“Poverty isn't simply the condition of not having enough money. It's the condition of not having enough choice, and being taken advantage of because of that. When we ignore the role that exploitation plays in trapping people in poverty, we end up designing policy that is weak at best and ineffective at worst.” PovertyInequalityExploitation Book:Poverty, by America Source: Poverty, by America
“To live and strive in modern America is to participate in a series of morally fraught systems. If a family’s entire financial livelihood depends on the value of its home, it’s not hard to understand why that family would oppose anything that could potentially lower its property values, like a proposal to develop an affordable housing complex in the neighborhood.” AmericaOpportunityPovertySocietyExploitationHousing Book:Poverty, by America Source: Poverty, by America
“Exploitation. Now, there’s a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate. 42 It is a word that speaks to the fact that poverty is not just a product of low incomes. It is also a product of extractive markets. Boosting poor people’s incomes by increasing the minimum wage or public benefits, say, is absolutely crucial. But not all of those extra dollars will stay in the pockets of the poor. Wage hikes are tempered if rents rise along with them, just as food stamps are worth less if groceries in the inner city cost more—and they do, as much as 40 percent more, by one estimate. 43 Poverty is two-faced—a matter of income and expenses, input and output—and in a world of exploitation, it will not be effectively ameliorated if we ignore this plain fact.” PovertyExploitationMinimum WageIncreasing Minimum Wage Book:Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City Source: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“Every condition exists,” Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, “simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.” Exploitation. Now, there’s a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.” PovertySocial JusticeExploitation Book:Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City Source: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City