A Dispatch from the Future

Over a few days this week, I read George Packer's "The Valley," a comprehensive take on Phoenix, Arizona and its surroundings published in The Atlantic Monthly, and it reminded me of how his "The Megacity" from The New Yorker, on Lagos, Nigeria, is perhaps my very favorite in the genre of travel to a city and write about it in detail. This recent Harper's Magazine piece on Branson, Missouri is another recent favorite.

Unemployment 2020

"Before the pandemic, Detroit restaurant server Deshan Hedrick used to worry about saving for a new home. Now she has a new problem: where to find food to last her through the next few days.

"Hedrick, who lives in a small house with a roommate and had never been laid off in 25 years of waitressing, hasn't received an unemployment payment since she lost her job on March 16. . .

"By one measure, Michigan is a relative success story. As of April 25, the state had enrolled 21.1% of eligible working-age adults into unemployment programs, the third-highest rate in the country and above the national rate of 13.3%, U.S. Labor Department figures show.

"That’s little comfort to Hedrick, 40, who says she wrestled for more than a month with a website for processing claims that repeatedly failed and couldn’t get through by phone. Her claim wasn't accepted until April 18. Under federal guidelines, she should have received funds by early April.

"Hedrick, who has no kids and grew up poor in Detroit, earned about $3,200 a month at Starter’s Bar and Grill. By mid-April, she exhausted her $1,700 in savings. Now she's surviving on noodles and canned soup donated by friends and faces a $4,000 backlog of bills --- from utilities and insurance to her monthly rent of $825.

"Michigan's Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity spokeswoman Erica Quealy acknowledged there have been delays but said that it has extended call center hours due to the surge in demand and delays, and has quadrupled the number of staffers helping customers."

~~ from "'The government is failing us': Laid-off Americans struggle in the 

     coronavirus crisis,"  

     Reuters, May 7, 2020