Ramin Mazaheri
Press TV, Chicago
According to a new survey of census data released by Bloomberg, the biggest cities in America have been the most economically-devastated by lockdowns resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.
Forty-two percent of Atlanta expects to be evicted by May, last week 44% of Houston didn't have enough to pay their household expenses while 1 out of 8 homes in Miami didn't have enough food, unemployment is the worst in the nation's 2nd-largest city - Los Angeles.
The study showed that second-tier cities fared better if they feature a technocratic workforce which is able to work from home, like Boston, the nation’s college town, “Big Tech” hubs San Francisco and Seattle, the paperwork centre - the capital, Washington DC, and also the nation’s largest metropolitan area and the global centre of high finance, New York City.
But for the household which doesn’t feature a worker with the option to “telework”, the upheaval and lack of government intervention has pushed scores of millions to their financial and emotional limits.
A whopping 70 percent of all Americans say that they experienced some sort of “financial setback” in 2020, which helps explains why 40% of Americans say they will spend all of 2021 in survival mode”, focused on just getting through each day.
Congress hasn’t passed a major household stimulus package since March 2020, and reduced unemployment benefits expire on March 14.
The central bank’s latest “Beige Book” just reported only “modest” growth so far in 2021, indicating disappointing results following months of controversial efforts from government officials.