I knew of the author of Poverty, Matthew Desmond, but it was mainly in passing references to his previous book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the America. That book, published in 2016, won just about every possible award, including the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction. He’s also won a MacArthur Fellowship Grant (the “genius award”) and is currently a professor at Princeton University. Yeah, just writing that makes me feel like an intellectual lightweight.

But a couple of months ago, Jon Stewart had him as a guest on the Daily Show where he discussed Poverty (2023), and it was fascinating. Both Desmond and Stewart are smart dudes,and it was fun listening to them go back and forth. The big take-awy from the book and the discussion was this simple concept: It would take – rough back of the envelope calculation – about $740 billion to lift all Americans out of poverty. On the other hand, if rich people paid all the taxes they owed – just paid them, no loophole closing and all – it would generate just about $720 billion in revenue.

No new taxes – and suddenly you can (theoretically) lift just about everyone out of poverty. Boom!

So I bought the book. It’s a very scholarly book – about 190 pages long and an additional 75+ pages of notes. For a Princeton professor whose lectures must be legendary – judging by his knowledge and ease of conversation with Stewart – it’s a dry book. His anecdotes are well done and surprising, but there is quite a bit of “In 2001 it was x% in Chicago, y% in Atlanta and z% in Jacksonville, FL, as opposed to 2010 where it was a% in Chicago…”

All good facts, but his 20-minute bit with Stewart is probably more in most folks’ taste (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoLN0YoErK0).

How other authors – fiction and non-fiction – have written about poverty/the underclass:

There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one’s means of livelihood…Money is like a sixth sense, without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.

– William Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

When someone works for less than than she can live on – when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently – then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The “working poor,” as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else.

–Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America