The unholy alliance between food banks and corporate America has shown itself to be more interested in maintaining the problem of hunger than actually solving it.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, normal wasn’t so great for the working poor in America. Despite a 10-year recovery, 12 percent of the nation remained food insecure in 2018. The minimum wage stagnated at $7.25 in 21 states. Low wages, unstable schedules, soaring rents in many cities, and limited or no health benefits all added up to a precarious economic situation for tens of millions of Americans.

The state of affairs was so economically unsustainable that food banks doubled their distribution from 2009 to 2019 to 5.25 billion pounds, serving 40 million people.

And now in 2020, with 22 million people thrown out of work in just a few short weeks and an administration unable to muster much empathy for their plight, much less the cash to keep their refrigerators stocked, food banks have stepped in again to fill the void left by an absentee government.