“People waited in cars for food distribution in San Antonio last week. “It does underscore the fact that so many people in our country live on a precipice,” a national food bank executive said.” – Credit…William Luther / The San Antonio Express-News, via Associated Press

by Patricia Cohen

“An indelible image from the Great Depression features a well-dressed family seated with their dog in a comfy car, smiling down from an oversize billboard on weary souls standing in line at a relief agency. ‘World’s highest standard of living,’ the billboard boasts, followed by a tagline: ‘There’s no way like the American Way.’

“The coronavirus pandemic has shown how close to the edge many Americans were living, with pay and benefits eroding even as corporate profits surged.”

“The economic shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic has suddenly hurled the country back to that dislocating moment captured in 1937 by the photographer Margaret Bourke-White. In the updated 2020 version, lines of cars stretch for miles to pick up groceries from a food pantry; jobless workers spend days trying to file for unemployment benefits; renters and homeowners plead with landlords and mortgage bankers for extensions; and outside hospitals, ill patients line up overnight to wait for virus testing.

“In an economy that has been hailed for its record-shattering successes, the most basic necessities — food, shelter and medical care — are all suddenly at risk.”

Read this New York Times article in its entirety, click here.