How America Manufactures Poverty - The New Yorker

[entremet]

This technically a book review, but it's rather long and covers a lot.

More manifesto than narrative, "Poverty, by America" is urgent and accessible. It's also austere. There aren't many stories about individuals; Desmond seems to dole these out with purposeful spareness, perhaps so that we won't get distracted by them. But the one he tells about himself is affecting. Before he went to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, or won a MacArthur, or became a professor at Princeton, Desmond grew up outside a little town near Flagstaff, Arizona, living with his family in a modest wood-panelled house that he loved. Then his father, a pastor, lost his job, and the bank took the family's home. "Mostly I blamed Dad," he writes. "But a part of me also wondered why this was our country's answer when a family fell on hard times." He kept wondering while he was in college, using scholarships and loans, at Arizona State University, supporting himself as a barista, a telemarketer, and a wildland firefighter. The question compelled him to write "Evicted." Behind that question, always, were the bigger questions that animate this new book: How is it that the United States, a country with a gross domestic product "larger than the combined economies of Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, India, France, and Italy," has a higher relative poverty rate than those other advanced democracies? Why do one in eight Americans, and one in six children, live in poverty—a rate about the same as it was in 1970? Why do we put up with it?

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It's interesting how the author blamed the victim here. The bootstrap brainwashing starts early.

The short answer, Desmond argues, is that as a society we have made a priority of other things: maximal wealth accumulation for the few and cheap stuff for the many. At the same time, we've either ignored or enabled the gouging of the poor—by big banks that charge them stiff overdraft fees, by predatory payday lenders and check-cashing outlets of what Desmond calls the "fringe banking industry," by landlords who squeeze their tenants because the side hustle of rent collecting has turned into their main hustle, by companies that underpay their workers or deny them benefits by confining them to gig status or that keep them perpetually off balance with "just-in-time scheduling" of shifts. To the extent that middle- and upper-class people unthinkingly buy products from such companies and invest in their stock, or park their money in those banks, or oppose public housing in their neighborhoods despite a professed commitment to it, or bid up the prices of fixer-uppers in Austin or San Francisco or Washington, D.C., they, too, are helping to buttress the system.

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This is definitely something I've seen as a Millennial here. This obsession with side hustles--many times out of necessity--and multiple streams of income. How we get nickel and dimed for everything, like I posted yesterday on the bowling thread.

I remember when I got my first professional job. I was young and wasn't the best budgeter, so I did overdraw a few times. But, man, the fees were outta control! I didn't know that those fees were recent things. Started in the 1980s, but now make a huge part of bank's profits.

And let's not forgot how unregulated NIMBYism, another American special, keeps housing prices high.

Also, the US does do a lot of social spending. It just goes more to the middle class and up.

For one thing, it unduly assists the affluent. That statistic about the U.S. spending almost as much as France on social welfare, he explains, is accurate only "if you include things like government-subsidized retirement benefits provided by employers, student loans and 529 college savings plans, child tax credits, and homeowner subsidies: benefits disproportionately flowing to Americans well above the poverty line." To enjoy most of these, you need to have a well-paying job, a home that you own, and probably an accountant (and, if you're really in clever, a money manager).

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How America Manufactures Poverty

The sociologist Matthew Desmond identifies specific practices and policies that consign tens of millions to destitution.

www.newyorker.com

 

[B-Dubs]

I read another interview with the author, he's absolutely not blaming the victims. That's a total misread. His argument is that cottage industries popped up that focus around taking the welfare paid out to help the impoverished out of their pockets and not providing them the value of that money taken. Essentially that there's companies designed to profit off the poor in a way that keeps them poor.

His argument is basically that we're paying out a good amount of welfare to help people, but that companies emerged that were designed to take that money from the working poor and to ensure that the welfare spending never did it's job. That if these companies didn't exist to take advantage of people that our anti-poverty policies would be seeing more success.

