that almost half of Americans couldn’t withstand as much as a $400 emergency.) These are often people at the margins of our economic system: students, the underemployed, hourly workers and ones such as Claude, who work in industries particularly susceptible to sudden evaporations in disposable income and consumer demand. And unlike the many millions of Americans reasonably staring into the future and worrying about their retirement accounts, they have much more immediate concerns.
She bid farewell to her last pupil last week. No one right now is springing for virtual piano lessons. “I let the parents know that I’d continue lessons online. But none of them has gotten back to me,” Arteaga says. “So that's gotten me a little worried about my income since this is basically my only source.” On Sunday night, she took to Twitter, describing her situation and including her Venmo and Paypal details.
She guesses she needs to find $300 in the next couple of weeks, “to just, like, squeak by because I'm semi-dependent financially on my parents, so they can kind of help me out,” she says. “But I can't lean on them too much, especially since my dad is self-employed”—he owns a maintenance company—“and is also being affected by the situation.” As of yesterday afternoon, she had collected $55.
He originally joined Twitter in December to more closely follow Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign, and he is a passionate believer in Yang’s proposal for a Universal Basic Income, a concept similar to an idea that Sen. Mitt Romney seems to be floating in Congress as a possible economic relief mechanism. “I'm reaching out everywhere I can to try to get assistance,” Dustin says late Monday afternoon.
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