Poverty, by America

Chapter 7 begins with the great Russian author Leo Tolstoy, who moved to Moscow as a wealthy adult and noticed its crushing poverty. He blamed himself for living a life of leisure that relied on the ceaseless labor of so many. Today, the wealthy and middle class contribute to poverty by restricting their power in labor, housing, and financial markets. Cheap goods and expensive houses contribute to the exploitation of the poor just as the burning of coal leads to both electricity and poisonous air. Society favors the preservation of wealth over efforts to alleviate poverty. Communities are specifically designed to entrench the wealth of their inhabitants and prevent outsiders from claiming a share of the benefits.

The problem is a bipartisan one, with both liberals and conservatives opting to keep the system in place. Solving the problem begins with connecting people with the aid designed to help them. Underutilization of welfare has been traditionally attributed to feelings of shame, but new research shows that it is simply hard to access such programs. People who receive information on how to use such programs are far more likely to use them, and so the government should take a page from the advertising industry and start showcasing its services.

Desmond estimates (roughly, by his own admission) that it would take $177 billion to lift every single American out of poverty. By comparison, the Internal Revenue Service loses $1 trillion every year to unpaid taxes among the ultra-wealthy. Revamping the tax code so that the wealthy pay their fair share would also make a significant difference. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, lowered taxes have also decreased productivity rather than inspired the rich to work harder. It will certainly be hard to compel the rich to pay more, but this should still be a major priority of public policy.

Other ways to combat poverty include a permanent extension of the pandemic-era Child Tax Credit, which sent monthly checks to working families. Instead of picking winners and losers based on arbitrary standards, a universal basic income would benefit everyone, although it would be very expensive. Desmond recommends “broader tent targeting,” where benefits typically granted to the poor also go to the working and middle class, or finding more specific ways to connect benefits like internet access to different kinds of people, such as those in rural communities or the incarcerated. The problem calls for bold policies capable of uniting large swaths of people to promote greater opportunities for all. Such policies will draw the charge of “redistributing wealth,” but he insists that what he is calling for is a rebalancing of the safety net so that it benefits those in need rather than those with the power to protect their wealth.

The COVID-19 pandemic proved that the government could take bold actions, in spite of partisan gridlock, such as programs to halt evictions in several American cities. However, the success received little fanfare, and so politicians had no interest in making it permanent. People have lost faith in the capacity for bold change, and so politicians think only in terms of moderate adjustments, but even recent US history shows evidence of the potential for transformative change, such as the Great Society programs of the Lyndon Johnson administration. It is time to address the root causes of poverty, especially the concentration of enormous wealth in the hands of a relative few, rather than simply try to make the burdens of poverty easier to bear.