Poverty, by America
Ratings39
Average rating4.1
15
Ratings39
Average rating4.1
#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.
Reviews with the most likes.
My book club read Desmon's EVICTED a few years ago and we follow it up this month with this new book. The previous book was extraordinarily powerful and for different reasons I feel the same about this one. A critical review of the book called it a Manifesto as if that were a bad thing. It IS a manifesto, one with a compelling argument backed up by statistics. We CAN end poverty. Desmond tells us how.
What he said.
Buy this book, read it, keep it handy. Attend local meetings. Talk to representatives. And, little by little, keep doing more.
(I was surprised he never mentioned the role of churches in keeping people poor; nor universities. Then I realized the need for the book to be finite.)
“The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy.”
Who can read that sentence and not feel horrified, shocked, ashamed?
Poverty, as we know from hundreds of studies that have been done over the years, is the root of many problems in society—hunger, evictions, homelessness, crime, low achievement in education, and more.
This book looks at the ways affluent Americans keep the poor poor. Some of these are doing with the full knowledge of the affluent and some of these are done unknowingly.
The epilogue is a call to action: As the president of One Fair Wage said, “‘We are not polarized from each other. We are polarized from our electeds.'” The author goes on to say, “The majority of Americans believe the rich aren't paying their fair share in taxes. The majority support a $15 federal minimum wage. Why, then, aren't our elected officials representing the will of the people? This we must demand of them.”
And then, and for me most importantly, this book shares strategies for ending poverty.
I thought this was going to be a lot longer than it actually was based on my Kindles reading percentage, but more than half the pages in the Kindle version are endnotes.
The book is a little bit depressing cos it's talking about the obvious of how America has such a big divide between rich and poor, mostly due to politics and the optics of people determining welfare as unfair - even though really the middle and upper classes get tax cuts which isn't seen as welfare but is sort of the same thing.
