2023-03-31
31 分钟This is in conversation from Apple News.
I'm Shemita Basu.
Today why there's so much poverty in America and what you can do about it.
Matthew Desmond is a sociologist and writer who likes to talk about big secret, seemingly intractable problems.
His Pulitzer Prize winning book Evicted told the story of housing insecurity by following eight families.
But his latest book zooms out and takes a different perspective on why poverty exists in America.
I read this line by Tommy Orange, the novelist where he writes, these kids are jumping out of the windows of burning buildings, falling to their deaths, and we think that the problem is, is that they're jumping.
And I tried to write a book about the fire, you know, who lit it, who's warming their hands by it.
So this is a book about why there's so much poverty in America and how can we get rid of it.
But in that telling, it's really a book about the fire.
It's called Poverty by America.
And that part about who's warming their hands, that's the part that'll stick with you because he's talking to you.
If you are not poorthat is, if you're wealthy or even just comfortable, you are benefiting from a system that keeps people poor.
And Matt says when you're in poverty, it dictates everything.
It's not just the state of not having enough money.
It's pain and exhaustion piled on top of like the nauseating fear of eviction piled on top of debt collector harassment and tooth rot and the suffocation of your dreams and literally the suffocation of your life.
Matt says for everyone else, it's not enough to simply be against poverty.
You need to be actively anti poverty, similar to the anti racism movement.
There's no such thing as a neutral stance here.
He rejects the idea that this is some kind of unsolvable problem.