Matthew Desmond - “Poverty, by America” & What It Takes to Close the Poverty Gap | The Daily Show

thanks for being here good be here uh let me say this fabulous book Thank you filled with such interesting uh research and uh unusual and I think really interesting ideas I mean does America require poverty to function in the way that we do is is it a requirement of our society yeah no I don't think so I mean it does the system we run do they require in the capitalist system people in poverty to function at maximum profit I think a lot of us do benefit from poverty in ways we don't realize right we soak

the poor in the labor market the housing market we continue to have a government that gives the most the families that needs the least by subsidizing affluence instead of fighting poverty right we continue to live in segregated lives a lot of us are connected to that problem but it also means we're connected to the solution I don't think we have to live with all this poverty America this system can work you say something in the book that blew my mind which is there's a part in there where you talk about the tax burden yeah and

if we just collected the taxes that were owed yeah it would account for 1 something trillion dollars and your calculation of how we could end poverty in this country was how much money so if you take everyone below the poverty line and lift them above it that's about $177 billion a year and it's a a super rough estimate but it gives us a sense of what we're talking about when we're talking about ending poverty because that's so utterly attainable for us right that's less than 1% of our GDP right so a study came out that

showed that if the top 1% of Americans just paid all the taxes they owed just the ones they owed just the ones they owed and not got taxed at a higher rate just paid what they owed we would net about $175 billion a year so we could just about close the poverty Gap just with and with without levying other taxes just collecting what we need right I mean so like so yeah right yeah but like when you say that I just go no that cannot that can't be right but be right that that's insane and

it's not the one thing I will say it's not like we don't spend money right on eleviating poverty we do the budget for America was what 3.7 trillion 10 years ago now it's like 7 trillion yeah we do spend the money are we just spending it inefficiently so I think we have to recognize that the things that we are doing to fight poverty now really really matter Medicaid food stamps you know housing assistance these are Lifesavers right and so these things these programs are lifting millions of folks above the poverty line every year we also

have to to recognize that we have to do more you know because the problem's getting a lot worse so over the last 50 years we've had wages stagnate for too many workers we've had housing costs sore we now have the lowest wages some of the lowest wages in the industrialized world in the richest country in the history of the world our poverty levels are higher than almost all other countries in the industrial world they're not just higher like our child poverty rate is double what it is in Canada Germany South Korea you go to Europe

Europeans have this phrase like American style deprivation so it's I don't even want to know what the German word for that is but it sure it's very long and sounds like someone has bronchitis right but it's this is the part that's shocking we've done things I'm going to go back to the pandemic that there was the era you know uh the rent assistance program and uh the the child tax uh credits poverty dropped in the pandemic when people were really suffering right by what percent so the third rescue plan uh the third rescue bill under

Biden um signed it in March right uh we dropped child poverty by 44% in 6 months uh because of intervention so uh we naturally at that point had to end it very quickly right that program right right well a lot of that because we were quiet we were quiet you know we dropped evictions to the lowest they've been ever on record we did the most for poor kids we've done since uh the war on poverty in the Great Society and there was there was not a lot of us saying this is the new America that

we want we weren't writing our Congress person we weren't talking to our neighbor about it we were quiet and in our silence like 5 million more kids got tossed into poverty the next year and so I think the is it a question of when we think about we always think like well for people below the poverty line there's a ton of programs for them but I'm a little bit above it and my parents are getting older and my kids are going to school and I'm in a tight squeeze and quite frankly I don't want any

resources that I might have to pay into and are there too many people even above poverty who are struggling but feel like I'm not getting any value on my return for tax dollars isn't there a little resource guarding and by the way not without cause yeah there's something to that but one thing that blew me I think the thing that blew me away writing this book is that if you look at everything the government does for us all those poverty programs that flow to the poorest families like food stamps uh social insurance like Social Security

but also tax breaks you got to count tax breaks you know they cost the government money and they put money in my pocket if you add all that up you learn that the average family the bottom 20% of the income distribution so our poorest families they're receiving about $26,000 a year Year from the government okay so the average family in the top 20% our richest families they're receiving about $35,000 a year from the government there say that again so so this is the true nature of our welfare state they're getting about 40% more than the

