Poverty, By America. Matthew Desmond. Crown (ISBN:9780593239933) 2024.

Summary: An argument that poverty in America is the result of choices made knowingly or not by affluent who benefit as a result.

Most discussions of poverty find the cause of poverty in one of two places. Either the poor are poor because of their own bad choices. Or the poor are poor because of systems and structures stacked against them. Matthew Desmond contends that the data offer a different picture. Poverty exists because the rest of us knowingly or not benefit from it. He shows that the poor who graduate from high school, get full-time jobs, and delay child-bearing until marriage are still poor. And he shows that our structures, at least governmentally, have vastly expanded resources for the poor. Without them, things would be far worse.

First of all, workers are vastly underpaid, particularly in light of corporate balance sheets. The “gig” economy makes this even worse. Government aid in the form of food stamps and the Earned Income Credit (when it is used) prevent their state from being worse. Thje rest of us subsidize low wages unknowingly.

We also force the poor to pay more for housing, mostly on the rental market, excluding them from home ownership, the monthly payments for which may be lower than rising rents. In addition, payday lending operations charge exorbitant interest for short-term loans. Desmond asks, “Who is feeding off this?”

We actually have a welfare system that most benefits those who least need it. Government subsidized retirement benefits, 529 college savings plans, child tax credits, and mortgage deductions and other subsidies benefit those well above the poverty line. But we just don’t think of that as “welfare.”

We use zoning practices to bar affordable housing creating de facto segregation while priding ourselves that it has been outlawed. We create cities that are patchworks of private splendor and public squalor.

Desmond argues that the resources are there to change this situation. If the wealthy paid even the current taxes they owe, substantial funds would be released to help the poor. Desmond points to the extra assistance given during COVID and how it kept people out of poverty as well as released funds into a struggling economy.

Desmond argues that all of us can make different choices, about the wages we pay, the zoning of our neighborhoods. He also argues for restoring power to workers through unions that make collective bargaining rather than a “gig” existence possible. Of course, companies could voluntarily empower their workers through such things as employee ownership options.

What Desmond is asking is what kind of country do we want? He argues that we all pay a cost for poverty. By changing things like zoning, empowering, and properly compensating workers, we create a better country for all of us.

What struck me reading this just after the 2024 elections was that it seems we want a very different country than what Desmond advocates and that even many of the working poor believe their lives will be better in this kind of country. I cannot believe Desmond is oblivious to our political discourse. Yet I think, as compelling as is the case he makes, he talks past the majority of the country, including many of the populations for whom he advocates as well as many who he needs to persuade among the more affluent.