Whew! I finished again. I came across parts I hadn’t really processed earlier and I came across parts which had angered me on my prior reading. At this point I think it’s a nice book. – a really sweet book for the dreamers and God knows someone has to do that. Parts were really good – other parts were worthy of being called “stupid.” (I upped tue rating a couple points here because I enjoyed parts of it.)
Poverty by America –
by Matthew Desmond
3/23/23 / 287 pages
Read by Dion Graham 5h 40m
Rating: 6 / politics – government
(Both read and listened)
I’m an environmentalist NOT so my neighbor can have more toys, more processed foods, more Sunday drives or whatever else television and social media have to sell him. That’s BS. We don’t need more houses or any kind of buildings made of trees and fossil fuel products which will burn up come wildfire time.
We have almost used up what once was an embarrassment of riches with the kind of thinking that Desmond is using. “In this rich country we can certainly feed and house our people…” sounds a lot like “If we can send a man to the moon we can …”. As though those were equivalents.
Nope – I don’t think we can get rid of poverty. I know some very well-to-do people (2) who are scared to death they’re going to starve to death with no one to love them. I knew very poor purple who went about their business and putting a dime in the basket (which ever basket came their way).
Earthly resources are limited while human demands are not. Besides that we’re going to burn up the world and all its resources USING those same resources while we go about trying to have it our way. (May God forgive us.)
Becky's Books - 
I sense your anger here.
Years ago, there was a bumper sticker that said ‘Live simply that others may live’. Well, I still have more, much more than millions of other people here on earth, but I have never succumbed to the kind of meaningless consumption that bedevils our society, is endangering the planet and takes up much more than our fair share of the world’s resources.
I do believe that poverty could be eliminated. I’m not a communist, not even a socialist, but though nobody ever admits it now, the USSR did eliminate poverty so it can be done. The Soviets may not have freedom of choice and Stalin was a monster, but nobody went hungry and nobody was homeless. Everybody got an education; there was free health care. It’s possible that if the west had had normal trading relations with the USSR, their economy might have thrived as well. We’ll never know, but we do know that when they were invaded by Germany in WW2, they had an educated workforce that could invent new military technology and produce it in vast quantities and maybe if they hadn’t had to spend so much on weapons during the Cold War, they might have not become so backward economically.
When I was young, because western governments were so afraid of communism’s influence, there was welfare spending that meant there was a lot less poverty in western countries than there is now. Just enough to discourage the masses from having any interest in copying the USSR and forging a revolution.
(There was no improvement in what was then called the ‘developing world’ because then as now wealthy nations did not only not share, they also exploited the resources of those poor countries. So, no welfare reforms for them.)
It was the end of the USSR that led to unrestrained capitalism and the extremes of wealth and poverty that we see now in western countries. Decision-makers don’t have to worry that there might be a communist revolution, because ‘communism failed’. They can do what they like, and the greedy get it all.
LikeLike
Oh my – (and thanks for the response!) Yes, Stalin did eliminate hunger and homelessness during his rule. The horrors of the Gulag blind me to those points. I’m afraid we can’t do that without taking away some liberties – like the liberty to spend money as we want and the liberty to live on the streets as opposed to a shelter.
But “poverty” is not a very well defined concept. Is it X amount of dollars or is it the lowest 1%? It seems like the value of $10 gets less and less with inflation and the lowest 1% of a population is always changing like if those people get $1,000 a week and then the poverty level goes to $1200 per week.
That said. hunger is hunger and homeless is pretty much homeless (unless you count the couches of friends, motel rooms and jails as homes.). So let’s get rid of homelessness and hunger and stop calling it poverty because p poverty levels rely on a comparison to other people while hunger and homelessness is more concrete (if not exactly so). .
I’m neither a conservative nor a free market person but I just think human nature being what it is there will always be corruption along with strange people who don’t want to follow the norms, mandated or not.
I don’t know how I would have fared in Stalinist Russia. I think I’d have done okay because I’m not outspoken and it would seem better. (Imo, he didn’t get rid of poverty either – only some symptoms of poverty but he did pretty well as ending that.)
Becky (Having to send this by email because I still canât get into my own site except to mess with the content.)
>
LikeLike
Oh, you’re kidding me? I just assumed it was all fixed by now. Did that person from WordPress get in touch with you?
LikeLike
No – no one from WordPress has answered anything. I found some other links though. I’m going to use the email to reply like I did here because I think I’m not the only one who has this problem.
Becky
>
LikeLike
Okaaay…
I think I’ve kept the WP reply to my email, and I will pester them again.
LikeLike
One more thing – I’m very, very much a pragmatist. If I had my dreamy ways I’d be voting for the most utopian world I could think up. As it is I can’t bring myself to go against what I consider (think? believe?) is human nature. Otherwise I’d be a stone cold utopianism. LOL!
Becky
LikeLike