Currently reading
Hieroglyph: Stories and Blueprints for a Better Future
Ukraine: Zbig's Grand Chessboard & How the West Was Checkmated
The Girl on the Train: A Novel
Our Souls at Night: A novel
Above the Waterfall
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction
The Homicide Report: Understanding Murder in America
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
The Gods of Mars
This is a depressing account of many individuals who are afflicted with poverty and are, with exceptions, unable to escape. The book provides considerable ammunition for the view that the poor are kept there by an uncaring and hostile society. From the tales and analyses emerge nuggets of potential policy directions. For instance, there is attention given to the disparity in spending for schooling based on local real estate valuation. Certainly centralizing revenues and then distributing them according to actual need would be a preferable way to address such imbalances. He also provides much detail about the hurdles faced by the working poor when they try to get social services. A couple of possible ideas popped to me from this. First, a centralized data system that took in all information and then generated matching programs, with completed applications, ID cards, authorizations, whatever, would make it possible for those in need to do one-stop shopping. Another small idea would be to add, or increase in cases where it does not already exist, night-time hours for social service agencies, so that people need not take off from work in order to come in. Shipler makes it clear that dysfunction in families is a major factor in poverty, and it may be that in many cases all the social services in the world will not effect change. But overall, it remains clear that needs are great, and society is not adequately focused on how to bring the poor further into a middle class mainstream. This is gripping, heart-rending stuff. A must read for anyone seriously into public welfare policy.