Poverty By America by Matthew Desmond

 

Matthew Desmond believes that we as a society have made the decision to keep a subset of the population poor.  He believes that we do this in three ways.  The first is exploiting them.  We limit their choices to bad schools, to only living in certain neighborhoods.  They pay more for financial services and are victims to financial businesses like payday loans.  Low wages give us cheap consumer goods and we are not ready to give those up.

Second is the various mechanisms that support housing segregation.  Zoning laws prohibit the construction of affordable housing except in certain locations.  Banks are not interested in making loans to build such housing or in providing funds for smaller mortgages.  This has the effect of making the poor spend more of their time in stressful situations, fighting crime and things like lead poisoning found in substandard housing.  It also has the effect of setting the children of poor parents up for their own poverty as they attend schools that don't have the resources or habits of good education.

Third society chooses to give more resources to those with money than to those without.  Policies such as mortgage deductions, lower taxing of capital gains and other policies push more resources to those with money, allowing them to keep more of their money.  The tax rates are lower than they have been in some time.  

Matthew Desmond is a social scientist who focuses his work on poverty and how to alleviate it.  He heads up a department at Princeton that develops theories and strategies to combat poverty.  He has written over fifty published articles and his 2016 book Evited was named a best book by many outlets.  This book is an eye-opener for readers and gives them another way to examine their own beliefs and choices in regards to poverty.  This book is recommended to nonfiction readers.