How are people feeling such financial pain? In the US we gave every adult over $3,000 in direct cash, and radically expanded unemployment benefits. In many states the unemployment checks were over $1,000/week for six months, then reduced to mere $500 to $700 per week. We also expanded health care access, froze evictions, expanded food programs, and more.

I fail to see how people could be struggling so when the US treasury has gifted people with tens of thousands of dollars.

> How are people feeling such financial pain?

Loss of work, loss of child supervision (in-person schooling and childcare closures), at times sharply restricted number allowed in stores (meaning parents have neither time without children to shop nor practically the ability to take children to shop) => increases reliance on delivery services for essential shopping with extra charges and higher losses; extra unemployment at its highest level (which wasn't maintained) was calculated to be approximately full-income replacement, so with the lower boosts, it still wasn’t full income reimbursement and large areas of the economy either haven't fully reopened or haven't fully rebounded., and for those who have been out of work the $3000 (+some for children) only compensates for a few weeks of the gap that hasn't been filled by the partially-boosted unemployment.

> froze evictions

Freezing evictions doesn't reduce the financial hardship of renters (who still owe the debt, they just aren't evicted for owing it), but does increase the hardship of landlords. It's not the same thing as covering rent.

> I fail to see how people could be struggling so when the US treasury has gifted people with tens of thousands of dollars. Because people have faced more tens of thousands of lost income or added expenses.

Ten thousand dollars isn't a huge grant when stacked up against the cost of living in America - there is a decent portion of the population that has been unable to work during the past year and forced to rely on a lot of programs they never had to in the past including SNAP(food stamps), medicaid and the extended unemployment benefit. The direct cash payments are extremely good because they're so unqualified, but in a lot of states intent to work requirements remain in place to collect unemployment benefits and while the payment amount has been increased the duration of payment hasn't gone up across the board. People can try and hoard the money they're getting out of unemployment but they'd be dealing with a lot of uncertainty. Maybe this will be over in four months - I sure hope so - but there is a chance a new vaccine resistant strain will emerge from spring break or states opening up prematurely and throw us back into full quarantine.

The US government acts slowly to provide relief and the last bill passed purely on a party line (even with one person celebrating the bill while voting against it for political reasons) - if people are facing financial uncertainty I'd definitely understand if they're counting every dollar that comes in and hording it due to the uncertainty of when this will actually end.