The stock market dropped in late March when it hit Americans all at once (except Trump, who knew months before) that COVID-19 was a deadly plague which demanded a quick response. The real economy, where people go to work and get paid, and then go out and spend their money, largely shut down. Suddenly 1 out of 4 Americans was out of a job.

The stock market has recovered. The real economy has not. Why does Dow Jones seem not to care that the Jones family can’t pay the rent? Because the Jones family is not rich and does not own stock. They are the poor relations that the Dow does its best to ignore.

But another stock market crash is almost inevitable. The Jones family’s unemployment checks will run out. They will not be able to find new jobs. No matter how much Trump denies it (and because of his denial), COVID-19 is raging through the US and people are rightly afraid to start their businesses back up. The Jones family’s landlord will stop forgiving the rent, because he can’t afford to pay his mortgage without getting it. They are all in danger of losing their homes.

The only reason the stock market cares about the 40 million Americans who have lost their jobs is that pretty soon, those people will stop spending money, because they won’t have any.

The capitalist economy depends on the American consumer. Nonstop advertising has trained us to want new things constantly. We buy every plastic gimcrack and follow every new fashion. Without our shopping, the whole house of cards will come tumbling down.

That house of cards hasn’t been sheltering most people very well anyhow. Capitalism only works if you have capital. Put another way, it takes money to make money. People who have never had a chance to accumulate wealth, like most Americans of color and those born into the lower classes, get stuck in jobs that don’t pay enough to live on. When the real economy shuts down, they have no savings and no collateral.

The US is about to face hunger and homelessness on a scale we have not experienced since the Depression of the 1930s. The federal government under Franklin Delano Roosevelt responded to the Depression with laws, jobs programs, and public works projects known as the New Deal. Slowly, the New Deal programs put Americans back on their feet.

We know the only Jones that Trump cares about is the Dow. He is perfectly willing for the rest of the Joneses to die of coronavirus, or lose their homes, or starve, as long as his rich buddies continue to make more money. With a normal president, Americans could expect the federal government to help us get through these bundled crises. Now we know we can’t expect any help until we elect a new president. If we lose everything meanwhile? Trump will just call us losers.