Speaker 1: Pushing.
Speaker 2: I'm Khalil Jibron Muhammad.
Speaker 3: I'm Ben Austen. We are two best friends, one black,
Speaker 3: one white.
Speaker 2: I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is
Speaker 2: some of my best friends are.
Speaker 3: Some of my best friends are in this show. We
Speaker 3: wrestle with the challenges and the absurdities of a deeply
Speaker 3: divided and unequal country.
Speaker 2: Today on the show we have the sociologist Matthew Desmond.
Speaker 2: He is the author of a new book called Poverty
Speaker 2: by America. Yes, an exploration of the United States, the
Speaker 2: richest country in the world that has tremendous guard at
Speaker 2: you in poverty. This book is a call to action,
Speaker 2: and this problem is on all of us to understand
Speaker 2: and work to fix.
Speaker 3: Man. We are so happy to have matt on the show.
Speaker 3: He studies and writes about what I also write about,
Speaker 3: which is housing. His last book, Evicted, Poverty and Profit
Speaker 3: in the American City, won a Pulitzer Prize. Yeah you'll
Speaker 3: pin baby, Dad is coming.
Speaker 2: Matthew Desmond. It is so wonderful to welcome you to
Speaker 2: some of my best friends are.
Speaker 1: It's great to see you too. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for having.
Speaker 3: Me and matt We got to see each other in
Speaker 3: Chicago just a couple months ago while you're on your
Speaker 3: book tour, and it was amazing to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Then, well, I've been living with your ideas for a
Speaker 1: while because I just read your new book that's coming
Speaker 1: out soon and loved it. I can't wait to see
Speaker 1: it out in the world. And congratulations on that. And
Speaker 1: what an incredible accomplishment. Band man, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: It has this very prideful smirk on his face.
Speaker 3: I'm ready to be like I just dropped the recorder.
Speaker 3: I'm like, done, done deal.
Speaker 2: In case you the listener, were wondering, yes, correction will
Speaker 2: be at a bookstore near you soon, so listen. You
Speaker 2: and I met each other at Harvard several years ago
Speaker 2: when I joined the Kennedy School faculty, and we became
Speaker 2: close friends. At the time, we were part of a
Speaker 2: community of folks, including Diva Pager, to whom you dedicate
Speaker 2: this book, a fear sociologist who helped us understand just
Speaker 2: how pervasive structural racism and biases in our labor markets.
Speaker 2: And I just got to tell you, you know, my
Speaker 2: time at Harvard has never been the same since you left, man,
Speaker 2: you abandoned me for Princeton, Like what a year later? Like,
Speaker 2: what's up with that? We haven't really talked about this,
Speaker 2: but I just need you to know I haven't been
Speaker 2: happy since you left.
Speaker 1: It was personal. I have to say, I miss the event,
Speaker 1: I miss you, I miss our talks, I miss running
Speaker 1: into you and our coffees and our and our beers.
Speaker 1: And you know, Diva was such a powerful spiritual and
Speaker 1: intellectual force in my life. And you know, she passed away,
Speaker 1: as you know, too young, and a lot of her
Speaker 1: energy and her spirit I hope to a channel in
Speaker 1: this book and this work. So she was the best
Speaker 1: of us. And thank you for opening up that conversation
Speaker 1: with her memory.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, Matt. So, as you say,
Speaker 3: we are the richest country in the world. It's crazy,
Speaker 3: and yet we have more poverty, more poor people than
Speaker 3: any other developed country. That's that's our story. And I
Speaker 3: wanted to ask you about the writing of this book,
Speaker 3: why this topic, Why focus on poverty.
Speaker 1: Well, I've been working on poverty all of my adult life,
Speaker 1: you know, and I've lived in very poor communities, you know,
Speaker 1: I've taught hundreds of students, you know, classes on inequality
Speaker 1: and poverty. But I just had this conviction, this nagget conviction,
Speaker 1: Like if someone stopped me on the street and was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, why do we have so much poverty in
Speaker 1: American how can we in it? What would be my answer?
Speaker 1: You know? And I felt like I didn't really have
Speaker 1: an answer, a nail down answer to that. You know.
Speaker 1: Tony Morrison always said that she wrote books that she
Speaker 1: wanted to read, and for me, this was kind of
Speaker 1: like that. I felt I needed this book. I needed,
Speaker 1: at least for myself, to get a kind of story
Speaker 1: about American poverty down on paper. And so that's what
Speaker 1: this attempt is. And it's an attempt to tell the
Speaker 1: news story about poverty in America, one that I don't
Speaker 1: think has been really told before.
Speaker 2: That question, so what are we supposed to do about it?
Speaker 2: Is one of the hardest questions that people like you
Speaker 2: and me and even Ben, you know, as a journalist
Speaker 2: who has written about public policy and about housing in particular,
Speaker 2: like it's always the hardest question to answer because you
Speaker 2: we're all so good at diagnosis. We're also good at
Speaker 2: laying out the problem. But I really love what you
Speaker 2: just said. I love that you said, you know what,
Speaker 2: I needed to answer that question for myself first, and
Speaker 2: once I figured it out, I needed to answer it
Speaker 2: in such a way that everyone could understand with clarity.
Speaker 2: That's really brilliant. I mean, the one thing that I
Speaker 2: think is really also interesting, Matt, is your own story.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is not just a topic you enter
Speaker 2: into through the Ivory Tower as an intellectual abstraction, as
Speaker 2: you know, someone who's just curious about empirical research and
Speaker 2: the answers. You are also someone who tells in this
Speaker 2: book your own struggle with family poverty. Tell us a
Speaker 2: little bit about what that was like for you growing
Speaker 2: up in Arizona and elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I grew up in Winslow, Arizona, which is an
Speaker 1: Eagle Song and railroad town, and money was really tight
Speaker 1: around our home. We got our gas shut off and
Speaker 1: then and we lost our home when I was in college.
