Why the very poor have become poorer: Christopher Jencks reviews $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer. Matt Bruenig on how poverty has one dimension: income. Total inequality: Researchers know that it’s expensive to be poor — but they are only beginning to understand the sum of the financial, psychological, and cultural disadvantages that come with poverty. The rich live longer everywhere; for the poor, geography matters. Roberto Ferdman on the big problem with one of the most popular assumptions about the poor. American policy fails at reducing child poverty because it aims to fix the poor. Rebecca Vallas on how the right wing has a solution for poverty: Pretend it doesn’t exist. Robert Greenstein, an expert on fighting poverty, makes the case against a universal basic income.
Ananya Roy writes in defense of poverty: “I worry that the expansive use of inequality distracts attention from specific forms of impoverishment, exploitation, discrimination, and segregation”. Dwight Garner reviews White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg (and more). How racism stalls progressive action: Policies to aid America’s poor are hampered by deeply entrenched bias across parties. Criminalizing the hustle: Daniel Denvir on policing poor people’s survival strategies from Eric Garner to Alton Sterling. Sara Rankin (Seattle): The Influence of Exile (“against the use of the criminal justice system as a response to visible poverty”). Barry Latzer systematically debunks the dogma that poverty causes crime.