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A review by kylegarvey
Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond
informative
inspiring
sad
4.0
Princeton sociologist Desmond, who already got a Pulitzer for previous book Evicted, asks about poverty in a very incisive, novel way. Not really in individual misery, nor in big mismanagement (I can just see and shrink from unwise political movements that might engender, or not engender, even to sympathies I ought to have and presume I do but somehow, mistakenly, stupidly, accidentally don't), but in big statecraft accidents. We need poverty abolition in this country. Now I see a little better.
Early on, an artificial lake, luxurious but wasteful, separated from begging people by only a few blocks, first spurs a question for our author: "How could there be, I wondered, such bald scarcity amid such waste and opulence?" (14). He knows the environment he's in, hopeless boredom and shame writ large: "Workers quickly learn they are expendable, easily replaced, while young people are graduating into an economy characterized by deep uncertainty" (29). Whole society, then, polluted by vain money search.
At least we're all in it together, though? No, we aren't? "Still, poverty is no equalizer. It can be intensified by racial disadvantages or eased by racial privileges" and then in a parenthetical Desmond can furthermore simplify his argument "(And which is more primary, race or class? Which is the root of social inequity and which the branches? Which organ is more important to you, your heart or your brain?)" (35). Ah. Fresh distillation: "Poverty isn’t a line. It’s a tight knot of social maladies" (37). Ok, nice, I begin to see.
Into past-present analysis we jump then. Right. "You can’t eat a cell phone. You can’t trade one in for a living wage" (39) is a wise sociological point (except can't I? Who says?); and then we see an easy conclusion, popularized at the time and then exacerbated decades into the future, wrongly deciding increasing minimum wage would depress employment: "Stigler was wrong… increasing the minimum wage has negligible effects on employment (64). George Stigler was an economist of the '40s defending classical-liberal/libertarian stuff, notably regulatory capture. I know enough to know there's not much political wisdom there.
Healthy reminder, though, unions are valuable ("The American economy is less productive today than it was in the postwar period, when unions were at peak strength" (68)) and we're stuck in a corporate dump too deeply now: "Uber is now a verb. Americans rank Amazon as one of the most trusted institutions in the country, second only to the military. These companies have become ascendant because we love them. I still find myself, after all these years, mystified that I’m able to have just about anything I can think of arrive on my doorstep in twenty-four hours" (79)). Little anecdotes are thankfully very rare in this volume.
To exacerbate poverty, we can undercut workers and force the poor to pay more. Landlording warped often enough nowadays, turned mean and stingy, "traditionally intended as a side hustle, a source of 'passive income,' into their main hustle, 'active income' that they believe should pay the bills and support them in their silver years" then problems ensue (90). And on top of that, a grid of exploitation's unrolled: "The products of the fringe banking industry rely on the feverish present-mindedness of the vulnerable, and the industry’s precognition that its customers will remain that way longer than they can bring themselves to admit" (100). All at once, there can be a cycle of poverty, where poverty's, in a sick way, actually expensive.
Or -- hitting closer to home now -- welfare that might be generous, healthful actually isn't? But say nothing about welfare, nothing at all, lest it be immediately and unjustly ripped from you. Instead of 2 Euros you want 3 Euros, or instead of 2 Euros you want 2 dollars, or you want corrupt mafiosos to get 1500 instead of 2700, etc., etc., etc.; ok, eveyone wants something! Just try wage slavery then, or worker-company debasing citizen-state, or some other arrangement. Desmond quotes Strain "kind of an evidence-free topic" and simply contradicts him: "It’s not" (114).
Well, "Virtually all Americans benefit from some form of public aid. Republicans and Democrats rely on government programs at equivalent rates, as do white, Hispanic, and Black families. We’re all on the dole" (120); including me? Simple facts like "Psychologists have shown that we tend to feel losses more acutely" (127) begin, and then a UBI proposal like what's "mailed out to homeowners each month. The federal budget is a giant circle of money, a whirl of funds flowing to the state from taxpayers and back to taxpayers from the state. You can benefit a family by lowering its tax burden or by increasing its benefits, same difference" (128) -- feels like Gold Diggers '33 starting, or something. I don't know.
"Every day we confront the capriciousness of life, the unfair, stupid ways [is my way a stupid way?] our future is determined by background or chance. / Most of us believe that working hard helps us get ahead—because of course it does—but most of us also recognize that advantages flow from being white or having highly educated parents or knowing the right people. We sense that our bootstraps can be pulled up only so far, that self-help platitudes about grit and self-control and putting in the hours is fine advice for our children, but it’s no substitute for a theory of how the world works" (131) and "The biggest government subsidies are not directed at families trying to climb out of poverty but instead go to ensure that well-off families stay well-off" (133) both supply so much great, great, wise, wise stuff that I think they should be quoted in full as much as possible.
