Not sure if this puts us in the Great Depression per se, but according to this article, huge numbers of people are either not paying rent, or are putting their rent on credit cards, at the least. The article quotes a rental payment processor company called Avail as saying that only 55% of landlords using their service received payments in full in July. This article says that 32% of households did not completely pay their housing payment in July, which is apparently a record, and the third month in a row in which the previous record was broken.
Another important point to note is that undocumented people do not receive the Bernie Bucks, nor did they get stimulus checks. Likewise for unhoused people.
Unemployment is insanely high as well - though the $600/week payments has helped a lot of people, that benefit has expired now, so we'll see what happens next. This wound-lick of a welfare plan kept a lot of us from penury for a while, I'll admit - my income shrank by only about 10%, which is amazing considering I went from working 40-45 hours/week to 13-20/week. Again, without that added benefit, a lot of people are gonna get fucked, which is going to drive down aggregate demand and further depress the economy. (Welfare is good folks, whodda thunk?)
I imagine the medical debt from covid hospitalizations is going to really fuck some people over, too, though I don't know the numbers on that.
Anyway, you wanted a material analysis, so here it is.
Link
Not sure if this puts us in the Great Depression per se, but according to this article, huge numbers of people are either not paying rent, or are putting their rent on credit cards, at the least. The article quotes a rental payment processor company called Avail as saying that only 55% of landlords using their service received payments in full in July. This article says that 32% of households did not completely pay their housing payment in July, which is apparently a record, and the third month in a row in which the previous record was broken.
Another important point to note is that undocumented people do not receive the Bernie Bucks, nor did they get stimulus checks. Likewise for unhoused people.
Unemployment is insanely high as well - though the $600/week payments has helped a lot of people, that benefit has expired now, so we'll see what happens next. This wound-lick of a welfare plan kept a lot of us from penury for a while, I'll admit - my income shrank by only about 10%, which is amazing considering I went from working 40-45 hours/week to 13-20/week. Again, without that added benefit, a lot of people are gonna get fucked, which is going to drive down aggregate demand and further depress the economy. (Welfare is good folks, whodda thunk?)
I imagine the medical debt from covid hospitalizations is going to really fuck some people over, too, though I don't know the numbers on that.
Anyway, you wanted a material analysis, so here it is.