Living outside of America does not relieve me of the curiosity of how things are going now and what life might have been like if I had stayed there.
Reading internet news is not as simple as just searching for “news” and digging in. Source reliability, bias, advertising money – all these must be considered. Bad news gets more attention than good, and outrage brings eyeballs (and advertising dollars).
But just about every news source I read says that things aren’t going well in America, and there are lots of problems that are getting worse rather than better.
This book focuses on a problem from a long time ago, poverty, which seems to be reaching a breaking point in some areas of the United States. There are plenty of books that look hard at poor people and try to figure out how they got that way, but this book instead focuses on how people who aren’t poor tend to benefit from the people that are, and how the current system is difficult to change because it is in affluent people’s best interests for this state of affairs to remain as it is.
There are a lot of statistics used in this book while examining the problem – maybe too many for my taste but I understand that the author needs to back up some of these contentions that will be hard for affluent people to hear.
The writing can be a little bit idealistic, but more importantly it is solution-oriented writing. It is easy to point out problems but much better to give some ideas on how to begin to solve them. The author is realistic as this kind of societal repair would mean a dramatic shift. But he remains positive and seems like someone who wants America to do better.
I liked this book and after reading so many articles decrying poverty and homelessness it is good to see someone handing out ideas. I guess the big question is: Is anyone in America listening?
Next I am reading a trio of novellas by Nghi Vo.
