The Recession Bread Lines Are Forming in Mar-a-Lago's Shadow

[turbinetree]

Economics

n Palm Beach a diner races to feed laid off workers. Food banks and pantries see surge in demand and long-term need.

By Shawn Donnan and Reade Pickert
April 4, 2020, 7:00 AM EDT

Though it’s just a four-minute drive across the lagoon from Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s private club, and ten minutes from the Palm Beach outposts of Chanel and Louis Vuitton, Howley’s diner has become an emblem of America’s stark new economic reality.

With more than 10 million people across the nation suddenly unemployed, bread lines are forming in the shadows of privileged enclaves like this one in Florida.

For the past two weeks, the kitchen staff at Howley’s has been cooking up free meals—the other day it was smoked barbecue chicken with rice and beans, and salad—for thousands of laid off workers from Palm Beach’s shuttered restaurants and resorts. The rows of brown-bag lunches and dinners are an early warning that the country’s income gap is about to be wrenched wider as a result of the Covid-19 crisis, and the deep recession it has brought with it.

Even as much of America is fretting about supermarket shelves depleted of their favorite cereal brands and toilet paper or the logistics of curbside pickup from favorite restaurants, a brutal new hunger crisis is emerging among laid-off workers that has begun to overwhelm the infrastructure that normally takes care of the needy.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-04/the-recession-bread-lines-are-forming-in-mar-a-lago-s-shadow?srnd=premium

[Laelth]

1. k&r for doing the right thing. n/t

-Laelth

[Throckmorton]

2. Our demand for meals at the soup kitchen

Has more than doubled since the schools closed on March 13. Not many children, as all of the area school districts are doing take away breakfasts and lunches.

The two largest employers in my are casinos, which have laid off over 10,000 people in the last 2 weeks.