<
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/22/poverty-by-america-by-matthew-desmond-review-how-the-rich-keep-the-poor-down>
"It’s no wonder Americans have failed to eliminate poverty, sociologist Matthew
Desmond maintains in his new book. He believes the better-off are fighting a
class war, keeping the poor down by design. Even if he shies away from some of
the consequences of his explosive claim, his arguments have the potential to
push debate about wealth in America to a new level.
Having won a coveted MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 2015, Desmond is
known for his absorbing previous book on eviction practices in housing, which
netted him a Pulitzer prize in 2017. He starts his ambitious new study by
demonstrating how enduring American poverty is. The current poverty line is
represented by an income of $13,590 a year for an individual and $27,750 for a
family of four. The number of Americans below it has hovered between 10% and
15% for decades, with calls and plans for reform amounting to “50 years of
nothing”. The only exception was the brief period of pandemic relief, which
drove poverty down “tremendously” – for children, by more than 50%. But things
are now returning to form. The Democrats ended much emergency relief last
autumn and cut new entitlements for the worst-off from an Inflation Reduction
Act that privileged green capitalism.
Desmond shows that poverty blights rural white areas but that its hardest core
is African American and urban. Having written the entry on racial capitalism
for the
New York Times 1619 project, Desmond is sensitive to the way poverty
intersects other forms of subordination. Another sociologist, the great William
Julius Wilson, argued more than three decades ago that deindustrialisation was
to blame for African American impoverishment, by depriving men of good
manufacturing jobs. But Desmond thinks this thesis, while accurate, misses the
various ways in which “the rich keep the poor down for their own benefit”.
Sociologists, Desmond charges, have shied away from “empirical studies of power
and exploitation”. Politicians and well-meaning observers have wrung their
hands without facing the “uncomfortable” possibility that the poor remain so
because the wealthier want it that way."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
