This book, Poverty by America, is disappointing comparing it to Desmond’s prior, Evicted.  But the point of Poverty in America is very different.  Where Evicted was about showing the reader how the very poor lived on a daily basis.  The point of Poverty is how the US can end poverty in America. That means it has a wide scope with many entangled issues.  Housing, medical care, hunger, education, crime, and more have to be dealt with not to mention racism and sexism. 

Poverty by America – 
by Matthew Desmond 
3/23/23 / 287 pages 
Read by Dion Graham 5h 40m
Rating: 4 / politics – government 
(Both read and listened) 

What’s missing in Poverty are the personal stories. Evicted examined the circumstances of individuals in an up-close and personal way. The reader got into downtown Milwaukee getting to know the people who were living with the problems of being really poor, being evicted, and therefore being homeless.  Poverty by America simply describes it all and Desmond gets enraged about the enormous problem of poverty in America with very few stories of individuals trying to cope with it.  

Notice the title? “Poverty, By America” – this seems to mean that America has created it, like “Evicted” is by Matthew Desmond.

But after a decade of outrage (and probably 5 or 6 decades of involvement) I’m too old and tired to read something like this. I’m rather numb to reports of the wealth and income gap. I nominated the book for the All-Nonfiction  reading group because of the great response to Evicted.  Maybe this one is directed at Generation Z.  
https://groups.io/g/AllNonfiction

Younger people will likely not be as put off by the polemics as I am.  Desmond is an idealist – I’m not – I’m very literal as well as being a pragmatist and I wonder if these utopian ideals are possible in a world of human beings, warts and all, dealing with limited resources and unlimited demands?  Every day is a new crisis in a “media-oriented, capitalist, democracy.” (I put that in quotes because although it’s mine because none of the words can be terribly well defined.

I knew from prior reading, and Desmond reiterates, that it’s much more fearful to lose something you have than to lose out on a potential gain.  No wonder the elite fight so hard and more recently the middle classes.

I did fine Chapter 1, “Why Haven’t We Made More Progress?”  pretty interesting. The rest of the book simply explored the topics introduced there.  

The main problem, in my opinion, is based on greed and fear of loss.  I think I understood that much at the age of 10 when I started reading the newspaper. (Fyi, that was when Eisenhower was president – lol.) But greed and poverty go back to the Old Testament – it’s not a new problem which came along with capitalism, and it’s not going away if we all go socialist. Dion Graham, the reader, doesn’t help tone down the urgency in the narrative. I got tired out just listening (mostly listening – sometimes rereading a paragraph or two in my Kindle.) 

And it’s human nature to fear the loss of what you have more than to fear not getting what you’re going after. The elite (and middle class) will fight to keep from paying what it will cost to implement what Desmond advocates.  Yes, it’s here in the US,  we’re rich enough to spread the wealth – but we won’t.  There will be some way to make the middle class pay for it and their fear of loss will overwhelm the push from the bottom. It’s happening now.

Because “eliminating poverty” is such a terribly broad topic, there’s virtually no subtlety or nuance in Desmond’s diatribe. I think it’s written for knee-jerk liberals – the ones who simply want to be told what to support so they don’t have to think about it. (The conservatives are no different.)  I’m a liberal at heart, but I try to give some actual thought to the proposed solutions. Our congressmen do NOT think. They hear what the people in their districts want and try to align themselves without actually lying. They try to “represent” the voters.  

The premise of Poverty by America is that ending poverty in America is possible.  
After showing us how poverty is systemic and built into the American way of life, he most positive suggestions Desmond has to offer are 

1. Advertise to the needy so they’ll apply for aid   
2.  Go after tax cheats. 
3  Empower the poor and the working class by collecting taxes owed from the rich,  reviewing minimum wage amounts, empowering labor unions.and use collective bargaining.  Also getting employers to compete with each other re wages and benefits, and finally, make dangerously low wages illegal.  

4. Implement housing assistance in various ways.

5.  Use intervention to help the poor prevent unwanted births.  

I’m sure there were more suggestions, but they’re scattered through the last 1/4 of the book.  

Question – are minimum wage and living wage amounts the same for working folks and welfare recipients?  If living wage for one is considered to be $50,000 a year, is that what folks on welfare should get?  How about that for minimum Social Security?   I have lots of questions.  

 And finally, Desmond praised the US response to Covid – I wonder what his response to the Covid scams is.  

https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2023/06/17/smr-280b-covid-relief-fraud.cnn

Fwiw, Desmond was awarded a Harvey Fellowship in 2006 and a MacArthur Fellowship in 2015.[2][14] He won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, the 2017 PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, and the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for his work about poverty, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.[15][16] His 2017 Pulitzer Prize citation read, “For a deeply researched exposé that showed how mass evictions after the 2008 economic crash were less a consequence than a cause of poverty.”[17].   And I so very much appreciated Evicted.  
https://mybecky.blog/2018/03/06/evicted-by-matthew-desmond-x2/