#Matthew Desmond

[gatheringbones]

[“Poverty is embarrassing, shame inducing. Misery (misère), the French sociologist Eugène Buret once remarked, “is poverty felt morally.”

You feel it in the degradation rituals of the welfare office, where you are made to wait half a day for a ten-minute appointment with a caseworker who seems annoyed you showed up. You feel it when you go home to an apartment with cracked windows and cupboards full of cockroaches, an infestation the landlord blames on you. You feel it in how effortlessly poor people are omitted from movies and television shows and popular music and children’s books, erasures reminding you of your own irrelevance to wider society. You may begin to believe, in the quieter moments, the lies told about you. You avoid public places—parks, beaches, shopping districts, sporting arenas—knowing they weren’t built for you.

Poverty might consume your life, but it’s rarely embraced as an identity. It’s more socially acceptable today to disclose a mental illness than to tell someone you’re broke. When politicians propose antipoverty legislation, they say it will help “the middle class.” When social movement organizers mobilize for higher wages or housing justice, they announce that they are fighting on behalf of “working people” or “families” or “tenants” or “the many.” When the poor take to the streets, it’s usually not under the banner of poverty. There is no flag for poor rights, after all.

Poverty is diminished life and personhood. It changes how you think and prevents you from realizing your full potential. It shrinks the mental energy you can dedicate to decisions, forcing you to focus on the latest stressor—an overdue gas bill, a lost job—at the expense of everything else. When someone is shot dead, the children who live on that block perform much worse on cognitive tests in the days following the murder. The violence captures their minds. Time passes, and the effect fades until someone else is dropped.

Poverty can cause anyone to make decisions that look ill-advised and even downright stupid to those of us unbothered by scarcity. Have you ever sat in a hospital waiting room, watching the clock and praying for good news? You are there, locked on the present emergency, next to which all other concerns and responsibilities feel (and are) trivial. That experience is something like living in poverty. Behavioral scientists Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir call this “the bandwidth tax.” “Being poor,” they write, “reduces a person’s cognitive capacity more than going a full night without sleep.” When we are preoccupied by poverty, “we have less mind to give to the rest of life.” Poverty does not just deprive people of security and comfort; it siphons off their brainpower, too.”]

matthew desmond, from poverty: by america, 2023

[thatwritererinoriordan]

"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." - Count Leo Tolstoy, rich guy who knew he was the problem, quoted in Poverty by America by Matthew Desmond

[aquotecollection]

This is who we are: the richest country on earth, with more poverty than any other advanced democracy. If America’s poor founded a country, that country would have a bigger population than Australia or Venezuela. Almost one in nine Americans—including one in eight children—live in poverty. There are more than 38 million people living in the United States who cannot afford basic necessities, and more than 108 million getting by on $55,000 a year or less, many stuck in that space between poverty and security.

Poverty, By America, Matthew Desmond

[idroolinmysleep]

A review of Matthew Desmond’s book Poverty, by America.

“If you count all public benefits offered by the federal government, America’s welfare state (as a share of its gross domestic product) is the second biggest in the world, after France’s,” Desmond tells us. Why doesn’t this largesse accomplish more?

For one thing, it unduly assists the affluent. That statistic about the U.S. spending almost as much as France on social welfare, he explains, is accurate only “if you include things like government-subsidized retirement benefits provided by employers, student loans and 529 college savings plans, child tax credits, and homeowner subsidies: benefits disproportionately flowing to Americans well above the poverty line.” To enjoy most of these, you need to have a well-paying job, a home that you own, and probably an accountant (and, if you’re really in clover, a money manager).

“The American government gives the most help to those who need it least,” Desmond argues. “This is the true nature of our welfare state, and it has far-reaching implications, not only for our bank accounts and poverty levels, but also for our psychology and civic spirit.” Americans who benefit from social spending in the form of, say, a mortgage-interest tax deduction don’t see themselves as recipients of governmental generosity.

[outstanding-quotes]

Poverty is pain, physical pain. It is in the backaches of home health aides and certified nursing assistants, who bend their bodies to hoist the old and sick out of beds and off toilets; it is in the feet and knees of cashiers made to stand while taking our orders and ringing up our items; it is in the skin rashes and migraines of maids who clean our office buildings, homes, and hotel rooms with products containing ammonia and triclosan.

