Creating poverty

Poverty, by America

The United States is the world's wealthiest country, a nation steeped in decadence and opportunity, hardly associated with poverty. However, this image of America, embodied by the middle class and elite, only reflects one side of society. The other side of the coin is the worst poverty problem in the developed world: in this land of abundance, one in nine people lacks basic living security; over one million public school students are homeless; and every year, countless people wander the streets and die due to evictions and homelessness.
This reality is shocking. Why is there so much despair and suffering in this wealthy country? This is the question sociologist Matthew Desmond set out to answer. He indeed arrived at the answer: poverty in this affluent society persists because some people are willing to see it happen and profit from it. One person's poverty is another's profit. Clearly, the American poverty this book seeks to explain isn't absolute poverty, but rather stark inequality. To fully understand poverty, we must look beyond the lives of the poor. The inability of the poor to change their current situation is precisely the result of others exploiting poverty. They depress wages for the poor, forcing them to pay more for basic survival. They prioritize accumulating their own wealth over alleviating poverty. This results in the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Poverty and despair accumulate in one place, while resources and wealth continue to grow and become increasingly concentrated elsewhere, ultimately building an insurmountable wall between the rich and the poor.
Such walls divide and disrupt society. Those who have never experienced poverty may find it difficult to understand that poverty is more than simply a low level of material well-being. "Hunger and dignity cannot coexist"—behind the simple figure of the poverty line lies the concrete suffering of some people day after day. This means physical pain, emotional trauma, homelessness, and constant fear. It means the trampling of dignity, the degradation of character, and the loss of freedom... Therefore, to completely solve the problem of poverty, it requires more than just charity. In an affluent society, as Desmond suggests, perhaps what we need is not some clever solution, but the will to solve the problem.

2024-05-01

中信出版社

271

9787521764604