Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond

It’s no wonder Americans have failed to eliminate poverty, sociologist Matthew Desmond (recipient of a MacArthur Foundation award) maintains in his new book. He believes the better-off are fighting a class war, keeping the poor down by design. Desmond shows that poverty blights rural white areas but that its hardest core is African American and urban. Having written the entry on racial capitalism for the New York Times 1619 project, Desmond is sensitive to the way poverty intersects other forms of subordination. The brilliance of this book lies in his account of how government and social policy act in ways commensurate with his class-war thesis. Living paycheck to paycheck means a precarious existence for people near the margin of daily survival. One cause is a labor market that forces workers to help companies achieve profits while underpaying them, simply because they can. He shows that the American economy has increasingly allowed business to enjoy power to coerce people into earning less for doing more--it is the second Belle Epoque, which is only aptly named for the richest of the rich. He shows how we need to turn that around so that everyone pays their fair share.