Speaker 1: There's this old line by Seawreight Mills, a sociologist, that says,
Speaker 1: you know, sociology is about making personal problems political. And
Speaker 1: I think this is, you know, one of the beautiful
Speaker 1: gifts that my discipline can give to the world. You know,
Speaker 1: to look at my foreclosure or someone else's eviction say look,
Speaker 1: this isn't this isn't on you. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a bigger game afoot in a way. And I
Speaker 1: think that experiencing poverty myself left me kind of curious
Speaker 1: about why, you know, why there's so much poverty in
Speaker 1: this land of dollars. And then when I moved to
Speaker 1: Milwaukee for the last book, I saw kind of poverty
Speaker 1: that I just never had seen before, you know, never
Speaker 1: experienced before. That's when I saw like Grandma's living without
Speaker 1: heat in the winter, and you know, kids routinely getting evicted.
Speaker 1: And I think that further drove that question inside of me.
Speaker 3: I'm interested in how those experiences led you to the
Speaker 3: work you do. And also you lot, you write a
Speaker 3: lot about race and the ways in your own experience
Speaker 3: that you, as a white person could pass for not poor,
Speaker 3: and how you thought about that in terms of your work.
Speaker 1: So on the on the first part of the question,
Speaker 1: you know, I think one of the things that really
Speaker 1: changed my thinking about poverty in Milwaukee was, you know,
Speaker 1: I moved into a mobile home park, right and one
Speaker 1: of the questions I started with was like, why would
Speaker 1: you buy a mobile home park, you know, like, if
Speaker 1: you could afford a mobile home park, why would you
Speaker 1: buy a mobile home park? And then the landlord opened
Speaker 1: up his books to me, you know, and so I
Speaker 1: could calculate his bottom line, and I learned that, like,
Speaker 1: the landlord of the poorest mobile home park in the
Speaker 1: fourth worest city in the country was bringing home over
Speaker 1: four hundred thousand dollars a year after expenses, after taxes,
Speaker 1: after expenses, and so then I was like, oh, why
Speaker 1: wouldn't you buy a mobile home park? And you know,
Speaker 1: his tenants were living on social Security and disability, and
Speaker 1: so that made me really see poverty in terms of
Speaker 1: you know, winners and losers, and I you know, that's
Speaker 1: not the kind of story they teach us at places
Speaker 1: like the Kennedy School, you know, And so it really
Speaker 1: affected me. And and I think that on your second question, Ben's,
Speaker 1: that's a complicated question, I feel, and I feel that
Speaker 1: the best we can do is just be honest about
Speaker 1: our blind spots and our who we are and what
Speaker 1: we bring to the table. And I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: just the things that everyone talks about, right, like your
Speaker 1: race or your gender. It's like how straight your teeth are.
Speaker 1: How you talk when someone gets arrested. Do you say
Speaker 1: what did he do? Or do you say what they
Speaker 1: get him for? Like, these little things really matter on
Speaker 1: a day to day basis on the ground, I think too,
Speaker 1: and I think the best we can do is just
Speaker 1: be be clear about what doors are open and what
Speaker 1: doors are shut because of who we are, who you know,
Speaker 1: who we are, and what we bring.
Speaker 2: We're going to take a quick break, and when we
Speaker 2: get back, we're going to talk about some of those
Speaker 2: problems they've motivated you to write this book, and how
Speaker 2: endemic and entrenched they are, and they are not by accident.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after the break. Welcome back to
Speaker 2: some of my best friends. Are We are talking with
Speaker 2: Matthew Desmond, author of Poverty Comma by America Today. This
Speaker 2: is an incredibly rich and powerful book, Matthew. And let's
Speaker 2: talk about the actual problem of poverty, something that most
Speaker 2: politicians don't actually talk about. Surprisingly, and so I'm just
Speaker 2: going to throw some of your own stats out just
Speaker 2: for our listeners. There's thirty eight million people living without
Speaker 2: enough food and a decent place to live. One hundred
Speaker 2: and eight million people who live a little bit better,
Speaker 2: but live on less than fifty five thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure most of our listeners understand what that means.
Speaker 2: One million homeless public school children and two million people
Speaker 2: in the United States of America without running water or.
Speaker 3: Toilet in there.
Speaker 2: So this is just a slice of the problem. Tell
Speaker 2: us why is it that America has so many poor
Speaker 2: people when it is, in fact the richest country in
Speaker 2: the world. What has caused this?
Speaker 1: We've caused this, and by we, I'd like to challenge
Speaker 1: all of us to ride ourselves into that we. You know,
Speaker 1: often when we talk about we or the who's to blame,
Speaker 1: it's always the other political party, that guy that's a
Speaker 1: little richer than us. But a lot of us benefit
Speaker 1: from poverty. This is by design. You know. Many of
Speaker 1: us consume the cheap goods and services the working poor produce.
Speaker 1: Many of us are the shareholders of shareholder capitalism, you know,
Speaker 1: don't we benefit when we see our returns coming back
Speaker 1: or our pensions grow, and when that comes at a
Speaker 1: human sacrifice. The welfare states imbalanced. You know, we give
Speaker 1: the most to families that need it the least, especially
Speaker 1: in lucrative tax ride offs. And then we have the
Speaker 1: audacity to claim we can't afford to do more.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's break it down. Let's talk about the
Speaker 2: tax system. For example, how is it that, as you
Speaker 2: write in the book, middle to upper income people receive
Speaker 2: more public benefits call it welfare or tax benefits or
Speaker 2: tax breaks than poor people by the numbers? How does
Speaker 2: this work?
