"POVERTY, BY AMERICA"

-by MATTHEW DESMOND

2023

A brilliantly incisive summation of the whys and hows of american poverty, with a laughably simple plan for ending it, that avoids the revolutionary chaos that most disaffected, desperate people imagine the only way. Desmond puts a number on the amount needed, and it turns out to be less than 1% of the USA GDP...an amount that could mostly be scratched up through the wealthy actually paying their taxes. He deconstructs how the american economy is built to reward the rich and punish the poor. Desmond has made poverty his lifelong study, living or standing shoulder to shoulder with those whose lives are most searingly devastated. He avoids emotional pleading, and speaks with the voice of a finger-wagging economist (though he's a sociologist by training).