Matthew Desmond

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?

In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.

Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.

Poverty, by America

Omar Fernandez

To live and strive in modern America is to participate in a series of morally fraught systems. If a family’s entire financial livelihood depends on the value of its home, it’s not hard to understand why that family would oppose anything that could potentially lower its property values, like a proposal to develop an affordable housing complex in the neighborhood.

After arriving in prison, many incarcerated Americans suddenly find that their health improves because the conditions they faced as free but impoverished citizens were worse.

Anton Sten

A retreat into complexity is more often a retreat into our social standing than evidence of critical intelligence

Lindsay

At the end of the day, aren't systemic problems (systemic racism, poverty, misogyny) made up of untold numbers of individual decisions motivated by real or imagined self interest? The system doesn't force us to stiff the waiter or vote against affordable housing in our neighborhood, does it? 

Kaelan Chambers

“For the past half century, we’ve approached the poverty question by attending to the poor themselves—posing questions about their work ethic, say, or their welfare benefits—when we should have been focusing on the fire. The question that should serve as a looping incantation, the one we should ask every time we drive past a tent encampment…every time we see someone asleep on the bus, slumped over in work clothes, is simply: Who benefits?“

A great book that calls out the hypocrisy of anyone who says that they care about eradicating poverty but isn't willing to fight for it. I learned a few things, among the most interesting that tax credits and deductions to the richest Americans are very expensive. If we truly cared about having a proper safety net, educating children,  housing everyone, etc we could achieve it just by spending less on tax breaks and taking that tax revenue and putting it to good use. 

Integrating communities also doesn't have to be expensive. New Jersey has done a great job by requiring affordable housing units for new developments. Simple and very effective. 

When you're poor, your cognitive power drops as much as not sleeping for a night. You can't think of good decisions to make while worrying about the late electricity bill to pay.

Zoning laws with single family housing laws screws up the poorer families and segregates them

Democrat homeowners often oppose affordable housing projects in their neighborhoods

Sharing opportunity and reversing discriminatory practices will mean that the wealthy need to give up something

The wealthy benefit from tax breaks, but don't see that as a government handout. While the poor getting a check do. Uptake rate of tax credits is very high and the government spends more on those programs than the military or poor people programs.

Aid is hard to get, bureaucratic, and hard to learn about.

To end poverty we need $177B a year, brings everyone to just above the poverty line.

Liberals criticize but don't celebrate (e.g. rental assistance program lowered evictions significantly and no one celebrated that).

Housing, rental, are a huge problem. Landlords that try to live off of renting create a poverty cycle for tenants.

Banks often don't finance mortgages for cheap housing.

A great book that calls out the hypocrisy of anyone who says that they care about eradicating poverty but isn't willing to fight for it. I learned a few things, among the most interesting that tax credits and deductions to the richest Americans are very expensive. If we truly cared about having a proper safety net, educating children,  housing everyone, etc we could achieve it just by spending less on tax breaks and taking that tax revenue and putting it to good use. 

Integrating communities also doesn't have to be expensive. New Jersey has done a great job by requiring affordable housing units for new developments. Simple and very effective. 

 Some notes 

When you're poor, your cognitive power drops as much as not sleeping for a night. You can't think of good decisions to make while worrying about the late electricity bill to pay.

Zoning laws with single family housing laws screws up the poorer families and segregates them

Democrat homeowners often oppose affordable housing projects in their neighborhoods

Sharing opportunity and reversing discriminatory practices will mean that the wealthy need to give up something

The wealthy benefit from tax breaks, but don't see that as a government handout. While the poor getting a check do. Uptake rate of tax credits is very high and the government spends more on those programs than the military or poor people programs.

Aid is hard to get, bureaucratic, and hard to learn about.

To end poverty we need $177B a year, brings everyone to just above the poverty line.

Liberals criticize but don't celebrate (e.g. rental assistance program lowered evictions significantly and no one celebrated that).

Housing, rental, are a huge problem. Landlords that try to live off of renting create a poverty cycle for tenants.

Banks often don't finance mortgages for cheap housing.

