![]() ![]() The larger culture misunderstands the causes of poverty, Shipler argues, “and is therefore uncertain about the solutions,” though the solutions are there: in a surprising moment, a Wal-Mart manager in rural New England reveals that the store could easily afford to pay its employees two dollars an hour more. They are sometimes the victims of addiction, ignorance, and bad choices in most instances, however, the working poor are single mothers and single wage-earners with several children and few options. These American poor-natives and immigrants alike-“suffer in good times and bad,” writes Shipler. ![]() Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Shipler ( A Country of Strangers, 1997) reveals that this may be illusory: for many of the men and women he portrays here, any property of worth has been mortgaged and remortgaged, and when it is sold, often in a hurry and for less than it’s worth, any proceeds go to paying down the mountains of debt that the poor accumulate. In The Mystery of Capital (2000), economist Hernando de Soto wondered why the Third World’s poor lack the fungible assets that their American counterparts hold-assets that keep them from being, well, so poor. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |