Poverty, by America

“Poverty is about money, of course, but it is also a relentless piling on of problems.”

Desmond emphasizes that poverty is as much a social and psychological problem as an economic one. Lacking money to satisfy basic needs is a profound source of stress and severely narrows a person’s choices. In gesturing toward all the elements of poverty that are not just about money, Desmond introduces a key aspect of his analysis: the idea that poverty is a structural issue that affects the impoverished in all areas of life, not just economics.

“There is growing evidence that America harbors a hard bottom layer of deprivation, a kind of extreme poverty once thought to exist only in faraway places of bare feet and swollen bellies.”

There is a myth that the poor in America are poor in only relative terms and that they are nothing like poor people in less developed parts of the world. Desmond shows that this is simply not true, revealing that many Americans go without basic needs, such as running water. Americans living in “deep poverty” (See: Index of Terms) thus face conditions similar to those even in the most deprived areas of the world.

“The American poor, living as they do in the epicenter of global capitalism, have access to cheap, mass-produced goods like every American does. But what good is a toaster oven if you can’t afford the electricity to power it or a kitchen in which to use it? As Michael Harrington put it sixty years ago: ‘It is much easier in the United States to be decently dressed than it is to be decently housed, fed, or doctored.”

Many poor people in the United States own a cell phone, wear some brand-name clothing, or possess other goods that would count as astonishing luxuries for the vast majority of the world’s population. Even so, this does not substantiate the frequent charge that such people are not in fact poor. As Desmond points out here, owning goods means very little if one does not have the structures in place to make full use of them, as shown in the example of someone owning a toaster but not having the electricity to actually use it. In drawing attention to how the costs of housing, food, and healthcare are unaffordable for many Americans, Desmond stresses how American society makes the most important necessities of life the costliest.

“Many of our welfare policies, too, have an antifamily design. Supplementary Security Income checks are docked if recipients live with relatives. A mother can lose her rental assistance or public housing unit if she allows the father of her child to live with her in violation of her lease. Households receive a higher total allotment of food stamps if romantic partners apply separately for the benefit rather than as a married couple.”

Opponents of aid to the poor often champion family values as an antidote to poverty, yet as Desmond highlights here, the “antifamily design” of many welfare programs actually makes it even harder for the poor to nourish family ties and maintain committed relationships. In penalizing impoverished citizens who seek family support or to build family units of their own, welfare programs further limit the poor’s choices and deprive them of sources of emotional comfort and private dignity.

“As workers lost power, their jobs got worse. Unions had kept caps on profits by raising workers’ wages and compensation. But as labor power faded, those caps were lifted with predictable consequences. Since 1979, the bottom 90 percent of income earners—not the bottom 10, 20, or even 50 percent, but the bottom 90 percent—saw annual earnings gains of only 24 percent, while the wages of the top 1 percent of earners more than doubled.”

Desmond points to the shrinking power of labor as one of the main causes between the growing gap between the wealthiest citizens and the average American. As unions declined, wages either stayed flat or declined in real terms across many industries, while the wealthiest doubled their wages. This issue is an important aspect of the theme The Myths of Scarcity in American Society, as the privileged often oppose measures to raise wages or empower workers by claiming it will lower productivity and competitiveness. As Desmond highlights here, there is actually plenty of wealth to go around, but the wealthiest are hoarding it in ever greater quantities for themselves.

“Even as more and more of us are shopping according to our values, economic justice does not seem to be among our top priorities. We know if our vegetables are local and organic, but we don’t ask what the farmworkers made picking them.”

Desmond argues that corporations can often obscure exploitative labor practices by instead highlighting their supposedly progressive social and cultural values. Here, he raises the issue of “economic justice,” questioning why more consumers fail to make that one of their “top priorities” in selecting products. This passage reflects one of the key tenets of The Importance of Poverty Abolitionism: Eliminating poverty is everyone’s responsibility and includes making anti-poverty choices even on the level of one’s purchasing power.

“Why don’t poor families move to better neighborhoods if rents are not that much higher? This question assumes that poor families move like affluent families do; to secure better homes, neighborhoods, schools. But it’s more often the case that poor families experience moves not as opportunities but emergencies, even traumas. They move under trying circumstances because they have to—their landlord evicted them, the city condemned their place, their block grew too dangerous—and scramble to stay out of the worst neighborhoods, often accepting the first place that approves their application.”

As Desmond makes clear, poverty represents a severe abridgment of freedom. A sense of acute vulnerability lurks behind every choice, and one of the most salient examples is housing. The rental market is already stacked against the poor, forcing them to pay more for shabbier housing and then restricting their choices still further when they struggle to pay. Taking the first available choice might be necessary to keep themselves and their families off of the street, but it increases the likelihood of moving from one predatory situation into another.

“Poverty isn’t simply the condition of not having enough money. It’s the condition of not having enough choice and being taken advantage of because of that. When we ignore the role that exploitation plays in trapping people in poverty, we end up designing policy that is weak at best and ineffective at worst.”