Structural immorality



J. L. Askew

The author’s thesis is that the United States has more poverty than any other advanced democracy because the well-to-do benefit from it. Desmond asks why the poverty rate has remained flat for decades in the midst of burgeoning federal relief. He says it’s because most of us prefer it that way. This sounds crass until you realize he’s talking about the federal income tax system which he claims is designed to keep the poor in their penury.
The author consistently compares the U.S. to European democracies, citing their low poverty rates compared to ours. But it’s a faulty comparison. Western democracies are nothing like the U.S., not just historically, but constitutionally, makeup of population, and cultural roots. For example, people in the U.S. are more generous, voluntarily donating seven times as much to charity as Europeans. Also, European democracies favor socialism, and many have “Labor Parties” pushing policies that Desmond favors. Western European countries are more homogenous compared to the U.S. which has a more diverse population. The author himself says, “The U.S. now has more immigrants than any other nation on earth.” While liberals claim that “diversity is our strength”, a population of fragmented cultures and backgrounds actually has more disadvantages than strengths. When dealing with societal problems, consensus and compromise are necessary to find solutions and differences must be negotiated. This is time consuming, requiring the expenditure of energy and resources.
Desmond tries to knock down the commonly accepted causes of poverty such as immigration and single parent families. He even attacks the conservative’s “success sequence”, three steps to avoid poverty. First, graduate high school, then get a full-time job, and finally wait until marriage to have children. Desmond says, “I wish it were that simple.” Yet Desmond is simplistic, ascribing most all of societal ills as the result of poverty. It could just as easily be argued that bad choices (committing crime, taking drugs, getting pregnant before marriage) cause poverty.
Desmond’s arguments are rife with logical fallacies. He completely discounts “work ethic”, attributing poverty solely to “unfair circumstances”, relying on the liberals’ shop-worn concept of “fairness”. But who determines what is fair?
Some of Desmond’s arguments are slip-shod. In trying to portray American wealth, he makes an absurdity, equating second homes with “timeshares.”
Desmond works strictly within a zero-sum framework. If the middle class and well-to-do prosper, then the poor suffer. Desmond accuses the non-poor of “hoarding opportunities” saying, for this to change, “those who have benefited from the nations excesses will have to take less so that others have more.”
If you try to provide your family a good life, you are depriving the poor!
When decrying the U.S tax system, Desmond shows his hand, “Altogether, the U.S. spent 1.8 trillion on tax breaks in 2021.” He writes our government “spent” its money on the “rich” and well-to-do (the ones who produce, who actually earn the money). But the money belongs to those who earn it, not the government. Taxation is a necessary evil to pay for the limited functions the constitution mandates for our government. But Desmond and other social engineers have come up with infinite ways to spend our tax dollars.
Desmond’s book is completely one-sided, leaving out key aspects of the causes and history of poverty in America. Poverty reached a high of 78% during the great depression without the rampant societal ills of today that Desmond says result from poverty. Post WWII prosperity was not due to one-third of workers at the time belonging to unions but because the U.S. was then the unchallenged economic power among countries rebuilding after war.
Simply handing out money as Desmond advocates doesn’t work. Seventy percent of lottery winners are dead broke in five years. Without self-discipline, no amount of money helps. 
While Desmond writes in crisp prose, good writing alone cannot save faulty reasoning and in the final reckoning his arguments are unconvincing.

Eitan Hershkovitz

Which is all to say, a country as wealthy as ours could put our money where our mouth is when it comes to supporting life. But from the poor, we seem to just take and take.

The last 3 chapters + epilogue changed me 

Beecher Halladay

Adam

Alyssa C Smith

Jess Frees

Patty Pforte

Jennifer

Megan Parrott

Nick Truden

Hannah Yoon

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a “provocative and compelling” (NPR) argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. “Urgent and accessible . . . Its moral force is a gut punch.”—The New Yorker ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2023: The Washington Post, Time, Esquire, Newsweek, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Elle, Salon, Lit Hub, Kirkus Reviews The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages? In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow. Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.

Poverty, by America

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