 

[entremet]

I read another interview with the author, he's absolutely not blaming the victims. That's a total misread. His argument is that cottage industries popped up that focus around taking the welfare paid out to help the impoverished out of their pockets and not providing them the value of that money taken. Essentially that there's companies designed to profit off the poor in a way that keeps them poor.

His argument is basically that we're paying out a good amount of welfare to help people, but that companies emerged that were designed to take that money from the working poor and to ensure that the welfare spending never did it's job. That if these companies didn't exist to take advantage of people that our anti-poverty policies would be seeing more success.

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I think you misunderstood me.

The author, once as a kid, thought it was father's fault. He obviously doesn't see that now.

"Mostly I blamed Dad," he writes. "But a part of me also wondered why this was our country's answer when a family fell on hard times."

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So I'm in agreement.

 

[myojinsoga]

Ultimately equality can be seen as how level the playing field is. No-one wants to be playing uphill; however if the board was flat there would be no direction to anything, no impetus or focus to human activity.

So inequality, in general, is necessary. But the question is how far do you go with it, and how do you agree on that? Anyone doing well under the prevailing system has more influence over the shape of things, as well as the same motivation everyone else does to make things better for themselves personally.

With greater inequality comes more gaps, more opportunities. More collapses to take advantage of, more 'liquidity' in the system over all, as things change hands. Inequality itself is more profitable the further you go with it. This pertains on the macro scale, and then that rising tide will lift your boat too, even if you don't take actions that are literally conspiratorial. You will do better too - as long as you began with the resources and intention to profit from what's around you - and don't fuck it up.

The more unequal and unfair the system is (the more it solidifies and entrenches and deepens inequity) the easier it becomes for the successful to keep succeeding, and the harder it is for the consequence of their fuck ups to ever reach them. This, for them, is desirable, and therefore striven for, and voted for. As a human being, I can relate to that, even while as a poor, I despise it.

I think we need to try and redefine things like advantage, and success, and competition. I believe they are necessary; but that we pin them to the wrong things, equating material success with existential validity. Under natural selection that's a fundamental paradigm - but as a massed swarm of little monkey people, we don't actually need to expose one another to it, quite so much as we do.

I think flattening out our precipitous societies would be a net good. However historically attempts to effect such a change have been revolutionary, disruptive, and deeply factionalising. I'd love to see a long-term plan initiated, designed on humanist principles, to grow society as a whole into a new shape over many years, carefully and procedurally, allowing competing impulses to coexist and shape outcomes for as long they are actually relevant.

 

[B-Dubs]

Ultimately equality can be seen as how level the playing field is. No-one wants to be playing uphill; however if the board was flat there would be no direction to anything, no impetus or focus to human activity.

So inequality, in general, is necessary. But the question is how far do you go with it, and how do you agree on that? Anyone doing well under the prevailing system has more influence over the shape of things, as well as the same motivation everyone else does to make things better for themselves personally.

With greater inequality comes more gaps, more opportunities. More collapses to take advantage of, more 'liquidity' in the system over all, as things change hands. Inequality itself is more profitable the further you go with it. This pertains on the macro scale, and then that rising tide will lift your boat too, even if you don't take actions that are literally conspiratorial. You will do better too - as long as you began with the resources and intention to profit from what's around you - and don't fuck it up.

The more unequal and unfair the system is (the more it solidifies and entrenches and deepens inequity) the easier it becomes for the successful to keep succeeding, and the harder it is for the consequence of their fuck ups to ever reach them. This, for them, is desirable, and therefore striven for, and voted for. As a human being, I can relate to that, even while as a poor, I despise it.

I think we need to try and redefine things like advantage, and success, and competition. I believe they are necessary; but that we pin them to the wrong things, equating material success with existential validity. Under natural selection that's a fundamental paradigm - but as a massed swarm of little monkey people, we don't actually need to expose one another to it, quite so much as we do.

