formaldehyde–face:

The One Cause of Poverty That’s Never Considered — The Atlantic

In a new book, Matthew Desmond argues that to understand what keeps people poor, we need to take a good look at the rich.

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I think lots of people on the actual left (not white neolibs but real leftists) are constantly talking about how the affluent are keeping poor folks poor.

Has anyone read this book yet? @odinsblog or anyone else?

The author of the article seems unwilling to admit that what we are talking about here isn’t the 1% or the ultra-wealthy but instead “affluent” meaning everyone who is not poor. There’s a paragraph near the end where they’re so close to getting it when they talk about poor service workers and how sacrificing some of our convenience would materially benefit the working poor, but then they invoke Marx more or less in scare quotes.

Yes, we all need to think about how what we do and the choices we make and the things we stay silent on keeps poverty profitable to the elites. But to only demonize the elites is bonkers and ultimately pointless, because while they do hold most of the political (capital) power, the fact that most Americans above the poverty line think they’ve got more in common with those in the ivory towers rather than the 40 year old dad bagging their groceries is what needs to shift if anything’s ever going to get better.