Poor Logic
9th July 2023
Matthew Desmond, a Princeton sociologist who has won a MacArthur “genius” grant as well as a Pulitzer for his previous book, Evicted, devotes his latest work to expounding a “theory” that will explain “why there is so much poverty in this land of abundance,” the United States. According to Desmond, the American people as a whole are its cause.
Without offering a precise definition or measure of poverty, Desmond laments that America, the world’s richest country, has “more poverty than any other advanced democracy.” (That the United States is also by far the most populous advanced democracy might itself help to explain this alleged fact.) Relying chiefly on a report he had published in 2015, along with statistics issued by the Census Bureau and the OECD, Desmond asserts that “almost one in nine Americans” live in poverty, with over 38 million unable to “afford basic necessities” and another 108 million “getting by on $55,000 a year or less,” “stuck in that space between poverty and security.”
Of course a large majority of the world’s population—including India, Pakistan, Indonesia, China, most of Africa, and much of Latin America—would envy an individual or even a family with an income half that large.