22 Time May 18, 2020
On The same day ThaT elOn musk, The famOusly eccenTric ceO Of The elecTric-
car company Tesla, saw his net worth hit $36.6 billion, Maricela Betancourt, one of the many
people who work in his factories, was agonizing over her family’s bills. Betancourt, 58, had
been a janitor at Tesla’s Fremont, Calif., factory until April 7, when the company told her and
129 fellow janitors to go home and not come back until social-distancing measures were lifted.
She got her last paycheck on April 8 and has no idea when the next one’s coming. She owes
$1,325 for an emergency- room visit in March, and is struggling to pay for rent, Internet and
food. Her husband, a construction worker, also lost his job during the COVID-19 economic
collapse. So did their son Daniel, 20, who is the first in their family to go to college and was
helping to pay his way with a job at an arcade. The family put their stimulus funds toward
Daniel’s tuition and prays something will come through before June rent is due.
Betancourt’s boss, meanwhile, might as well live in another stratosphere. While she relied
on a food bank to supplement family dinner and Daniel turned to gig work for extra income,
Musk publicly mused that he’s considering selling all of his possessions because they “just
weigh you down.” Tesla’s stock price rose so steeply this year (28%) that on May 1, Musk
tweeted that it was too high, sending the share price tumbling 10%. It’s still more than triple
what it was a year ago.
“It’s obviously a millionaire company that has enough resources to thrive,” Betancourt
told me from her home in San Jose, Calif. “But as workers, we live paycheck to paycheck, and
now we don’t even have that paycheck, so we don’t know what we’re going to do.” (Tesla did
not reply to a request for comment.)
The growing gap between America’s rich and everyone else is hardly new. But the extra-
ordinarily rapid economic collapse catalyzed by COVID-19 has made the chasm deeper and
wider, with edges that keep crumbling under the feet of those crowded on the edge. Since
mid-March, more than 30 million people have filed for unemployment—more than three
times as many as lost their jobs during the two-year-long Great Recession. Meanwhile, after
a steep but brief dip in March, the stock market rallied. The richest and most well- connected
are seeing their wealth reaccumulate, as if by magic, while middle- and working- class fami-
lies drown in debt that deepens with every passing week.
The contrast isn’t just between low-wage workers and billionaire bosses. Bills are mount-
ing for small restaurants and retailers as their applications for the federal Paycheck Protec-
tion Program go unanswered. But firms like Hallador Energy, an Indiana coal company that
hired former Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt as a lobbyist, raked in mil-
lions from the program. While the median home price rose 8% in March, families across the
O
COVID-19 | ECONOMY
PHOTOGRAPH BY MAR K M