I think flattening out our precipitous societies would be a net good. However historically attempts to effect such a change have been revolutionary, disruptive, and deeply factionalising. I'd love to see a long-term plan initiated, designed on humanist principles, to grow society as a whole into a new shape over many years, carefully and procedurally, allowing competing impulses to coexist and shape outcomes for as long they are actually relevant.

Click to shrink...

So again, the author's point is that there's essentially an industry that has popped up in order to profit off of welfare spending. Companies designed to take the help we are providing the most vulnerable among us and profit off them while providing these people with nothing in return. He's not calling for a revolution or anything like that, he's literally saying that we can fix the problem by addressing these companies and stopping them from taking advantage of welfare spending to line their own pockets.

 

[entremet]

So again, the author's point is that there's essentially an industry that has popped up in order to profit off of welfare spending. Companies designed to take the help we are providing the most vulnerable among us and profit off them while providing these people with nothing in return. He's not calling for a revolution or anything like that, he's literally saying that we can fix the problem by addressing these companies and stopping them from taking advantage of welfare spending to line their own pockets.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, it's very practical.

He was very detalied examples. He also doesn't seem to go into the big themes of capitalisms--according to the review.

Welfare reform, was a disaster, for example.

And there are other ways, Desmond points out, that government help gets thwarted or misdirected. When President Clinton instituted welfare reform, in 1996, pledging to "transform a broken system that traps too many people in a cycle of dependence," an older model, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or A.F.D.C., was replaced by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or tanf. Where most funds administered by A.F.D.C. went straight to families in the form of cash aid, tanfgave grants to states with the added directive to promote two-parent families and discourage out-of-wedlock childbirth, and let the states fund programs to achieve those goals as they saw fit. As a result, "states have come up with rather creative ways to spend tanf dollars," Desmond writes. "Nationwide, for every dollar budgeted for tanf in 2020, poor families directly received just 22 cents. Only Kentucky and the District of Columbia spent over half of their tanf funds on basic cash assistance." Between 1999 and 2016, Oklahoma directed more than seventy million dollars toward initiatives to promote marriage, offering couples counselling and workshops that were mostly open to people of all income levels. Arizona used some of the funds to pay for abstinence education; Pennsylvania gave some of its tanf money to anti-abortion programs. Mississippi treated its tanf funds as an unexpected Christmas present, hiring a Christian-rock singer to perform at concerts, for instance, and a former professional wrestler—the author of an autobiography titled "Every Man Has His Price"—to deliver inspirational speeches. (Much of this was revealed by assiduous investigative reporters, and by a 2020 audit of Mississippi's Department of Human Services.) Moreover, because states don't have to spend all their tanf funds each year, many carry over big sums. In 2020, Tennessee, which has one of the highest child-poverty rates in the nation, left seven hundred and ninety million dollars in tanf funds unspent.

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Spending welfare funds on country music stars or banking those funds like Tennessee hurts poverty relief efforts.

 

[Amalthea]

The US system seemst tailor made to make most people live comfortably enough but always one misfortune away from ruin so the people are both satisfied enough and yet too busy to survive to revolt against that very system.

 

[myojinsoga]

So again, the author's point is that there's essentially an industry that has popped up in order to profit off of welfare spending. Companies designed to take the help we are providing the most vulnerable among us and profit off them while providing these people with nothing in return. He's not calling for a revolution or anything like that, he's literally saying that we can fix the problem by addressing these companies and stopping them from taking advantage of welfare spending to line their own pockets.

Click to shrink...

Well yeah ... But if I read and responded to the matter at hand, then when would I get to have my little rant?

Forgive me I'm just a dreamer a lot of the time, and this all spends a lot of time in my head each day.

I'm pessimistic of any one single intervention - such as stopping those companies you mentioned from profiting or even operating as they do - making a real difference. It begs further questions; how do you provide those services then, and how do you fund them?

That's not an informed position on my part, just a vague pessimism, which I'm open to revising. But, imo, the shape of things is the shape of things, and that's where change needs to come.