Speaker 1: All? Right? So a lot of us have a hard
Speaker 1: time seeing a tax break like a welfare check, which
Speaker 1: makes sense, that's kind of how our brains work. But
Speaker 1: you know, a tax break and a welfare check they
Speaker 1: cost the government money, they both contribute to the deficit,
Speaker 1: and they both put money in our pocket. So if
Speaker 1: we get a tax break because we own a home,
Speaker 1: for example, the mortgage interest seduction, we could either receive
Speaker 1: that benefit by the government letting us to up the
Speaker 1: interest come tag time, or they could just mail us
Speaker 1: a check during that time. It's the same difference. So
Speaker 1: if we think in those terms and we start adding
Speaker 1: up everything the government does for us, every tax break,
Speaker 1: every means tested program, every social insurance program, you learn
Speaker 1: that the poorest families in America, families in the bottom
Speaker 1: twenty percent of income distribution, they get about twenty six
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year from the government, but the richest families,
Speaker 1: those in the top twenty percent, receive about thirty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year from the government on average. That's
Speaker 1: almost a forty percent difference. That's what I'm talking about, right,
Speaker 1: That's what we're talking about. It in balanced welfare state.
Speaker 1: That's that's how we do more to guard fortunes than
Speaker 1: fight poverty.
Speaker 3: You and I both write about housing, and so again
Speaker 3: this mortgage interest deduction which you get, you know, I
Speaker 3: call it public housing per homows, and we both point
Speaker 3: this out. The amount that people get ridden off on
Speaker 3: their taxes is greater than the entire amount that goes
Speaker 3: to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. So for
Speaker 3: actual public housing for poor people, it is significantly greater though.
Speaker 1: By biroductor three. Right. Yeah, So like last year, we
Speaker 1: spent about one hundred and ninety billion dollars on homeworner
Speaker 1: tax subsidies. Most of that was accrued by families six
Speaker 1: six figure incomes. Most white Americans are homeowners and most
Speaker 1: Black and LATINX families are not. Because of our systematic
Speaker 1: dispossession of people of color from the land and that
Speaker 1: same year we only spend about fifty three billion dollars
Speaker 1: on direct housing assistance to the needy. So you're right,
Speaker 1: you know, it's hard to think of a policy that
Speaker 1: does a better job of amplifying our economic and racial
Speaker 1: inequality than our housing policy does.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I'm going to imagine myself right now in
Speaker 2: this conversation as a public policy wonk who comes out
Speaker 2: of the conservative side of the equation. So, why isn't
Speaker 2: it the case that people who have earned their money
Speaker 2: and bought a home and are already being taxed by
Speaker 2: state and local governments entitled to receive a portion of
Speaker 2: their investment in the community back, unlike people who haven't
Speaker 2: worked hard enough to do the same thing and now
Speaker 2: need a handout from the government in the form of
Speaker 2: a voucher for housing or for access to a public
Speaker 2: housing apartment.
Speaker 1: So I think that we should want to live in
Speaker 1: a country that rewards hard work, and I think that
Speaker 1: no one's arguing that it shouldn't be rewarded. The mortgage
Speaker 1: interes seduction doesn't do anything to help people get into
Speaker 1: home ownership. It just makes homes more valuable than they
Speaker 1: should be. Home ownership doesn't lead to financial security, leads
Speaker 1: to more financial security, and in part because it's massively
Speaker 1: government subsidized. I think it's really hard to look at
Speaker 1: folks that can't stand up straight because they've been picking
Speaker 1: our berries for years, in years of years, or you know,
Speaker 1: maids with chemical burdens on their arms, and tell them
Speaker 1: to work harder and work more. I think there's so
Speaker 1: many people working and working and working below the poverty
Speaker 1: line and can't get ahead. And one of the reasons
Speaker 1: they can't get ahead is because we as a nation
Speaker 1: are spending so much more on families that don't need
Speaker 1: our help.
Speaker 2: M wow, Yeah, that was that was really tough playing
Speaker 2: that guy. So, so what you're saying, so what you.
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 2: So what you're what you're saying is the people who
Speaker 2: can actually afford to buy a home should just pay
Speaker 2: for the cost of their home period And why should
Speaker 2: we give them money back?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean, and if there wasn't like an eviction crisis,
Speaker 1: if we weren't facing a housing crisis of like historic proportions,
Speaker 1: if most poor renting families then it's been at least
Speaker 1: half of their income on housing costs, I don't think
Speaker 1: i'd lose a lot of sleep at night right over
Speaker 1: the mortgage just production. But that's not the American we
Speaker 1: live in. We live in America where we got over
Speaker 1: a million homeless public school kids, right, where an eviction
Speaker 1: goes out every seven seconds, you know, where one in
Speaker 1: four families below the poverty line who are renting or
Speaker 1: paying over seventy percent of their income on housing costs. Right,
Speaker 1: and we have public housing waiting lists that are stretching
Speaker 1: into decades, right, not years, decades. And so then we
Speaker 1: run into this normal and I khalil, you hear this
Speaker 1: all the time, the house of the Kennedy School, this boring, pernicious, like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, how can we afford it? How can we
Speaker 1: afford to do more?
Speaker 2: And for me can help these people make better choices?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the other that's the other part of it.
Speaker 1: By the way. Yeah, by the way, no one's asking
Speaker 1: me what I'm doing with my mortgage intra seduction savings, right,
Speaker 1: No one's up in my business. No one's asking me
Speaker 1: if I'm drinking it or smoking it, you know, or
Speaker 1: if I'm going to Vegas with it. But you know,
Speaker 1: the level of scrutiny over over these kind of benefits
Speaker 1: for the very poorest families. Just should I think should
Speaker 1: trive us a shame.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I just want to add one more point
Speaker 2: to this, and that is that we pretend that we
Speaker 2: live in a world that the economic system known as
Speaker 2: capitalism isn't by definition a pyramid scheme where most people
Speaker 2: will work at the bottom of this economic system in
Speaker 2: order to do the things, provide the services, make the
Speaker 2: goods that we all need to live off on, literally
Speaker 2: to harvest the fruits and vegetables that we eat, to
Speaker 2: mill the timber that builds our homes, to drive the
Speaker 2: buses for those of us who do take public transportation,
Speaker 2: or to get our kids to school. We pretend as
Speaker 2: if the system isn't by definition dependent on those people.
