Reviews tagging 'Pregnancy'

Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond

3 reviews

devynreadsnovels's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative inspiring medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Classism, Racism, Sexism, and Violence

Moderate: Death, Gaslighting, Ableism, Addiction, Alcoholism, Mental illness, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Child abuse, and Police brutality

Minor: Pregnancy, Religious bigotry, Deportation, Slavery, Xenophobia, Medical content, Cursing, Gun violence, Hate crime, and Pandemic/Epidemic

modernthymes's review

challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism and Racism

Minor: Addiction, Pregnancy, and Abortion

zombiezami's review against another edition

informative medium-paced

2.0

I genuinely don't understand why people are praising this book. It's giving radical moderation. The social problems that Desmond describes are very real and important to address, but his conclusions do not follow from the evidence or from how capitalism works.

Desmond's main argument is that it's necessary to be a poverty abolitionist (definitely agree), and that it's possible to abolish poverty and exploitation without dismantling capitalism (wtf?). I don't know how you study the kinds of things Desmond studies in the way that he's studied them and come to that conclusion. He believes it's possible to end poverty by persuading congress to strengthen the IRS to go after rich people who haven't paid their fair share of taxes. Sis, who do you think funds congress and made it so that's the case??

Rich people didn't just forget to pay their taxes. Congress didn't just neglect to collect those taxes. The author seems very invested in a just-world fallacy, and I hope he realizes that soon. It's well known at this point that Exxon found out decades ago that climate change was happening and that human activity, notably fossil fuel use, was causing it. Rather than doing anything to alert the public and help people prepare or divest from fossil fuels, they funded misinformation campaigns that have undermined climate activism to this day. Fast forward to now, rich people are buying bunkers in the hopes of escaping the impact of their actions on the planet and on the people they exploit. The ultra wealthy have a fundamentally different morality. They have to in order to justify having so much while others suffer and die from preventable causes.

Another frustration is that, when the author was talking about people who are in his tax bracket, who are presumably the primary audience for this book, he repeatedly uses the pronoun "we." Are we speaking French? Who is we??? 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Addiction, Ableism, Chronic illness, Medical content, Gaslighting, Death, and Xenophobia

Minor: Colonisation, Abortion, Pregnancy, Drug abuse, Pedophilia, Drug use, Suicide, Child abuse, Sexual harassment, and Pandemic/Epidemic