I take the point though - maybe I'm just badly off topic.

 

[Rover]

Ultimately equality can be seen as how level the playing field is. No-one wants to be playing uphill; however if the board was flat there would be no direction to anything, no impetus or focus to human activity.

Click to shrink...

Where did this idea even come from? Do you personally feel like you need it to be this way to feel fulfilled?

I think there's already plenty about life that drives us. There is also such a thing as just wanting to live quietly in peace. The machine this society built is about subjugating and exploiting others. In many ways, we did not even fully get rid of ideas like serfdom or slavery, it's just been recontextualized under capitalism. I don't see why we need it, other than the drivers of it insisting we do.

 

[B-Dubs]

Well yeah ... But if I read and responded to the matter at hand, then when would I get to have my little rant?

Forgive me I'm just a dreamer a lot of the time, and this all spends a lot of time in my head each day.

I'm pessimistic of any one single intervention - such as stopping those companies you mentioned from profiting or even operating as they do - making a real difference. It begs further questions; how do you provide those services then, and how do you fund them?

That's not an informed position on my part, just a vague pessimism, which I'm open to revising. But, imo, the shape of things is the shape of things, and that's where change needs to come.

I take the point though - maybe I'm just badly off topic.

Click to shrink...

The author is making the point that with our current levels of spending we should be making real progress, but that as a result of these companies we're seeing nothing happening. It's not about the money not being enough or them not getting services, but about these companies taking advantage and pulling the money out of their pockets so they can't use it on what they need to.

 

[Gentlemen]

I think flattening out our precipitous societies would be a net good. However historically attempts to effect such a change have been revolutionary, disruptive, and deeply factionalising. I'd love to see a long-term plan initiated, designed on humanist principles, to grow society as a whole into a new shape over many years, carefully and procedurally, allowing competing impulses to coexist and shape outcomes for as long they are actually relevant.

Click to shrink...

Or we could just give poor people cash and stop scolding them about how they wouldn't want things to improve if we just 'leveled things out.'

 

[ZeroMaverick]

I'm gonna read this book

 

[Fatoy]

Where did this idea even come from? Do you personally feel like you need it to be this way to feel fulfilled?

I think there's already plenty about life that drives us. There is also such a thing as just wanting to live quietly in peace. The machine this society built is about subjugating and exploiting others. In many ways, we did not even fully get rid of ideas like serfdom or slavery, it's just been recontextualized under capitalism. I don't see why we need it, other than the drivers of it insisting we do.

Click to shrink...

There's absolutely nothing wrong with being satisfied within living a peaceful, fulfilled, and quiet life, and it's a failure of most societies that this is increasingly not possible for the majority of people. But as long as there have been people - under any economic system - there have been subsets of them who want something different, and then subsets of those people who go out and find or create it.

 

[Mezentine]

We have, at this point, endless studies and pilots and test programs and other sources of data showing that direct and modest intervention by the government at pretty much any level to directly provide people with money so they can secure reasonable access to food, housing and education has massively disproportionate social benefits with generational effects and at a certain point I think we need to acknowledge that those pilot programs never go anywhere because Americans, on the whole, are okay with suffering, and think its good to have a precarious underclass who live in fear and develop health complications at 45 due to chronic stress and die in poverty because at least that means that you're not one of those people, at least your comfort, however fragile it feels on a day-to-day basis, doesn't feel quite that close to the edge and you certainly don't want any of the few dollars you get to be taken away and given to them because they don't deserve it, and they're probably brown, and definitely have bad character, and have no-one but themselves to blame

This obsession with side hustles--many times out of necessity--and multiple streams of income. How we get nickel and dimed for everything, like I posted yesterday on the bowling thread.