poorest families and then we have like the audacity the shamelessness to look at a program that would like reduce child poverty or make sure all of us had access to a dentist and be like gosh how could we afford it right you know here's where they go with that and this is the thing that I would like you uh uh to talk about which is what they would say is oh yeah but the top 10% 20% they pay all the taxes I don't think people understand what a regressive tax system we really have for people

not just at poverty but working class middle class that comes from sales taxes and everything people pay much more percentage of their income at the lower levels even though it's not federally taxed right so you know a lot of folks just look at that income tax and they'll say the poor aren't paying taxes but that's like counting calories only by counting what you had for breakfast right you know and so if you're look at the whole tax structure you see you know a lot of the poor working-class middle class folks are paying the same tax

levy as Rich folks the folks that have the lowest tax burd in the country of course our richest families makes no sense but we're not bad people no so what is going wrong is it if you were Doge if you were there to say yeah what what how could we do this more efficiently to get people that are struggling to alleviate that because in many other countries they do do that yeah what what would you say so I think we got to do three things we got to deepen our investments in fighting poverty we got

to get back to those big bold programs that we had in the Great Society we saw what we could do in what were some of those programs that you would so we expanded Social Security we created Medicaid and Medicare we expanded educational opportunities these were deep investments in the poorest families in the country right so we need to get back to that we can fund that by fair tax implementation so the IRS chair a few years ago told Congress that we lose a trillion dollars a year a trillion on tax cheating and evasion a trillion

a trillion yeah those poor people are getting away with the ton right a trillion a year and alleviating poverty would be 200 billion a year what right what is there something in the system of federalism that means those dollars uh to the like if Walmart has a five billion or10 billion profit and yet still a lot of their workers are on Public Assistance or struggle who might not be below poverty line but just above it how are we not Penal izing them right I think we need to move back to that question which I think

it's this like second piece of the puzzle we need to have new ways of empowering the poor we need to find a way to build worker power to expand housing choice to finally take on all the ways they're getting financially soaked by Banks and payday lenders in the country right and so this is a way why is that so is it that poor people need better lobbyists is that what this is like how does this get done they need better choice so they're not accepting the best bad option all the time so if you think

of like how are we going to build worker power in this economy so now you got to go to one Amazon warehouse or one Starbucks location at a time right remember when we were losing our minds cuz one Amazon warehouse in Staten Island maybe organized a few summers ago and we're like oh my gosh you know but we have no chance of organized all our warehouse workers or bu's like this so we have to have different approaches so the new labor movement is saying let's organize entire sectors let's get everyone in food of hospitality let's

if they take a vote then that could trigger a process where the Secretary of Labor is like all right let's bring worker representatives corporate Representatives let's hash something out that covers every single worker in that sector so this is what policy WS call sectoral bargaining and it's a way to organize all those kind of warehouse workers all those Brees and go is there something too to getting the government to Value labor again in the way that they value Capital right Capital being taxed that you know gains that are much lower there's a lot of rules

that ease uh Capital uh stock BuyBacks you're you're only uh you know have to answer to shareholders is there a way to get workers in on that because that seems like where the accumulation of wealth seems the greatest how do we plug labor into that stream without necessarily killing the stream but letting it really uh uh getting them into the flow of it yeah uh why don't we put workers on corporate boards for example you know easy easy why do they fight that and and would sectoral bargaining get that done it could move us closer

to something more like a capitalism we deserve a capitalism that serves the people not the other way around and a lot of the times I think the ideas we have about growth are just wrong you know if you rewind the clock 1960s we had a higher corporate tax rate about 50% % about one and three of us were belonging to a union and we were much more productive as an economy than we are now and we're kind of fed this like lie that like we got to slash these unions we got to slash this corporate

tax break and we're going to get the economic growth and we we win in that bargain and we got the inequality where we didn't get the growth but don't you think the financialization of our economy changed that calculus you know we used to think about IBM the Blue Chip companies you would invest in them and they would have steady growth and and they would give you dividends and and you would work for them for 40 years you know I I was thinking you know if if you were to reasonably watch the news networks the little