The public conversation around poverty often focuses on a lack of money, and while that is certainly an important consideration, it fails to take into account what is being actively withheld from the poor as a result of structures that discriminate against them. Desmond stresses that the poor are often denied meaningful choice and are exploited endlessly by the more privileged. Desmond frequently emphasizes the structural causes of poverty and its perpetuation to highlight The Importance of Poverty Abolitionism, advocating for a rejection of the current “weak” and “ineffective” anti-poverty policies in favor of reforming the system itself.

“Once you got the poor into factories, you needed laws to protect your property and law men to arrest trespassers and court systems to prosecute them and prisons to hold them. If you were going to fashion an economic system that required the movement of labor, capital, and products around the globe, you needed a system of tariffs and policies to govern the flow of trade, not to mention a standing army to uphold national sovereignty. Big money required big government. But big government could also hand out bread. Realizing this, early capitalists decried the corrosive effects of government aid long before it was extended to the so-called able-bodied poor.”

The most vocal proponents of capitalism often claim to be against “big government,” denouncing it as an inefficient and costly interference with the natural workings of the free market. Nevertheless, as Desmond points out here, there is plenty of government interference already involved in the form of trade agreements, tax policies, and a police force ready to crack down on any form of public protest that interrupts business as usual. Government is thus only the enemy insofar as it seeks to redress the imbalance of power between workers and the owners of capital.

“Our country is not divided into ‘makers,’ who can support themselves through work, and ‘takers,’ content to eke out a small life on government handouts. Virtually all Americans benefit from some form of public aid. Republicans and Democrats rely on government programs at equivalent rates, as do white, Hispanic, and Black families. We’re all on the dole.”

Here, Desmond is referring to an infamous line from Mitt Romney during his 2012 campaign for president, where in a behind-closed-doors meeting with Republican donors, a camera secretly recorded him dismissing nearly half of all Americans as “takers” who are a drain on public resources without contributing anything in return. Desmond counters that the “makers/takers” rhetoric is a false dichotomy, as nearly all Americans rely on the government in some form or another. This passage reflects The Myths of Scarcity in American Society that lead to misleading ideas about poverty and government expenditure.

“As the civil rights activist Ella Baker once put it, ‘those who are well-heeled don’t want to get un-well heeled,’ no matter how they came by their coin.”

After examining different explanations for why middle- and upper-class people tolerate a system that exploits the poor, Desmond suggests there is a fear that any benefit to the less advantaged will correspond with costs to the more advantaged. Desmond does not reject this claim: He insists in plain language that the non-poor will have to make sacrifices, financial and otherwise, to help lift others out of poverty. Even so, he stresses that plenty of wealth and privilege will remain, belying The Myths of Scarcity in American Society.

“What happens to a country when fortunes diverge so sharply, when millions of poor people live alongside millions of rich ones? In a country with such vast inequality, the poor increasingly come to depend on public services and the rich increasingly seek to divest from them. This leads to ‘private opulence and public squalor,’ a self-reinforcing dynamic that transforms our communities in ways that pull us further apart.”

Desmond presents the stark contrast between Private Opulence and Public Squalor as one of the most salient results of structural poverty and inequality. Instead of the privileged and the poor occupying different rungs on the same ladder, they are splitting into entirely different societies with parallel institutions operating by entirely different rules. Desmond here highlights how the rich are both less reliant on public services and, thus, less willing to fund those services for citizens who continue to need them. This in turn leads to an exacerbation of structural difficulties for those living in poverty.

“Equal opportunity is possible only if everyone can access childcare centers, good schools, and safe neighborhoods—all of which serve as engines of social mobility. But private opulence and public squalor leads to ‘the commodification of opportunity,’ where those engines of social mobility now cost something.”

Desmond once more emphasizes the structural nature of poverty by explaining that the poor have far worse chances of social mobility as long as they are denied access to good schools and safe neighborhoods. The existence of Private Opulence and Public Squalor thus not only makes life harder for those currently in poverty but also makes it more difficult to rise out of poverty in the long term.

“Most Americans want the country to build more public housing for low-income families, but they do not want that public housing (or any sort of multifamily housing) in their neighborhood. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to champion public housing in the abstract, but among homeowners, they are no more likely to welcome new housing developments in their own backyards.”

Desmond holds that even professed liberals are often reluctant to help others if it requires sacrificing some of their own comforts. This reinforces Desmond’s point that the system as a whole is rigged against the poor while also stressing how ending poverty requires the more privileged to willingly end class segregation in their own neighborhoods.

“We need not be debt collectors or private prison wardens to play a role in producing poverty in America. We need only vote yes on policies that lead to private opulence and public squalor and, with that opulence, build a life behind a wall that we tend and maintain.”

Desmond insists that society as a whole is complicit in perpetuating Private Opulence and Public Squalor, but that does not mean that ordinary people are evil or actively exploitative. The vast majority of people are simply living their lives and acting in accordance with their self-interest. The problem is that the same institutions from which people benefit also exact high costs on others. It is therefore incumbent upon people to stop supporting those institutions that harm others, even though doing so will limit their own benefits.