Speaker 2: And so you spend a lot of time in this
Speaker 2: book actually talking about like, since we know we need
Speaker 2: people to do these jobs, we ought to care enough
Speaker 2: about them to have a decent quality of life that
Speaker 2: we should not be exploiting them through our labor systems,
Speaker 2: or exploiting them in the housing market, or exploiting them
Speaker 2: in terms of banking and access to credit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think we should use that word exploitation
Speaker 1: for me, it's just like, look, I mean, we've all
Speaker 1: been exploited, we've all been in a position where we
Speaker 1: don't get a lot of choice, and you got to
Speaker 1: you gotta pay the piper. You're stuck in a hotel
Speaker 1: and you're going to pay you know, fifty ads for
Speaker 1: breakfast or whatever. But that's that defines the lives of
Speaker 1: the poor, right, just no choice and because of that,
Speaker 1: having to accept a bad option, not because they didn't
Speaker 1: make a financially wise decision, but because there's no other
Speaker 1: decision to be made, right, there's no other option on
Speaker 1: the table. And for me, this point is really crucial
Speaker 1: because the way we talk about poverty so much, it's
Speaker 1: so abstract. Right, It's about policy, it's about history, it's
Speaker 1: about structure, and I think we need to start talking
Speaker 1: about it in really personal terms. I was given this
Speaker 1: talk the other day and a lot of folks in
Speaker 1: the audience were basically, well, what about them? What do
Speaker 1: I do with my heart? Uncle?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: What do we do with the Republican Party? What do
Speaker 1: you know? And it's like, look, if we just if
Speaker 1: we did the stuff in our own lives, I think
Speaker 1: that would be enough. That would be a start.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, a question I want to ask you, Matt,
Speaker 3: because you know, this is an endemic problem for the
Speaker 3: history of the United States, but it's got way way
Speaker 3: worse than say, the last thirty years, and we have
Speaker 3: the divide between rich and poor, the number of poor people.
Speaker 3: What's happened in those last thirty years that has made
Speaker 3: this much worse.
Speaker 1: So this is give me a little give me a
Speaker 1: little room on this question. So I think this is
Speaker 1: a really super complicated question, and it's one that's it's
Speaker 1: about a paradox. Then we got to lean into the paradox.
Speaker 1: So here's the paradox. The paradox is, over the last
Speaker 1: fifty years, the poverty rate, by a lot of measures
Speaker 1: hasn't shown a lot of improvement. So you can look
Speaker 1: at a poverty rate called the supplemental Poverty measure that
Speaker 1: does a pretty good job of counting government spending but
Speaker 1: also regional housing costs. You know, fifty years ago, in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, it was about fifteen percent right before
Speaker 1: co with fifteen percent. Some years it went up, some
Speaker 1: years went down, but not a ton of progress. And
Speaker 1: the reason that's weird is because government spending on poverty
Speaker 1: programs is actually increased by a lot over that time,
Speaker 1: so increasing.
Speaker 2: I know, that's really counterintuitive, and it's certainly a lot
Speaker 2: of people I know have argued the opposite.
Speaker 1: Right, and so, and it makes sense to argue the
Speaker 1: opposite because it feels that if you don't, you're saying
Speaker 1: those programs don't work. And that's not what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: right emphatically, I'm saying, Gosh, those programs work. And there's
Speaker 1: amount of evidence showing that housing systems, food systems are
Speaker 1: just essential and effective, and yet poverty persists, and by
Speaker 1: a lot of measures, been is right. You know, fiction
Speaker 1: filings are up twenty two percent over the last twenty years,
Speaker 1: and of our families visiting food pantries up nineteen percent
Speaker 1: or last twenty years. So some very troubling signs on
Speaker 1: the horizon. And for me, the way to reconcile this
Speaker 1: paradox is to face the fact that the fundamentals of
Speaker 1: American society are breaking down for long of families, especially
Speaker 1: in the job market and in the housing market. So
Speaker 1: real wages have declined. If you're a guy without a
Speaker 1: college degree, you make less today than you would fifty
Speaker 1: years ago. Adjusting for inflation.
Speaker 3: There's been a total disintegration of unions, which accounts for
Speaker 3: a bunch of the.
Speaker 1: Huge point, right, And now our wages increase only about
Speaker 1: point three percent a year in real terms, and so
Speaker 1: that means the government is kind of having to spend
Speaker 1: more to stay in the same place because our jobs
Speaker 1: have got a lot a lot worse, and we haven't
Speaker 1: addressed this kind of unrelenting exploitation of the poor in
Speaker 1: the labor market. And so I think that that's an
Speaker 1: incredibly important point because it leads to this realization that
Speaker 1: we don't just need to turn the faucet on more.
Speaker 1: We need deeper investments, but we also need different ones.
Speaker 1: We need ways to address exploitation in the housing, financial
Speaker 1: and labor markets.
Speaker 3: Well, you also say, Matt, that the faucets are on,
Speaker 3: but a large portion of subsidies for the poor don't
Speaker 3: actually reach them. So so they're they're sort of on,
Speaker 3: but they're spraying all over the place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, nice, I like that a gossip drum or
Speaker 1: or there's folks with their their their cups above the water.
Speaker 1: Yeah in a way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1: That the story about welfare cash welfare tanaff temporary assistant
Speaker 1: for needy families. This is like where it gets maddening, right,
Speaker 1: because for every dollar budgeted for cash welfare, only twenty
Speaker 1: two cents lands in the pocket of a poor family
Speaker 1: because states do all sports. Yeah, it's crazy. And it's
Speaker 1: not just a red state, blue state thing, right, it's
Speaker 1: all over the country.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know why is that?
Speaker 1: Well, the program is issued through something called the block ground,
Speaker 1: as you know, and that's just a wonky way of saying, hey, states,
Speaker 1: here's some money, use your discretion about how to spend it.
Speaker 1: And man, they do, right, they spend ten f dollars
Speaker 1: welfare dollars on Christian summer camps as in it's only training,
Speaker 1: or they don't. They just don't spend it, you know.
