Poverty, By America - Matthew Desmond

I’ve been trying to get back into reading more consistently, and this book really caught my eye. I came across it by watching an interview between Matthew and Jon Stewart - Matthew Desmond on The Daily Show.

The book was really eye opening, and almost painful in some sense. Matthew spoke about a wide range of ideas on how poverty is created, how it persists, how we benefit from it, what it would cost to reduce the amount of it, and what we can do about it now. And the numbers involved were shocking.

A key part of the book was on the tax burden, and on how if we only collected the taxes owed, we could almost close the gap. It means that we could take everyone that is below the poverty line and lift them above it. The IRS chief told Congress that we lose $1T a year on tax evasion, and the cost to end poverty is in the $100B range.

Another fascinating thing I learnt how the poverty rate, and eviction rate, dramatically fell during the pandemic. What? That made absolutely no sense to me, but the bold relief that was passed at the time made it happen. As expected, soon after, the relief was stopped, and poverty levels rose again.

“How we rely on welfare” was an another revealing chapter. I was under the false impression that the majority of people who are well-to-do do not receive direct monetary value from the goverment. I always assumed it was about amenities, like roads, parks, etc. In this chapter, Matthew talks about how mortgages are subsidised by the government, which dispropotionately benefits affluent Americans. He talks about health insurance provided by companies, again supported by the government. He even spoke about how student loans are propped up by the government. All of these forms of welfare, including tax breaks, didn’t really seem like “welfare” to me, till I thought about it more. The average family in the top 20% received 40% more than a family in the bottom 20%.

At several moments in the book, he implores us to rethink our outlook towards the poor, and to goverment assistance. The prevalent notion that the poor are lazy and extract money out of the system is just false, and he gives research article after research article proving it. In the chapter on trying to understand what poverty is, he describes it as physical pain, traumatic, destabilising, fear inducing, leading to a loss of liberty, the feeling that your goverment is against you, embarassing and shame inducing and diminished life and personhood.

A key point that he brought up was our silence. Not in the dramatic sense of letting injustice propagate, though he does definitely talk about it. But about the good stuff that the goverment has done to alleviate poverty. He gave several examples of anti-poverty measures implemented by the government, and how it was not celebrated in the least. This leads to these programs being killed off.

A lot of the book talks about how we have ostracized and disable the poor. From undercutting working movements, predatory zoning laws, and other serious affronts. “As people accumulate more money, they become less dependent on public goods and, in turn, less interested in supporting them.” “The rich and the poor soon unite in their animosity toward public goods—the rich because they are made to pay for things they don’t need and the poor because what they need has become shabby and broken.”

I don’t know if enjoyed is the right word for my reaction to this book. I felt morose at times, but at times, hopeful as well. Definitely a worthwile read.