Millions of people in the United States have long known what it is like not to be able to buy food, or soap, or toilet paper. Some because they came here from much poorer places, others because they are among the 140 million poor or low-income people living in the country today.
Now, millions more of us are experiencing this scarcity for ourselves due to the COVID-19 crisis, as panic-buying cleans out supermarket shelves, healthcare workers plead for masks and gloves, and hospitals and states are forced to bid against each other for scant supplies of ventilators.
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