Speaker 1: Like Hawaii is sitting on so much unspent welfare money
Speaker 1: they could give every kid in the state ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars below the poverty line. So what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: right when we're talking about this, we're talking about there's
Speaker 1: poor kids by the millions that aren't good enough to
Speaker 1: eat because of this, right, Like, that's that's what we're
Speaker 1: talking about, right, We're talking about And you both have
Speaker 1: been to a viction court Man, it's just like we're
Speaker 1: talking about. You walk into a viction court basically anywhere
Speaker 1: in the country, and you see a ton of kids
Speaker 1: running around, right, and so it's just like, you know,
Speaker 1: this is that's what we're talking about when we're talking
Speaker 1: about this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: Matt. You had said in Hawaii they could give ten
Speaker 3: thousand dollars to each kid. They have so much They
Speaker 3: have so much money for poverty saved up. We want
Speaker 3: to take a quick break and talk more about that,
Speaker 3: about solutions, and also about direct payments to people. We're
Speaker 3: eager to talk to you and talk to one another
Speaker 3: really about guaranteed income as a possible solution.
Speaker 2: To also known as universal basic income.
Speaker 3: Universal based income, which is the idea that you give
Speaker 3: direct cash payments to people who qualify, and it's become
Speaker 3: kind of popular. So Colorado just became the ninth state
Speaker 3: with some form of guaranteed income, but numerous cities and
Speaker 3: municipalities are already doing this, at least in sort of
Speaker 3: like pilot programs. Chicago, Stockton, California, Newark, New Jersey, Gary, Indiana, Patterson,
Speaker 3: New Jersey, Cambridge, San Francisco. It's all over the place,
Speaker 3: and I want maybe the three of us can talk
Speaker 3: about what works and what doesn't work about these direct payments,
Speaker 3: about guaranteed income, and you know, what should we learn
Speaker 3: about it in terms of combating the poverty problem.
Speaker 2: And I'll just add, Matt as you as you gear
Speaker 2: up for that, that I mean, we, you and me
Speaker 2: come out of a social sigen in space where every
Speaker 2: smart person, usually a guy in the room, usually a
Speaker 2: white guy, has the perfect solution for our four hundred
Speaker 2: year old problem. Right Like, there's no historical context, there's
Speaker 2: no irrationality, you know, there's only like here it is
Speaker 2: and you know I've done it, the random controlled trial
Speaker 2: has proved it, so let's do it all right. So
Speaker 2: this seems to me to at least be one of
Speaker 2: these ideas that is happening in the country right now.
Speaker 2: And I know, for example, here in Newark, Mayor ros
Speaker 2: Baraka has been doing this for two years. He has
Speaker 2: two hundred participants who receive two hundred and fifty dollars
Speaker 2: bi weekly over two year period which will end soon
Speaker 2: this September of twenty twenty three. Or another group of
Speaker 2: two hundred participants who get three thousand dollars four times
Speaker 2: over the past two years, so two different models of distribution,
Speaker 2: two year period, four hundred people chosen by lottery. So
Speaker 2: the results aren't in yet, but this is just one
Speaker 2: example of many that been talked about. So what do
Speaker 2: you think about this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd love to hear both of your takes on this.
Speaker 1: I'll give you a on the pro side, and then
Speaker 1: I'll give you some of my concerns or some caution
Speaker 1: on the pro side. I think that during COVID, we
Speaker 1: had this national experiment in universal basic income, actually through
Speaker 1: the child tax Credit, right, So, child tax credit was huge.
Speaker 1: It went out to tens of millions of families, both
Speaker 1: middle and low income families received the credit. What are
Speaker 1: it do at cut child poverty by forty six percent
Speaker 1: in six months? Right? Six months? Yeah? Remarkable, remarkable, historic, incredible,
Speaker 1: we had we had a different country for a moment there.
Speaker 1: I think the lessons from the child Tax Credit with
Speaker 1: respect to this conversation is lower the administrative burden, get
Speaker 1: the checks out, get them out to a lot of folks,
Speaker 1: and make the checks meaningful, you know, make the stipend meaningful.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons I think we see from some
Speaker 1: universal basic income experience fairly modest or you know, not
Speaker 1: really great results is because it's too small. Amount of
Speaker 1: money is too small, you know, poverty is too deep.
Speaker 1: Child attack Shutter took it on boom massively good result.
Speaker 1: The hesitation or one hesitation I have about guarantee cash income,
Speaker 1: it's just it's often talked about is like the only
Speaker 1: thing you need to do, you know. It's like, if
Speaker 1: we just did this, and what we saw during COVID
Speaker 1: wasn't just massive declines in poverty, but massive surgeons in rents.
Speaker 1: Rents went up highest on record a nationwide. And so
Speaker 1: I think maybe just because I'm a housing guy, come
Speaker 1: at this often through through focusing on the housing crisis,
Speaker 1: where it's like, if we don't figure out exploitation, if
Speaker 1: we don't address that in all sorts of different realms,
Speaker 1: then these kind of policies can be watered down pretty
Speaker 1: quickly when markets catch up to the benefit, you know.
Speaker 1: And so I think that you know, if we if
Speaker 1: we want to approach you BA and guarantee basic income,
Speaker 1: I would be totally down to have that conversation as
Speaker 1: a piece of a piece of the menu, a piece
Speaker 1: of the solution, but not the only solution.
