Poverty, by America

by Matthew Desmond

Rebalance the safety net and insist on tax fairness in order to make significant investments

but it should not be in the business of heavily subsidizing it.

the federal government responded with $46.5 billion in rental assistance.

Imagine if we had met the results of the ERA program with loud cheers.

we should salute their effectiveness,

from the top 1 percent of households would bring in some $175 billion a year.

In 2020, 1.1 million workers earned at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, a wage mandate that hasn’t budged in over a decade.

that empower the central government or an official (like the secretary of labor)

why are they permitted to pay those

A renewed contract with American workers should make organizing easy. As things currently stand, unionizing a workplace is incredibly difficult.

corporate boards have significant worker representation

What they wanted was to buy their apartment

fees to cover the building’s upkeep.

Monthly rents in the cooperative fell by $100, even as rents nationwide were surging.

immediately ending exorbitant overdraft fees.

when someone overdraws their account, banks could simply freeze the transaction

the program for bringing about a 24 percent decline in unintended pregnancies among low-income and uninsured women

abortion at the Women’s Center costs $445. Because Medicaid can’t be used to cover the procedure

but the millions of decisions we make each day when going about our business.

These arrangements create what the postwar sociologist C. Wright Mills called “structural immorality”

Jamila Michener more recently labeled exploitation “on a societal level.”[27]

personalizing poverty by examining all the ways we are connected to the problem—and to the solution.

UPS drivers are unionized, but FedEx

drivers are not.

anti-sweatshop

Many Americans have made it a priority to steer clear of “sin stocks” belonging to companies that manufacture weapons or promote gambling or drill for oil.

We can audit our alma maters or current universities, for example.

gentrifying low-income neighborhoods?

but we tend to act on them only when we receive a social push.

allowing social scientists to compare Black children who went to integrated schools

to experience poverty as adults.

Students from poor families who attended low-poverty schools significantly outperformed those who attended high-poverty schools with “state-of-the-art educational interventions.”

America has backslid since Brown,

replace exclusionary zoning policies with inclusionary ordinances,

But studies have found that when affordable housing blends into the surrounding community, and when it is well managed and well distributed

zero effect on property values.[10]

its property values have remained among the highest in the nation, and it ranks first in public education.)

What if homeowners enjoyed a bit more money in their pockets if they voted yes on affordable housing? What

George Romney’s. The Republican politician and father of Utah senator Mitt Romney proposed it in 1970 when

The people who follow the intrigues of zoning politics tend to be richer, older, and whiter than the surrounding community,

Dobson is the deputy director of the Fair Share Housing Center, a public interest law firm devoted to expanding affordable housing in New Jersey,

we sense that our status (or that of our racial group) is slipping,

if our largest corporations weren’t pocketing billions each year through tax avoidance.

The American labor movement was the dominant force behind the New Deal.

Center for Community Change,

the Carnegie Medal, and the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction.

40 percent more in government subsidies than the poorest American families.”

public housing (or any sort of multifamily housing) in their neighborhood.”

“most of it owing to tax avoidance by multinational corporations and wealthy families.”

has appropriated $80 billion to go after tax cheats and evaders.