A Higher Minimum Wage, More Unions, and More Public Housing. Review of ‘Poverty, by America’ by Matthew Desmond
“Why is there so much poverty in America?” This question opens Poverty, by America, a newly released book by Princeton University Professor of Sociology Matthew Desmond. The book’s emphatic answer is “exploitation.” In fact, all Americans fortunate not to live in poverty, as Desmond sees it, are at least indirectly complicit in exploiting poor Americans […]
Job Gentrification: Three Questions as a Way of Teaching About Minimum Wages
I have a go-to discussion strategy, for when I teach undergraduate political economy. It is a way of shocking students out of their dogmatic slumbers. I ask three questions; here are the first two: 1. What percentage of workers in the US work at the minimum wage? 2. If you have a job in the […]
