Broke in America

November 16, 2020
Social worker Goldblum, founder of the National Diaper Bank Network, and journalist Shaddox deliver an illuminating and wide-ranging account of what poverty looks like in America and how it is perpetuated by a broken and negligent system. The U.S. government actually wastes money by underfunding welfare programs, according to the authors, who claim that cuts to food assistance programs have contributed to malnutrition, vitamin deficiency, and other medical conditions that require greater spending on health care. Goldblum and Shaddox also note that majority-Black cities, including Detroit and Baltimore, are more likely to have high lead levels and other issues with their water supply, and that bottling corporations often pay less for water access than residential customers. Sketching the roots of American poverty, the authors point to redlining and predatory lending practices that have made homeownership and wealth accumulation difficult for people of color, among other causes. They suggest a number of potential policy solutions, including raising the minimum wage and a national jobs guarantee, and draw on their own experiences to advise readers on how to get involved. Enriched with revealing statistics and vivid personal stories, this is a valuable resource in the fight against poverty.

December 1, 2020
An exploration of why so many Americans are struggling financially. Goldblum, founder of the National Diaper Bank Network, and journalist Shaddox argue that the systems that should protect our citizens are broken and that poverty results from flawed policies--compounded by racism, sexism, and other ills--rather than people's "bad choices." Federal programs for the poor often fall far short of their aims: The U.S. has only 36 affordable housing units available for every 100 extremely low-income families; roughly 1 in 3 households on Navajo reservations lack plumbing; and inadequate counsel by public defenders can lead to harsher penalties for crimes or time in "debtors' prisons" for those unable to pay fines or court fees. An overarching problem is that the U.S. determines eligibility for government benefits with an outdated and "irrationally low" federal poverty level of $21,720 for a family of three, which doesn't take into account necessities such as child care when women work outside the home. The authors credibly assert that it makes more sense to define poverty as an inability to afford basic needs in seven areas--"water, food, housing, energy, transportation, hygiene, and health"--each of which gets a chapter that draws on academic or other studies and interviews with people like a Baltimore resident who had to flush his toilet with bottled water after the city shut it off due to an unpaid bill. In a plainspoken primer in the spirit of recent books like Anne Kim's Abandoned and Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's Tightrope, Goldblum and Shaddox interweave macro analyses with examples of micro interventions that might work in any community. A Head Start teacher in Lytle, Texas, says her program saw benefits just from giving toothbrushes (and a chance to use them at a classroom sink) to children who had none at home: "They come here, and they scrub like there's no tomorrow." A down-to-earth overview of the causes and effects of poverty and possible remedies.

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