bug in the corner is the stock market right right if you go to a hospital they plug you into a machine it gives you your pulse your blood pressure you know all that you would be well within your rights to think that is the measure of my health right I'm looking at that when you watch that you would think oh that must be the measure of our economy's health right is there a way to educate the public that that's not actually our economy right that's just a tiny fraction that goes mostly to I don't know

the top 10% own 50% of the wealth in in the stock market what other measures would give people a better sense of how we're failing right like could we have a ticker that's about you know the number of families who went to a food pantry this month Eat Right a ticker that's like the number of families that lost their home like a a ticker about the number of kids that can't afford a winter coat this winter you know kind of tracking that as like the real the human the people how many people have parents that

need uh uh elder care but it's squeezing them because their kids are going to cut like give a sense of that by the way I reopened that cut just by hitting like that oh just by doing that I can't even do this anymore are these critique it now from the left a little bit Yeah are there things that the left advocates for or does that makes this realignment harder I just don't think the left has fully committed to Poverty abolitionism you know you know we know where our local organic cucumber came from you know but

we don't wait we do we do wait is it written on there do I have to do I have to hold it under a blue light what how do we do it we know all right we know you we don't know how much the farmand got paid picking it no you know if you go to London you go to Independent stores they have a sticker on the door and they say this store pays a living wage now our stores we we've got a lot of stickers but we often don't have that one you know and

so I think that more of us have to just commit you're saying we've got to put up poverty has no home here signs I think that I think we I think the left needs to get more serious about economic Justice and do you think so I always worry here's what I always worry about and I worry about this with climate it always comes down to for some reason on the left you people just have to be better people and that'll put pressure on it I feel like the whole point of joining as a society is

that is that a system can alleviate that like I just don't know how we get out of it without legisl I don't know I mean when you say like we've to call our Congress I'm like I've been in that situation where you call Congressman it does diddly poo right like they're not even answering and half the time they don't even know the ins and outs of what you're talking about like the country's held together by hundreds and hundreds of legislative AIDs that are working tirelessly yeah isn't there can't we present them I would love to

see you Lobby in Washington because I feel like you have interesting ideas that haven't tried we're not walking down the same tired path right is that a possibility or no they don't are they open to that of me going to Washington yes people like you I don't know I'd have to get a tie I'd have they call you did they at least ask yep yeah for real yeah yeah but I think you know that we definitely need more IAL movements we need new legislation but we also need more skin in the game I think as

a country so like let's think about segregation right so segregation is upheld by zoning laws it's upheld by history but it's also upheld like at soccer games you know where your buddy turns you you're like you know you saw that building we're not going to we're not going to build that thing right it's upheld in little Oh you mean nimi the sort of like we all want economic Justice yeah for those guys if you wouldn't mind right but doesn't that speak to that the systems then have to here's what I would say we think of

poverty as a vice and we think of entitlements as a moral hazard for vice why don't we view it as investment why don't we view like what a great economic engine for this country to take areas that have suffered entrenched poverty and rejuvenate them yeah in in a different way there's huge Investments so look at Food Stamps right yes a billion dollars dedicated food stamps get you $1.5 billion in our GDP if you look at what it does for kids the long-term economic and health benef for kids it's a huge return on investment it's about

$1 in food stamps get you $62 coming back to you in a society meanwhile right when we cut the corporate tax rate the benefits we get are a lot less we got a lot less that we are promised often when we're doing that so investing in American people and stabilizing communities that need it the most is the best way for all of us I got to tell you that out of all that argument that to me was the most concise and Powerful because and it's one that I really haven't heard which is you don't understand

like we're not just giving people uh uh money we're investing and getting a huge return and all these corporate sub subsidies are not getting us a good return exactly that's F that's fabulous right there that is anyone watching this uh I really appreciate it uh this book if you get a chance it it will blow it will open your eyes to A system that can often be well-meaning but not function in the manner that it purports to be functioning and it's it's really a wonderfully accessible uh journey through that so I really app appreciate the

book be sure to check out poverty by America Matthew Desmond [Music]