Downbound Train
I got laid off down at the lumber yard / Our love went bad, times got hard / Now I work down at the carwash / Where all it ever does is rain / Don’t you feel like you’re a rider on a downbound train.
“The good: This money kept families afloat—at least for the first, intense months of shelter-in-place. New estimates suggest that the congressional rescue plan prevented poverty rates from rising, with many jobless workers seeing their incomes increase during lockdown due to the expanded unemployment-insurance payouts. The bad: It left out roughly 15 million people in immigrant families, many of whom were working essential jobs stocking grocery shelves, delivering takeout, and drawing blood in hospitals. And the ugly: The big helicopter drop was a onetime thing, and the unemployment-insurance expansion was time-limited.” The Atlantic’s Annie Lowrey on why economists are so worried about a Second Great Depression.