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In interviews with people who lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union in Russia one of the first things they describe happening once capitalism takes over is this cultural shift towards "hustles" and the obsession with making money and flaunting it any way you can. It was really striking to me, how they immediately clocked that as the new dynamic entering the culture, and there was a real attitude of "Our communist experiment failed, and we know why it failed, but we really want to replace it with this?"

 

[entremet]

We have, at this point, endless studies and pilots and test programs and other sources of data showing that direct and modest intervention by the government at pretty much any level to directly provide people with money so they can secure reasonable access to food, housing and education has massively disproportionate social benefits with generational effects and at a certain point I think we need to acknowledge that those pilot programs never go anywhere because Americans, on the whole, are okay with suffering, and think its good to have a precarious underclass who live in fear and develop health complications at 45 due to chronic stress and die in poverty because at least that means that you're not one of those people, at least your comfort, however fragile it feels on a day-to-day basis, doesn't feel quite that close to the edge and you certainly don't want any of the few dollars you get to be taken away and given to them because they don't deserve it, and they're probably brown, and definitely have bad character, and have no-one but themselves to blame

Click to shrink...

Not extending the child tax credit post COVID was a huge mistake. It was so successful too.

 

[bremon]

The US system seemst tailor made to make most people live comfortably enough but always one misfortune away from ruin so the people are both satisfied enough and yet too busy to survive to revolt against that very system.

Click to shrink...

As a Canadian with former classmates to went to university and then moved to America, it's always seemed to me that there's no better country in the world to be healthy, well-educated and employed in a profession that pays well. Any of those cornerstones falls and it seems like it can be a terrible place to be very quickly. That said, I've often thought of moving south for work for a few years to facilitate topping up investment accounts quicker.

America's system of corporate boots on everyone's necks seems to do a fantastic job of quelling any civil unrest towards poor policy. You don't really see French style revolts when everyone is worried about being able to both pay rent AND keep the lights on.

 

[Mcfrank]

We have, at this point, endless studies and pilots and test programs and other sources of data showing that direct and modest intervention by the government at pretty much any level to directly provide people with money so they can secure reasonable access to food, housing and education has massively disproportionate social benefits with generational effects and at a certain point I think we need to acknowledge that those pilot programs never go anywhere because Americans, on the whole, are okay with suffering, and think its good to have a precarious underclass who live in fear and develop health complications at 45 due to chronic stress and die in poverty because at least that means that you're not one of those people, at least your comfort, however fragile it feels on a day-to-day basis, doesn't feel quite that close to the edge and you certainly don't want any of the few dollars you get to be taken away and given to them because they don't deserve it, and they're probably brown, and definitely have bad character, and have no-one but themselves to blame

Click to shrink...

I am begging you to use periods. You make good points that are unreadable due to this writing style.

 

[Mezentine]

The author is making the point that with our current levels of spending we should be making real progress, but that as a result of these companies we're seeing nothing happening. It's not about the money not being enough or them not getting services, but about these companies taking advantage and pulling the money out of their pockets so they can't use it on what they need to.

Click to shrink...

The hustle culture is fractal, it shows up at every scale, it encourages grift and finding ways to skim off the top from the level of the individual all the way up to companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. What we think of as the good eras of capitalism are, I think, when we've managed to mostly tamp this down but whenever shit gets bad it erupts again.

 

[WedgeX]

Matt Desmond is a national treasure.

 

[myojinsoga]

Where did this idea even come from? Do you personally feel like you need it to be this way to feel fulfilled?

I think there's already plenty about life that drives us. There is also such a thing as just wanting to live quietly in peace. The machine this society built is about subjugating and exploiting others. In many ways, we did not even fully get rid of ideas like serfdom or slavery, it's just been recontextualized under capitalism. I don't see why we need it, other than the drivers of it insisting we do.

Click to shrink...

Or we could just give poor people cash and stop scolding them about how they wouldn't want things to improve if we just 'leveled things out.'

Click to shrink...