Speaker 3: Where are you guys, I've been very I've been very
Speaker 3: interested in it because you know, the idea that we
Speaker 3: have to change our values in some way, right like
Speaker 3: we we have such backlash when it comes to any
Speaker 3: program for the poor. And it's been interesting why UBI
Speaker 3: sort of attracts a wider range of politics, you know,
Speaker 3: so that it's you know, we have all these states
Speaker 3: and cities doing it, and there's something I guess about
Speaker 3: the universal aspect of it that it goes to everybody,
Speaker 3: and so you know, everyone can benefit. And you point
Speaker 3: this out mat in the book that that's also what
Speaker 3: makes it somewhat untenable because or at least, you know,
Speaker 3: it's not as productive as it could be because the
Speaker 3: money is going to a lot of people that don't
Speaker 3: need it, and that just you know, inflates the cost
Speaker 3: so much. Khalil, have you thought about this about why
Speaker 3: why guaranteed income is a little more palatable to people.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure it is. I mean, my read on
Speaker 2: the situation is that at the local level, mayors are
Speaker 2: much more innovative and willing to experiment because they're much
Speaker 2: more on the hook to their voters. They can't dog
Speaker 2: whistle like governors. Can, and so they if they hear
Speaker 2: by word of social scientists or the grapevine that there's
Speaker 2: something out there that that seems to be working, they're
Speaker 2: going to follow it. That's my take on it in
Speaker 2: terms of its appeal. I'm more interested, though, in the
Speaker 2: bigger issue, and this is an issue you keep coming
Speaker 2: back to, whether it's UBI or whether it's the stimulus
Speaker 2: checks that came with the COVID pandemic, is that we
Speaker 2: have not chosen to solve for the fundamental problem of
Speaker 2: poverty in the first place, and that most anti poverty
Speaker 2: measures are essentially essentially plugging a hole in a leaky bucket.
Speaker 2: So the extent to which we want to actually address
Speaker 2: the big issues that create poverty in the first place,
Speaker 2: UBI is probably not going to get us there.
Speaker 3: But that's probably part of its appeal. Right, you can
Speaker 3: just send checks and not have to do this other stuff.
Speaker 1: I think that's right. It's almost like, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: you hear what about education, Could we educate our way
Speaker 1: out of this? And I think we all care about education,
Speaker 1: but you know, we can't. We can't. We've actually got
Speaker 1: a lot more educated last fifty years and a lot
Speaker 1: more unequal, but that argument has that similar kind of
Speaker 1: appeal where it's kind of like you don't have to
Speaker 1: change the terms of the debate. I would love the
Speaker 1: UBI conversation to be more of a conversation about tax fairness.
Speaker 1: You know, if we're actually going to go down this road,
Speaker 1: we do need to pay for in a serious way.
Speaker 1: And if we're losing over trillion dollars a year in
Speaker 1: tax avoidance in evasion, which we are, then there's no
Speaker 1: way we could do big, ambitious things like guaranteed basic income.
Speaker 1: So I think there is a conversation amongst the UBI
Speaker 1: crowd which just kind of doesn't care about that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like it's about modern monetary theory and it's about
Speaker 1: who cares about the deficit. But I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: balancing a budget, if you're in any kind of state, local,
Speaker 1: federal government, you got to care about that.
Speaker 3: I want to hit on something that you said just
Speaker 3: a moment ago about about the stimulus packages during COVID
Speaker 3: in the Cares Act, because this was like, this was
Speaker 3: such a success story for big government. I mean, this
Speaker 3: is incredible. There were three point three million people who
Speaker 3: filed for unemployment and checks were sent out and it
Speaker 3: was a it was a mix of things, as you say,
Speaker 3: Like it wasn't just direct payments. It was also rental assistance.
Speaker 3: There was also some child tax credits, and the child
Speaker 3: poverty rate was cut in half. We had sixteen million
Speaker 3: fewer people in poverty. That is like, you know, historic
Speaker 3: in the United States. I mean, this is like new
Speaker 3: Deal stuff. And the question, or like what I want
Speaker 3: I've been thinking a lot about, is why even people
Speaker 3: like us haven't been talking about this constantly. Why did
Speaker 3: this sort of just like you know, peter out. And
Speaker 3: I know, I know some of that is about inflation
Speaker 3: and people are worried about like the price of eggs
Speaker 3: and gasoline. But this has did not become a rallying
Speaker 3: cry for the Democrats. This did not become an example
Speaker 3: that people are pointing to. I mean, for a lot
Speaker 3: of people who are listening to this, this will be
Speaker 3: the first time that they've heard this. You know, what
Speaker 3: does that even say about about the kind of hurdles
Speaker 3: we have to overcome to to sort of engage any
Speaker 3: of these programs have this huge, massive success in our
Speaker 3: in recent years, in the last two or three years,
Speaker 3: and that's not even a talking.
Speaker 1: Aboutint I love the way that you asked the question
Speaker 1: because you asked it about us, and I think that's
Speaker 1: the exact way to ask the question. It's not just
Speaker 1: about the other political party, and it's not just about
Speaker 1: that one senator from West Virginia that voted the other way.
Speaker 1: You know, it's about us, Like, did we pick up
Speaker 1: the phone, you know, do we call our congress people.
Speaker 1: We're we out in the streets about this, We're rewriting
Speaker 1: editorials about this. And there was this passive silence from
Speaker 1: the progressive left in America on this. I think that
Speaker 1: diagnosing that problem is really, really key. I was with
Speaker 1: Heather McGee a few weeks.
Speaker 3: Ago, the author of the Some of Us author.
Speaker 1: Beautiful thank you for the pro Yes, Yeah, and her
Speaker 1: diagnosis was, you know, the progressive movement, especially among young people,
Speaker 1: are really hesitant to throw Biden a bone because they
Speaker 1: were hoping for a different kind of candidate, different kind
Speaker 1: of policy. But in their silence, you know, all lawmakers
Speaker 1: learn that they can spend a ton of political capital,
Speaker 1: do all this good, and get not a lot of
Speaker 1: returns from it, you know, in terms of political success,
Speaker 1: And so poor families in the future are going to
Speaker 1: pay for our silence.
Speaker 2: And you know what's interesting on that point, Matt, I
Speaker 2: have I have two I have one different opinion in
Speaker 2: one to add to this failure of blaring the good
Speaker 2: news of what happened with the COVID stimulus money and
Speaker 2: its impact on lower and poverty. One is that I
Speaker 2: actually think that the problem of inflation became an economic
Speaker 2: political problem for the Democrats. And rather than saying young progressives,
Speaker 2: who frankly don't think drive much news coverage, particularly in
Speaker 2: the page of the New York Times of the Washington Post,
Speaker 2: what does drive a lot of news coverage is median voters,
Speaker 2: Democrats in particular, since Republican Party has gone all crazy
Speaker 2: and so that's you know, it's a different kind of voter.
