: ensure the loan was forgivable rehire his employees and use
Speaker 1: it all within eight weeks, he concluded it was useless.
Speaker 1: I can't convince people to come back to work for
Speaker 1: eight weeks and then tell them to go back on unemployment.
Speaker 1: They don't want to go through that process all over again,
Speaker 1: he says, I'm going to have to give the money back.
Speaker 1: Given how long the pandemic could last and how quickly
Speaker 1: the first rounds of stimulus ran dry, the three trillion
Speaker 1: dollars the US government has spent so far likely won't
Speaker 1: be close to enough. Congress is working to extend the
Speaker 1: p p P loan restrictions beyond eight weeks and to
Speaker 1: soften some of the conditions on how the money is spent.
Speaker 1: House Democrats, meanwhile, have proposed an additional three trillion dollars
Speaker 1: in relief that would, among other measures, extend the six
Speaker 1: hundred dollar boost in unemployment benefits through January. But Senate
Speaker 1: Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has balked at the idea, arguing
Speaker 1: that providing more assistance would make it more lucrative to
Speaker 1: not work. Moves to reopen the economy won't necessarily help
Speaker 1: right away, either, because while you can send people back
Speaker 1: to work, you can't force consumers to use their services.
Speaker 1: And that's to say nothing of the potential for new outbreaks.
Speaker 1: Do I even want the kind of customers who are
Speaker 1: willing to come to a restaurant right now? Bernstein asks.
Speaker 1: In May, Tennessee allowed restaurants to reopen if they operate
Speaker 1: at less than seventy five percent capacity, But Bongo Java
Speaker 1: wouldn't be profitable under those circumstances. And besides, Bernstein wouldn't
Speaker 1: feel safe. It's not just safety from COVID at this point.
Speaker 1: The political divide has also created a security risk, he says.
Speaker 1: He mentions the men who carried guns and rocket law
Speaker 1: uncher into a subway franchise in North Carolina to protest
Speaker 1: the states stay at home measures, and the family Dollar
Speaker 1: customers in Michigan who killed a security guard who'd asked
Speaker 1: one of them to wear a mask. This whole situation
Speaker 1: is bringing all these issues to the forefront that no
Speaker 1: one wants to talk about. Education, politics, the economic divide
Speaker 1: in this country. No one can say that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: Do we just keep going as is? Or do we
Speaker 1: as a society do something about it? He doesn't know
Speaker 1: the answer yet. Like everyone, he's still in the thick
Speaker 1: of the story. The panic of March has given way
Speaker 1: to the resigned acceptance of June. People wake up unsure
Speaker 1: what day it is, make coffee, eat cereal, and spend
Speaker 1: hours on hold with government agencies. Some days they feel optimistic.
Speaker 1: I was in the Marine Corps. Anderson in Montana tells me,
Speaker 1: I have a very pro American mindset. I really do
Speaker 1: believe we're more resilient. Other days, it feels as though
Speaker 1: the fallout from COVID nineteen has pushed the country to
Speaker 1: its breaking point. This is going to exacerbate inequality, he says.
Speaker 1: A few days later, the group of losers in this
Speaker 1: will be large and left behind in some way. That sucks.
Speaker 1: In New Mexico, Lockhart says her savings have run dry.
Speaker 1: She's given up her house, and she and her three
Speaker 1: daughters have moved in with her parents. But six people
Speaker 1: in a two bedroom house isn't sustainable. She did finally
Speaker 1: apply for unemployment and has looked into low income housing.
Speaker 1: She's also been dating a childhood friend who offered to
Speaker 1: let her family move in with him. The hitches that
Speaker 1: he lives in Chicago. He owns his own house. It
Speaker 1: has extra bedrooms, Lockhart says, but according to my divorce agreement,
Speaker 1: I'm not supposed to take the kids out of state.
Speaker 1: She hasn't decided what to do. The Diswarts have been
Speaker 1: out of work for more than three months, longer than
Speaker 1: they had estimated their savings would last. Qualifying for unemployment
Speaker 1: kept the couple from having to tap him. In May,
Speaker 1: Benny was finally approved for four and forty dollars a week.
Speaker 1: He also got some money from the Golf Channel, which
Speaker 1: paid its freelance camera crews through the end of May. Now,
Speaker 1: though the Diswarts fall events are starting to be canceled,
Speaker 1: Benny has considered stocking shelves in an Amazon warehouse, but
Speaker 1: Chrissy doesn't want him to. She's worried he'll contract the virus.
Speaker 1: I'm Carol Masser and I'm Jason Kelly. Please join this
Speaker 1: every day on Bloomberg Business Week on the radio starting
Speaker 1: at two pm Wall Street Time. Also catch up with
Speaker 1: us via podcast wherever you get your podcast. This is Bloomberg.