I wasn't outlining what I want or what I think is good. Just very anecdotally what I see. I'm not an authority, this is just my perspective as someone struggling to live and to understand living. I'm glad there are other perspectives and I'd like to hear them elaborated on.

The author is making the point that with our current levels of spending we should be making real progress, but that as a result of these companies we're seeing nothing happening. It's not about the money not being enough or them not getting services, but about these companies taking advantage and pulling the money out of their pockets so they can't use it on what they need to.

Click to shrink...

I will read about it some more - but thank you. I've advocated here for systemic changes, however of course specific arrangements or policies can simply be "wrong" in themselves, and changing them would simply be effective.

 

[Isilia]

Dad's wife always doesn't understand why I don't live in a big house with 3 cars like Dad did.

He made over 100k a year 30 years ago. The wife makes 40k a year today in addition to my paltry disability benefits.

Wonder what the difference is!

 

[mujun]

Welfare reform, was a disaster, for example.
Spending welfare funds on country music stars or banking those funds like Tennessee hurts poverty relief efforts.

Click to shrink...

The latest Last Week Tonight episode was about TANF. It sounds like a complete shitshow. Only a small amount of the people who actually need it get it while the rest goes to people like Brett Farve or sits in the states' coffers.

 

[Bowl0l]

You all voted in representatives that actively destroys social safety nets, incite hate towards minority, lie and protect the rich. Poverty is the expected outcome.

 

[Digital Dinosaur]

All of the historical and cultural reasons why poverty became a moral failing and was considered a deserved punishment just flowed so well into capitalism (and corporatism) seeking to enshrine maximum exploitation as a foundational philosophy.

Because Americans hate the poor so much, they don't give a shit about unpacking the systems which exploit them. However, these things do take time. As the middle class finishes its disintegration we see all these people suddenly discovering the inescapable web of scams and abuse America represents.

 

[Weeats]

I read Evicted by Desmond a couple of years ago.

He is both a careful and considerate scholar and an undeniably gifted writer.

I will definitely be picking this up.

 

[Zaku3]

All of the historical and cultural reasons why poverty became a moral failing and was considered a deserved punishment just flowed so well into capitalism (and corporatism) seeking to enshrine maximum exploitation as a foundational philosophy.

Because Americans hate the poor so much, they don't give a shit about unpacking the systems which exploit them. However, these things do take time. As the middle class finishes its disintegration we see all these people suddenly discovering the inescapable web of scams and abuse America represents.

Click to shrink...

I finished the Hell on Earth podcast and I'm quite frankly disgusted by the Protestant Reformation.

Their religions are straight up cope. Catholic dogma atleast (barring homosexuality and other things) is looking at how the world should be. The various Protestant religions see that the world isn't like that and cope about how the world we live in is actually what God wants.

Edit: He seems like a good author. Eviction seems more up my alley compared to this book because it's probably stuff I already know. Anyone think a socialist can learn anything new for this specific book or should I get eviction only?

 

[Dreams-Visions]

"The American government gives the most help to those who need it least,"

This is one of the huge, obvious problems. It's not just the government; it's the banks, all of the fundamental systems.

 

[Zaku3]

"The American government gives the most help to those who need it least,"

This is one of the huge, obvious problems. It's not just the government; it's the banks, all of the fundamental systems.

Click to shrink...

It's the point of the system. Our nation's founding is a myth. Unjust taxes is the causus belli but the taxes were for a war to protect the colonies. The crown didn't let them run wild on the natives and the taxes meant less money in their pockets. We can't solve our problems because our problems are foundational.

 

[B-Dubs]

I finished the Hell on Earth podcast and I'm quite frankly disgusted by the Protestant Reformation.

Their religions are straight up cope. Catholic dogma atleast (barring homosexuality and other things) is looking at how the world should be. The various Protestant religions see that the world isn't like that and cope about how the world we live in is actually what God wants.

Edit: He seems like a good author. Eviction seems more up my alley compared to this book because it's probably stuff I already know. Anyone think a socialist can learn anything new for this specific book or should I get eviction only?

