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BOOKS I READ: Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond (2023). The inspiration for the title came to Desmond at an airport luxury shop, where he saw a tag: “Handbag, by Chanel.” Poverty, by America, became his jocular statement about how poverty is manufactured in the United States, supported by policy and the politics of fear—rooted in racism—and scarcity in a country that has more than enough resources to eliminate the problem. Desmond uses the phrase “private opulence and public squalor,” relating how it creates political turmoil, a condition first identified by the Roman historian Sallust during the time of Caesar in 63 B.C. It’s nothing new for societies.
Desmond uses a quote from Leo Tolstoy that captures the spirit of the book. Tolstoy observed, after moving to Moscow and encountering much hopelessness, that the problem was he and other affluents, “I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means—except by getting off his back.” In one example, he singles out banks who charge their poorer customers high monthly fees, expensive overdraft charges, while providing lines of credit to check cashing stores offering paycheck loans worthy of loan sharks, concluding that it’s expensive to be poor.
Toward the end of the book, Desmond offers meaningful steps, political and otherwise, to get off “his back.” He embraces the role unions can play to stem growing inequality. He calls for people to become “poverty abolitionists,” for alleviating poverty, he claims, would greatly improve communities and society in general.
See my Bookshop.org stand, supporting local bookstores, and my reading log. The previous book in the log is below:
