The Time Tax
M arcella Patino was hunched over a table at the South Salt Lake Community Center, her pizza getting cold and her nerves fraying.
Patino is a single mom with three kids, and kidlike in her own way, tiny and sweet-voiced.
When I met her, in the summer of 2024, she was 33 years old and earning $300 a week doing manicures and pedicures.
To bump up her income, she had recently gotten a degree from aesthetician school, meaning she could start offering her clients facials and eyebrow lamination too.
She would start making $450 a week soon—$23,400 a year, assuming she was able to work year-round with no breaks.
Her rent was $1,550 a month.
Then she had to pay for electricity, heat, food, clothing, cell service, health care, child care, gas, and everything else.
To keep Patino and her children out of abject poverty, the state of Utah was providing her with Medicaid, SNAP (benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps), and $600 a month in cash assistance.
“Is it enough?” I asked.
She blushed, picking at her nails, hand-painted with miniature strawberries and lemons.
She went to food banks, she said.
Her mom and her neighbors pitched in.
Still, she kept falling into debt.
Whether the help was enough was less of a pressing matter than whether the help would be there at all.
5News aggregated this summary from the outlet’s public feed. The full article, with all the context, is on www.theatlantic.com — the content belongs to The Atlantic.