Click to shrink...

You can learn something from everyone, just because you have a belief structure doesn't mean you can't learn something from someone else. It's always worth engaging with well thought-out ideas, don't let yourself be limited by ideology. That's a road to perdition.

 

[Teusery]

Very interesting read, makes me want to pick up the book. I like how many actual solutions get suggested, from big to small, from individual actions to governmental overhauls.

Also REALLY like that data seems to point towards people accepting a "systemic issue" origin of poverty rather than sticking to the bootstraps bullshit.

Side note: even though republicans are, no surprise, behind a lot of those issues, its pretty surprising to see how many states blue and red are misusing funds dedicated to helping the poor.

 

[Dyle]

It's ultimately just a result of our government structure, as is everything. The reason other countries do better is far less from any philosophical differences but mostly due to fact that their legislative structure is able to make and execute significant policy changes far more efficiently. That stops the hole from getting as deep as it is and makes it much easier to solve problems once the hole is already there.

 

[nolongerexists]

I finished the Hell on Earth podcast and I'm quite frankly disgusted by the Protestant Reformation.

Their religions are straight up cope. Catholic dogma atleast (barring homosexuality and other things) is looking at how the world should be. The various Protestant religions see that the world isn't like that and cope about how the world we live in is actually what God wants.

Edit: He seems like a good author. Eviction seems more up my alley compared to this book because it's probably stuff I already know. Anyone think a socialist can learn anything new for this specific book or should I get eviction only?

Click to shrink...

If you haven't already, you should check out the classic sociological work from Max Weber: "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." It's considered a foundational text in sociology, whether one buys his conclusions or not. Weber argues that the rise of Protestantism across Europe helped prime the rise of capitalism, by deemphasizing Catholic asceticism and making it more socially acceptable to accumulate wealth.

 

[Booshka]

I can't believe we didn't extend the CTC, it's inhumane given how successful it was at ending childhood poverty and helping single mothers.

Similar to what Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich did with Welfare Reform.

This country pushes for more inequality legislatively and then lets the private sector do the dirty work.

It's a neoliberal hellscape

 

[Zaku3]

You can learn something from everyone, just because you have a belief structure doesn't mean you can't learn something from someone else. It's always worth engaging with well thought-out ideas, don't let yourself be limited by ideology. That's a road to perdition.

Click to shrink...

My concern is will I learn anything new. I am 37 so learning brand new things is worth the time investment. If what I can get is mainly more examples or slightly more detail it's not worth reading. My time is limited and severe depression and anxiety disorder held me back most of my life until about 7ish months ago.

If you haven't already, you should check out the classic sociological work from Max Weber: "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." It's considered a foundational text in sociology, whether one buys his conclusions or not. Weber argues that the rise of Protestantism across Europe helped prime the rise of capitalism, by deemphasizing Catholic asceticism and making it more socially acceptable to accumulate wealth.

Click to shrink...

Bought gonna listen to it as an audiobook. 6 hours ish not bad.

 

[Scottt]

Dang I remember starting to read Evicted but had lost my copy somewhere and never got back to it. This one sounds like an important book

 

[Gyro Zeppeli]

The American government and ultimately the wealthy class have conditioned the American public to loathe social policies that would assist the poor and middle class: Universal healthcare, social safety net, unions, and higher wages. The American people are their own worst enemy. Perhaps someday they will wake up.

 

[entremet]

Author was interviewed on The Ezra Klein Show


View: https://youtu.be/s8d1nFYVvNg

 

[Booshka]

Also on Democracy Now.

Great information and overview.


View: https://youtu.be/n5v-DmXUvcM

 

[entremet]

Just started the book on audio.

The intro is super effective and also incredibly sad. We've really hidden poverty in the US. No wonder nothing is done.

 

[onyx]

Racism is a huge reason why America doesn't do anything about poverty. Instead, American has pushed whole communities into poverty.