Matthew Desmond, Poverty, By America

[iirulancorrino]

Matthew Desmond, Poverty, by America

[churchblogmatics-blog]

Books for political formation

Books that have left an indelible mark on my understanding of politics some way. My political development is unfinished, so this list is unfinished - I'm always open to suggestions

Capital Vol. 1, Karl Marx - unmasks the inherently exploitative social relations embedded within capitalism, critiques capitalism as ineffective/self-destructive (not just immoral)

Capital and Ideology, Thomas Piketty - there is no such thing as a "natural" social order, examines how inequality regimes have emerged and been justified across the world throughout the past 1000 years of history

Nixon Agonistes, Garry Wills - captures a cross-section of American politics over a short period, probing insights into the psychology driving political affinities, documents the evolution of the word "liberal" in American political discourse

What Are We Doing Here?, Marilynne Robinson - provides a constructive, anti-Hobbesian view of society

Poverty, by America, Matthew Desmond - shows the extent to which poverty in America is a policy choice, harm reduction is possible without revolution

The Code of Capital, Katharina Pistor - a cursory overview of the legal strategies to insulate capital from any competing legal claims

Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt - laziness and insistence on self-exoneration is often the psychological engine behind human wickedness and injustice over and above malice

Illness as Metaphor / AIDS and Its Metaphors, Susan Sontag - shows how deeply ingrained prejudicial views of disability is within our collective language and psyche

Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West, Cormac McCarthy - violence has never been excised from politics, the invisibility of violence to the bourgeois is an illusion

Lysistrata, Aristophanes - unmasks the nature of gender politics despite its operation behind closed doors, imagines a project of mass organizing along gender lines

Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud - civility is unfortunately a tenuous prospect

Heroes of the Fourth Turning, Will Arbery - excoriates conservative psychological pathologies

Martin Luther King Jr

A Gift of Love - justice is love in public

Letter From a Birmingham Jail - there are contexts where civil disobedience is mandatory for the Christian, solidarity with the marginalized is always mandatory

The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot - progress is not inevitable

William Faulkner

Absalom, Absalom! - racism is an inexorable part of American capitalism, imperialism cannot be stopped until we are able to free ourselves of our disingenuous national myths

The Sound and the Fury - nostalgia makes you an idiot, unable to understand your present or to predict your future

Herman Melville

Billy Budd, Sailor - history is unavoidably malleable

Moby-Dick - a true-believer demagogue is worse than a cynically disingenuous one, democracy can be an ineffective antidote to a tyrant

Franz Kafka

The Trial - the very procedures instilled to protect (or at least mitigate) injustice can also exacerbate it

The Metamorphosis - modernity interferes with our ability to see and relate to others as human, liberalism's self-advocating and individualistic ethic destroys us from the inside out because it forecloses our ability to recognize this

John Milton

Areopagitica - freedom of speech is as much about the individual's freedom to render judgment on speech as it is about the speakers ability to speak, the problem with censorship is the top-down nature of it, not in the governed people's discernment of quality or value

Paradise Lost - similar to Birmingham Jail, the character of Abdiel represents righteous opposition to Earthly principalities

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - the psychological, spiritual, emotional toll that being black in America takes on a person, black empowerment is a necessary step towards black liberation

Ursula LeGuin

The Lathe of Heaven - structural reform can only be undertaken democratically, no change is without trade-offs so changes must be broadly accepted and supported by the populace who will inevitably bear the unforeseen burden that results

The Ones Who Walk Away From the Omelas - shows the extent to which our brains are broken by imperialistic thinking, exploitation is a necessary feature of the worlds we are capable of imagining

[wellconstructedsentences]

When my family moved to East Arlington, a suburb of Boston, after taking new jobs, we landed in a neighborhood with far fewer issues and far less joy. When the snow fell there, the neighbors cleared only their own walks, stopping abruptly at the property line.

Poverty by America by Matthew Desmond

[hoorayiread]

Evicted, A Book Review

Has a book ever made you so uncomfortable that you wound up reading faster? Because I read this book in about a week (last year I read 14 books. I'm not one of those Booktok people that reads 5 thousand-page novels a month).

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond is a non-fiction book published in 2016 about the affordable housing crisis. More specifically, it examines the lives of several poor families living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and tells their stories. This book examines how and why people become trapped in cycles of poverty and what constant eviction does to people physically, financially, and psychologically. It also suggests ways our wellfare system could be overhauled to alleviate this.

Time, care, and empathy was put into this research. Desmond made an effort to look at both white and Black families during his project, analyzing the racial discrimination and segregation that is still very much a part of everyday American life. The families in these stories had problems such as drug addictions, criminal records, and a history of poor choices (you know, the kinds of things Fox News likes to rant about), but still portrays them in a sympathetic light. There is one person in this book, Crystal, who was prone to erupting into fits of violence when under exreme stress due to a history of severe childhood trauma. She hurt people, but I still came away from this book firmly believing that she deserved a roof over her head.

One of the chapters that really sticks out in my mind is titled "Lobster on Food Stamps." It tells the story of a poor woman in a trailer park who spent her entire monthly allotment of food stamps on a single, indulgent seafood dinner for one. Stories like this are a very common talking point for political pundits that like to demonize poor people. But Evicted uses this woman's story to explain why this happens: when you are extremely poor, it is next to impossible to dig yourself out no matter how much you save and what choices you make. There is no way out. Genuinely. Indulging will make the pain go away, at least for today. It is, ultimately, a very human choice.

Evicted is a difficult read, emotionally. Every time I sat down to read this thing it was always "Oh, great, Arleen's getting kicked out of another place for some bullshit reason." This isn't a fun book, but it's important. I've also heard good things about Desmond's followup Poverty, by America.

Now, nonfiction can't be spoiled, so let me end this review with the last line of the book:

"No moral code or ethical principal, no piece of scripture or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become."

[morgan--reads]

Poverty, By America - Matthew Desmond

Summary: Sociologist Matthew Desmond examines how the poor are kept poor in the United States. 

Quote: “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.” 

My rating: 4.5/5.0   Goodreads: 4.32/5.0 

Review: A short but targeted attack on policies and social behaviors that keep poverty such an issue in the United States. Desmond makes his points with searing language backed by clear data and personal anecdotes of those affected by poverty. He doesn’t coddle, but nor does he despair. Alongside the clearly identified problems, he offers actionable solutions. 

To-read: Desmond’s book Evicted is also excellent.

[gatheringbones]

[“The poverty debate could do more to recognize the powerful effects of rejection on a person’s self-confidence and stamina. Applying for an apartment or job and being turned down ten, twenty, forty times—it can wear you out. Theories about neighborhood selection or joblessness often assume low-income people are more or less “rational actors” who recognize trade-offs and make clear choices. The reality is that many are “exhausted settlers” who accept poor housing in a disadvantaged neighborhood or a dead-end or illicit job after becoming depleted and disheartened from trying and trying and failing and failing. The shame of rejection not only can pressure people to accept undesirable circumstances today; it can also discourage them from striving for something better tomorrow.”]

matthew desmond, from evicted: poverty and profit in the american city, 2016

[theeboyracer]

Some of my favourite quotes from Matthew Desmond’s newest book:

“‘It is much easier in the United States to be decently dressed than it is to be decently housed, fed, or doctored.’”

“As the sociologist Gerald Davis has put it: Our grandparents had careers. Our parents had jobs. We complete tasks.”

“Many features of our society are not broken, just bifurcated. For some, a home creates wealth; for others, a home drains it. For some, access to credit extends financial power; for others, it destroys it.”

“The question that should serve as a looping incantation, the one we should ask every time we drive past a tent encampment, those tarped American slums smelling of asphalt and bodies, every time we see someone asleep on the bus, slumped over in work clothes, is simply: Who benefits? Not Why don’t you find a better job? Or Why don’t you move? Or Why don’t you stop taking out such bad loans? But Who is feeding this?”

“Things collectively shared, especially if they are shared across class and racial divides, come to be seen as lesser. In America, a clear marker of poverty is one’s reliance on public services, and a clear marker of affluence is one’s degree of distance from them…There was a time when Americans wished to be free of bosses. Now we wish to be free of bus drivers. We wish for the freedom to withdraw from the wider community and sequester ourselves in a more exclusive one, pulling further and further away from the poor until the world they inhabit becomes utterly unrecognizable to us.”

[darthfoil]

"Only 1 in 4 families that qualify for any kind of housing assistance (rental assistance, public housing) receive it. The waiting list for public housing in a city like L.A. is not counted in years anymore; it is counted in decades. " "The reason that waiting list is so big, is because we haven't invested deeply in housing our poorest families. And one of the reasons we don't have enough money to go around is because we have things like the mortgage interest deduction."

Matthew Desmond on The Real Cause of Poverty with Matthew Desmond - Factually! - 215

The Mortgage Interest Deduction is a tax deduction rich people get for owning a home. It is a housing subside for the wealthy.

[aquotecollection]

A higher minimum wage is an antidepressant. It is a sleep aid. A stress reliever. Vocal segments of the American public, those with brain space to spare, seem to believe the poor should change their behavior to escape poverty. Get a better job. Stop having children. Make smarter financial decisions. In truth, it’s the other way around: Economic security leads to better choices.

Poverty, By America, Matthew Desmond

[strike-debt-bay-area]

Poverty, By America: book discussion July 15

We'll meet on Saturday, July 15, by Zoom. We'll discuss the second half of POVERTY, BY AMERICA, by Matthew Desmond. Email us for the Zoom invitation; feel free to come if you missed the first part.

[outstanding-quotes]

Poverty is the feeling that your government is against you, not for you; that your country was designed to serve other people and that you are fated to be managed and processed, roughed up and handcuffed.

Matthew Desmond, Poverty, By America