Speaker 2: And for those median Democratic voters, not only is inflation real,
Speaker 2: meaning their cost were driven up, but this question of
Speaker 2: whether or not we need to get back to something
Speaker 2: that was, like you know, Obama friendly, an economy that
Speaker 2: worked then before Donald Trump and before all this COVID madness,
Speaker 2: and in some ways inflation became the bugaboo of the
Speaker 2: success of the stimulus package, whether or not we can
Speaker 2: actually absorb inflation or not, which is a policy debate
Speaker 2: separate from this. I think that's what went wrong. That
Speaker 2: political liability and risk to what carrying the water for
Speaker 2: inflation during this moment, I think contributed to the lack
Speaker 2: of like celebrating the stimulus packages and Khalid.
Speaker 3: That's inherent to the democratic message. What you just said
Speaker 3: that if you think of Biden or Obama, they're always
Speaker 3: speaking to the middle class, right, and inflation is a
Speaker 3: middle class problem. They don't want to speak about poor people.
Speaker 3: They don't say these tax cuts will benefit the poor.
Speaker 3: And when you talk like that for thirty years, you know,
Speaker 3: then then an issue like this comes up, a success story,
Speaker 3: and you can't own it because they haven't. They don't
Speaker 3: have that language. They're gonna always focus on the middle class.
Speaker 3: And it's like it's like they shot themselves in the
Speaker 3: foot as they're as they're doing this.
Speaker 1: I think that you're right that that that narrative shifted.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's a huge part of it. You
Speaker 1: had a second point too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The second point which gets me also
Speaker 2: to a kind of term you adopt. So the second
Speaker 2: point is that I think we live in a country
Speaker 2: where everyone is socialized to despise poor people, including poor
Speaker 2: people that they the politics of on deserving, this of individualism,
Speaker 2: of meritocracy, of what we used to call social Darwinism,
Speaker 2: which is a version of basically saying, you know, if
Speaker 2: you're poor, you you deserve to be poor because you're
Speaker 2: not good enough to either biologically, culturally fill in the blank.
Speaker 2: And I think that spirit is alive and well in America.
Speaker 2: I think it has been cultivated since Reagan took office
Speaker 2: after the nineteen sixties, which was an exceptional period for
Speaker 2: redefining our values, even if we didn't fully get there.
Speaker 2: And I will say, in my own social networks, and
Speaker 2: I'm not going to name any names, I heard more
Speaker 2: than a few stories of people saying, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: look at those poor people getting those checks and look
Speaker 2: at what they're doing with that money. Whether it was
Speaker 2: true or not, it didn't matter. What mattered is that
Speaker 2: poor people are not to be trusted, they're not good people,
Speaker 2: and we should we shouldn't encourage the dependency that comes
Speaker 2: with it. These are all things that every American listening
Speaker 2: to me right now knows fully well. But being honest
Speaker 2: about the scale of that sentiment, that ideology that exists
Speaker 2: in our society. I think is a problem that your
Speaker 2: book tries to address by giving a new term, at
Speaker 2: least to yourself, this notion of a poverty abolitionist, this
Speaker 2: idea that listen, we actually have to commit ourselves to
Speaker 2: ending poverty and it's not going to be solved by
Speaker 2: fixing poor people.
Speaker 1: Right. There's this line in the book by Tommy ORNs,
Speaker 1: the novelist that I just love, where he says, these
Speaker 1: kids are jumping out of the windows of burning buildings,
Speaker 1: falling to their deaths, and we think that the problem
Speaker 1: is that they're jumping, and we have to find ways
Speaker 1: of telling the story about the fire. You know, who
Speaker 1: lit it, who's warming their hands by it. And I
Speaker 1: think we have to have this reflex where every time
Speaker 1: someone goes down that road, or goes down the scarcity
Speaker 1: mindset road, the idea that we can't afford to do more.
Speaker 1: I think we just have to have this narrative, rhetorical
Speaker 1: reflex we're pushing back constantly, and for me, the idea
Speaker 1: of a poverty abolitionism is a conviction, a commitment that
Speaker 1: shares with other abolitionist movements, the belief that poverty is
Speaker 1: an abomination. It's not something we have to live with.
Speaker 1: It's not something that we should want to reduce, it's
Speaker 1: something we should want to end. And I think that
Speaker 1: it shares with other abolitionist movements, like the movement to
Speaker 1: abolished lavery of the prison, the recognition that profiting from
Speaker 1: someone else's paying corrupts all of us. And I think
Speaker 1: that when we take this on as an identity, it
Speaker 1: becomes personal and political. It means shopping differently, investing differently,
Speaker 1: living differently, flexing our influence and wherever we have it
Speaker 1: in the spirit of divesting from poverty. And I think
Speaker 1: that this is kind of how we change the common sense.
Speaker 1: But we all have to have some skin in the game,
Speaker 1: I think, and not just keep kicking the can down
Speaker 1: the road and putting it on whoever that uncle that
Speaker 1: comes to Thanksgiving, or that one relative or the guy
Speaker 1: down the hall or the other political party, that start
Speaker 1: really taking some ownership over this in our own lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You use this term by Seawright Mills along the way
Speaker 2: that you call that he coined, and you use here
Speaker 2: structural immorality that fundamentally we have a society that was
Speaker 2: built on immoral premises. You know, we don't have to
Speaker 2: go down the road of the indigenous land that was
Speaker 2: stolen or the enslaved bodies, but that the ongoing way
Speaker 2: in which freedom in America also means the freedom to exploit,
Speaker 2: to take as much as possible, and then to blame
Speaker 2: people for their own misery as a result of that process.
Speaker 2: You even use the term at some point you're like,
Speaker 2: if this isn't gas lighting, I don't know what it is, right.