 

[entremet]

Racism is a huge reason why America doesn't do anything about poverty. Instead, American has pushed whole communities into poverty.

Click to shrink...

The book definitely addresses this. Big time. Which I appreciate. Exclusionary zoning for example. The author did his research.

 

[Akira86]

equality doesn't HAVE to be characterized as a flat field lacking options with no clear directions or ways to elevate yourself, that's just someone's particular framing that tries to justify inequality.

the world will always have uneven statuses, but there can still systems in place to help people deal with it. just saying 'we need inequality otherwise everyone would be poor or bad off' is just defense of a bad status quo.

 

[fragamemnon]

Author was interviewed on The Ezra Klein Show


View: https://youtu.be/s8d1nFYVvNg

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This was a fantastic Interview. He uses moral arguments in a way that is grounded and makes clear sense.

I do wish people would recognize the loss of national talent and treasure that poverty is stealing from us as a country. That's brought up late in the podcast and is a compelling civic nationalist argument, an angle you don't get a lot from media these days.

 

[Kenai]

equality doesn't HAVE to be characterized as a flat field lacking options with no clear directions or ways to elevate yourself, that's just someone's particular framing that tries to justify inequality.

the world will always have uneven statuses, but there can still systems in place to help people deal with it. just saying 'we need inequality otherwise everyone would be poor or bad off' is just defense of a bad status quo.

Click to shrink...

Yea there's a long-standing and annoying "viewpoint" that just living and being happy is wrong. You need to be "productive" and the results of that have to be tangible or that time is wasted. It's not always said out loud but that same viewpoint spills into other unsavory things really quickly.

 

[entremet]

Author was interviewed for The Atlantic.

The War on Poverty Is Over. Rich People Won.

The sociologist Matthew Desmond believes that being poor is different in the U.S. than in other rich countries.

www.theatlantic.com

Annie Lowrey: How is poverty different in America than in its peer countries?

Matthew Desmond: We have more of it. We have double the child-poverty rate of Germany and South Korea. We have a lot less to go around with, in terms of fighting poverty. We collect a much smaller share of our GDP in taxes every year.

It's different because it's so unnecessary. We have so many resources. Our tolerance for poverty is very high, much higher than it is in other parts of the developed world. I don't know if it's a belief, a cliché, or a myth. You see a homeless person in Los Angeles; an American says, What did that person do? You see a homeless person in France; a French person says, What did the state do? How did the state fail them?

Government programs obviously work. I've been with people when they receive a housing voucher. They praise Jesus. They fall on their knees. They pray and weep and cry. We have massive amounts of evidence about the benefits of government spending on anti-poverty programs. But poverty is also about exploitation. We have all these anti-poverty programs that accommodate poverty without disrupting it. They're not eliminating poverty at the root.

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Housing

Lowrey: Let's drill down on housing. Talk me through how something wealth-generating for some families is wealth-sapping for others.

Desmond: This is a unique feature of American life. If you go to Germany, a lot of professionals live in social housing. It's not stigmatized. They're living shoulder to shoulder with folks that might be in a very different place than they are economically.

Here, the housing market is bifurcated. For two-thirds of the country—people who own homes—the housing market is almost miraculous. Homeownership is not a winning proposition for everyone—that was a resounding lesson of 2008. But for a lot of folks, it is their biggest source of wealth creation. It's one of the biggest carve-outs in the tax code, with the mortgage deduction and other housing subsidies. And there are no rent hikes when you're a homeowner. Then you have this other one-third. The rental market is just utterly brutal, especially for the poorest among them.

Those two experiences aren't just different; they're connected. If you think of zoning laws—that is how we build walls around our
communities, how so many affluent communities keep out not just affordable housing, but any multifamily housing. That doesn't just create these pockets of affluence; it also creates pockets of concentrated poverty.

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Just finished the book on audio. Very good and very depressing. But he does offer solutions.