Anyway, what's opposing any malfeasance and sickness, there, besides a little 'shameful' fraud or something? Nothing [answers own questions, ok]. To explain liberality, might not want to use something illiberal, even if it's handy? That fortunately makes no sense at all. Sure, you can throw a bindle over a shoulder, blow a harmonica toot or two, and settle down to some good quirky Sullivan's Travels-like naughty 'fun' -- but no, what if you think that's enormously bad, shouldn't happen, and could disappear tomorrow? I'd probably have to think on it. More. Carefully.
But "Has there ever been another time, in the full sweep of human history, when so many people had so much and yet felt so deprived and anxious?" (134); and "In a country with such vast inequality, the poor increasingly come to depend on public services and the rich increasingly seek to divest from them. This leads to 'private opulence and public squalor,' a self-reinforcing dynamic that transforms our communities in ways that pull us further apart" (136); and "Massive tax cuts, which fundamentally reshaped the agendas of the nation’s two major political parties and resulted in the rise of private fortunes alongside public poverty, were not simply a response to government overreach. They were a response to white people being ordered to share public goods with Black people" (142). Ah. The triple threat.
And finally "This kind of circumscribed liberalism, which ends at your property line, not only denied low-income Americans access to some of the nation’s best public schools and safest streets: It also meant that working-class white families were asked to bear the costs of integration in a way that white professionals never were. This bred among blue-collar whites a festering resentment" (150). Oh, what looks like self-defeating stubbornness might, again, be more sophisticated and sadder underneath? Yes.
To keep 'em there, might need to thoroughly pin 'em down? "How do we, today, make the poor in America poor? In at least three ways. First, we exploit them" (154), "Second, we prioritize the subsidization of affluence over the alleviation of poverty" (155), "Third, we create prosperous and exclusive communities" (156). If the arrangement were made healthy, and poverty were abolished, what would happen? "What could $177 billion buy? Quite a lot. We could ensure that every person in America had a safer and more affordable place to live. Every single one of us. We could put a real dent in ending homelessness in America, and we could end hunger. We could provide every child with a fairer shot at security and success. We could make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty" (161).
And I appreciate when Desmond pauses to correct, pre-empt, shut down his opponents' nay-saying -- "I'm not calling for 'redistribution'. I’m calling for the rich to pay their taxes. I’m calling for a rebalancing of our social safety net. I’m calling for a return to a time when America made bigger investments in the general welfare. I’m calling for more poor aid and less rich aid" (170).
We could always, maybe, empower the poor? Catch some parallel issues, like reproductive freedom, when you do all that. "When women exercise control over family planning, including the ability to seek an abortion, they expand their educational and economic possibilities. And when reproductive choice is constricted, women and their children are often cast into poverty" (194) as well as "Just as global warming is not only caused by large industrial polluters and multinational logging companies but also by the cars we choose to drive and the energy we choose to buy, poverty in America is not simply the result of actions taken by Congress and corporate boards but the millions of decisions we make each day when going about our business" (197). Important to remember!
Quite literally, tear down the walls? We could "replace exclusionary zoning policies with inclusionary ordinances, tearing down our walls and using the rubble to build bridges" (209). Know about the abandonment of high principles, so you might not abandon them? "Stacks of social psychological evidence confirm that when we feel resources are scarce or could be, when we sense that our status (or that of our racial group) is slipping, we discard our commitments to equal opportunity" (215). And, saddest maybe but most important to remember, everything has been normalized already: "Our institutions have socialized us to scarcity, creating artificial resource shortages and then normalizing them" (216). Sickest stuff around, believe it.
And in a very nice conclusion, Desmond gets another well-aimed shot at his inarticulate, small opponents: "Conservatives like to say they are not for equality of conditions (everyone gets the same thing) but equality of opportunity (everyone gets the same shot). Fine by me—but only if we actually work to make equality of opportunity a reality. It is hard to put into words what the end of poverty would mean for millions of workers and parents and tenants and children below the line. It would mean a wholly different existence, a life marked by more safety and health, by more fairness and security. It would mean lives directed not by the scramble of survival but by passions and aspirations" (224).
Too often I think, leftist politics can neuter itelf, give itself too much a handicap, by presenting 'modesty', reasonable, compromise-able -- and I don't mean to say Desmond isn't reasonable or anything, lol, as he previously wrote that he wasn't 'calling for "redistribution" [but simply for] more poor aid and less rich aid' -- just that when he starts writing about 'aspirations' it's suitably stiff and I like it a lot.
Also returning to the image at the beginning, not in superficial text itself but maybe in unspoken feeling, our author can return to what's incorrect, overall, in our whole society: "We can feel it, the emotional violence we inflict upon ourselves, knowing that our abundance causes others’ misery. It’s there in that residue of shame and malaise coating our insular lives; that loss of joy, the emptiness; our boring satiation, our guilt" (227). And in a final epilogue that's crisp but hugely stacked still, Desmond writes of the supremacy of "usefulness over purity—and we must organize" (230): ok, very nice, I like all that.