Speaker 1: Right, And a lot of us just just trying to
Speaker 1: live find ourselves morally compromised traditions and relationships, right, And
Speaker 1: so I think that I love this term structural immorality
Speaker 1: because it recognizes that, like, look, you know, this is
Speaker 1: hard for all of us. We're all kind of hard
Speaker 1: in us. But we can start investing day by day.
Speaker 1: And so I think that finding ways to personalize this,
Speaker 1: I feel like it's important for building that political will.
Speaker 2: Listen, you make really clear here in this book that
Speaker 2: the cost of solving poverty, of ending poverty, of abolishing
Speaker 2: poverty means that we all have to bear some cost
Speaker 2: for doing that, and all of this bs in our
Speaker 2: talking points that we hear in the public policy debate.
Speaker 2: We all win with equity, we all win. Everybody can
Speaker 2: be rich is bullshit. It is bullshit. In order for
Speaker 2: the people living in East Hoorn next to me, which
Speaker 2: is on average a more working class community than the
Speaker 2: affluence South Orange that I live in, either my taxes
Speaker 2: are going to have to go up to help subsidize
Speaker 2: their needs, or the price of my home is going
Speaker 2: to have to come down so that more of them
Speaker 2: can afford to live in this community, either through single
Speaker 2: family units or affordable housing. Either way, something has to change,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to have to give up something in
Speaker 2: order for that change to happen. I just want to
Speaker 2: end this conversation with that recognition, because we cannot keep
Speaker 2: believing that solving for an economic system built for exploitation
Speaker 2: means that we can all be good people and bear
Speaker 2: no burden or cost for change.
Speaker 1: Right. I think that those of us that have found
Speaker 1: economic security and privilege will have to take less from
Speaker 1: the government. We will have to start benefiting less from
Speaker 1: government largess. But what we get from that bargain is
Speaker 1: a better country. We get a safer country, we get
Speaker 1: a healthier country, we get a freer country. We get
Speaker 1: a country where we don't have to worry about our
Speaker 1: kids so much. We get a country that lives up
Speaker 1: to its stated values and its higher his highest angels,
Speaker 1: you know, in highest values. So I think that you're right.
Speaker 1: It is a lie to swallow these everyone and wins arguments.
Speaker 1: But I do think that there are costs that we're
Speaker 1: bearing now as a country by tolerating all this desperation
Speaker 1: and depravity around us. And there's going to be cost
Speaker 1: to unwinding ourselves from the addiction of poverty. But those
Speaker 1: are the costs that I'm totally willing to bear. I
Speaker 1: want to live in that country.
Speaker 3: Matt. You are so intelligent, and you're also so thoughtful
Speaker 3: and caring. I mean, it's a thing that I think
Speaker 3: is in It's rare and amazing, and it comes through
Speaker 3: in your writing and it obviously comes through and speaking
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 1: So thank you well your work and Khalil's your work
Speaker 1: has meant so much to me over the years, and
Speaker 1: your friendship and collegialship, and thank you so much for
Speaker 1: everything you do out in the world. So it's been
Speaker 1: a real honor, you know, just to be in conversation
Speaker 1: with you all, and I hope we can do it
Speaker 1: in person soon.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much Matt for joining us today on some
Speaker 2: of our best friends are thanks us. What a good conversation.
Speaker 2: I learned a lot man. But you know, Ben, something
Speaker 2: that really struck me talking to him when he said
Speaker 2: that a mobile home park owner makes four hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars profit off of backs of poor people in Milwaukee, Like,
Speaker 2: I was like, damn, that's that's a lot of bread
Speaker 2: and it. You know, we often like think that people
Speaker 2: who are renting these places are doing like public service,
Speaker 2: you know, to some degree, because these are really shitty places,
Speaker 2: whether it's a mobile home park or some slumlord in
Speaker 2: the Bronx. But no, what he's really saying is that
Speaker 2: they are holding the line on their costs to create
Speaker 2: decent places of living so that they can make as
Speaker 2: much money as possible off the poorest people.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I mean this is the work that I've
Speaker 3: done on housing too, and why we need government in
Speaker 3: these roles because the private market is never going to
Speaker 3: deliver this fairly. Yeah, that's what we learn over and
Speaker 3: over and over again.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then government with like direct cash assistance, you know,
Speaker 2: you end up with twenty two cents in the pocket
Speaker 2: of poor person and the rich people are getting mortgage deductions.
Speaker 2: It is so much so yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean so for me and all of that.
Speaker 3: Then hearing him talk about poverty abolition, which is not
Speaker 3: something I had heard about before this book and before
Speaker 3: this conversation, is like, I like that. It makes me
Speaker 3: think about it in terms of prison abolition and about
Speaker 3: mass incarceration, because when I think about mass incarceration, I
Speaker 3: think about these fifty years and that we're living in
Speaker 3: this status quo which is is not normal. It's an aberrations,
Speaker 3: it's punishing, and we can't accept it as normal. And
Speaker 3: that's what I think poverty abolition does too. Like the
Speaker 3: way we're living now, we can't accept this, you know,
Speaker 3: the air we're breathing, and so it is that kind
Speaker 3: of call to action. It is involves all of us,
Speaker 3: and so yeah, I think that phrase should be used more.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And you know, you just said something that
Speaker 2: I hadn't thought about when we talked to Matt. But
Speaker 2: it just echoes your point really clearly. The fact of
Speaker 2: mass incarceration, as a lot of prison abolitionists will say,
Speaker 2: is a consequence of the way that poor people were
Speaker 2: abandoned by the state. Yea connected they're connected. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: it's the right approach to solving both problems. So we
Speaker 2: got work to do. I don't know about you, but
Speaker 2: I'm on it. I am on it. First responder poverty, abolitionism,
Speaker 2: signing me up, love you, Love you too. Some of
Speaker 2: My Best Friends Are is a production of Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 2: The show is written and hosted by me Khalil Dubron
Speaker 2: Muhammad and my best friend Ben Austin.
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