“For me, the fundamental lesson that emerges from this debate is that if we want to abolish poverty, we need to embrace policies that foster goodwill and be suspicious of those that kindle resentment. Will the policy unite people struggling with economic security, those below the poverty line and those above it? Will it drive down poverty and promote economic opportunity? A policy that checks both of these boxes deserves serious consideration.”

Desmond focuses on The Importance of Poverty Abolitionism, stressing that radical reforms are needed if poverty is to be eradicated instead of merely alleviated. In speaking against policies “that kindle resentment” and in favor of those that “foster goodwill,” he emphasizes the importance of social solidarity in effecting meaningful structural change.

“We don’t just need deeper antipoverty investments. We need different ones, policies that refuse to partner with poverty, policies that threaten its very survival. We need to ensure that aid directed at poor people stays in their pockets, instead of being captured by companies whose low wages are subsidized by government benefits, or by landlords who raise the rents as their tenants’ wages rise, or by banks and payday loan outlets that issue exorbitant fines and fees.”

As Desmond points out early on, funding for antipoverty efforts has steadily risen over the past half-century, under Republican as well as Democratic administrations, with mediocre results. More money does nothing to redress practices that extract wealth from the poor—it simply adds more money to be extracted, benefiting those who exploit the poor more than the poor themselves. Desmond thus speaks of The Importance of Poverty Abolitionism, calling for widespread structural reform instead of superficial measures that only serve to perpetuate poverty instead of “threaten[ing] its very survival.”

“A renewed contract with America should make organizing easy. As things currently stand, unionizing a workplace is incredibly difficult. The laws regulating how to form a union are esoteric and baffling, and the federal government does a poor job of protecting workers who make the effort, leaving them exposed to firings and abuse. Small wonder that most union drives fail.”

The “contract with America” was a term for the legislative agenda of the Republican majority elected to Congress in 1994, which included lowering taxes, harsh punishments for crime, and cutting welfare programs. Desmond borrows the term to describe a fundamentally revised relationship between government and workers, where the priority is fair wages and humane labor practices rather than maximal productivity and corporate profit.

“The goal is singular—to end the exploitation of the poor—but the means are many. We should empower American workers and expand housing access. We should also ensure fair access to capital. Banks should stop robbing the poor and near-poor of billions of dollars each year, immediately ending exorbitant overdraft fees.”

Desmond’s proposal to abolish poverty is radical, but it begins with many steps that by themselves are relatively simple and common sense: better jobs, better housing access, and fairer banking practices. In keeping his focus firmly on these structural social and economic issues, Desmond continues to expose The Myths of Scarcity in American Society by reiterating that there is enough wealth and resources to ensure that every American lives a life of dignity.

“Those who have amassed the most power and capital bear the most responsibility for America’s vast poverty: political elites who have utterly failed low-income Americans over the past half century; corporate bosses who have spent and schemed to prioritize profits over people; lobbyists blocking the will of the American people with their self-serving interests; property owners who have exiled the poor from entire cities and fueled the affordable housing crisis.”

This one sentence encapsulates Desmond’s thesis most clearly. Responsibility for poverty lies with the wealthy and powerful, and not just the wealthy. Desmond emphasizes that every American can play a role in helping to end poverty and that ending Private Opulence and Public Squalor means recognizing the ways in which the few benefit from the continuing impoverishment of the many.

“America has backslid since Brown, so much so that our children’s schools today are less economically diverse than their grandparents’ schools were, and although we have taken baby steps toward racial integration, most of our communities remain sharply segregated by race as well. As our cities become more unaffordable, the sheer distance separating the haves and the have-nots will only grow wider.”

The suburbs are the great bastion of both racial and class segregation. It will be impossible to solve poverty until the gates of suburbs are unlocked to people from all socioeconomic backgrounds so that they may both partake of its benefits and contribute to them. Poverty is the great squandering of talent, and so giving people access to ordinary opportunities can enable them to tap extraordinary potential.

“Choosing abundance, at once a perspective and a legislative platform, a shift in vision and in policy design, means recognizing that this country has a profusion of resources—enough land and capital to go around—and that pretending otherwise is a farce.”

The Myths of Scarcity in American Society have dominated and distorted the discourse around poverty for decades. Desmond acknowledges that abolishing poverty is neither cheap nor easy, but other countries with far fewer resources have come much closer to doing so than the United States has. Admitting the possibility of ending poverty is the first crucial step toward actually accomplishing it, but it is only possible if Americans decide to “choos[e] abundance” and reject the “farce” of scarcity.

“Poverty will be abolished in America only when a mass movement demands it so. And today, such a movement stirs. American labor is once again on the move, growing more boisterous and feistier by the day, organizing workplaces once thought untouchable. A renewed movement for housing justice is gaining steam. In a resurgence of tenant power, renters have formed eviction blockades and chained themselves to the entrances of housing court, meeting the violence of displacement with a force of their own.”

As Desmond argues, poverty is not principally a problem of money, but one of exclusion. The key to eliminating poverty is not for everyone to become equally wealthy, but for society to embrace a group of people so long left out in the cold. Desmond believes that solidarity among races, classes, and ideologies will restore a genuine sense of community and end the crisis of Private Opulence and Public Squalor.