By Matthew Desmond. Draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Argues that those who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. They prioritize the subsidization of their wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And they stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair.
Offers new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem and helps imagine solutions. Builds a original and ambitious case for ending poverty. Calls on everyone to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom. Read more.