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“Today, the biggest beneficiaries of federal aid are affluent families,” observes Matthew Desmond in “The High Cost of Being Poor,” which will appear in the Review’s April 20 issue. “Every year, the richest American families receive almost 40 percent more in government subsidies than the poorest American families.”

So why is it that those “who benefit most from government largesse in the form of tax breaks harbor the strongest antigovernment sentiments”? Desmond takes readers through the federal tax code and examines the threadbare social safety net—which, briefly reinforced at the beginning of the pandemic, lifted 16 million Americans out of poverty, only to be shredded again—to find out how a country that prioritizes “the subsidization of affluence over the alleviation of poverty” can still pretend to be unable to pay for school lunch.

Below, alongside Desmond’s essay, we have collected a selection from our archives about poverty, inequality, and policy.

Matthew Desmond
The High Cost of Being Poor

The American government gives the most help to those who need it least. This is the true nature of our welfare state.

Marilynne Robinson
What Kind of Country Do We Want?

“The cinch that tightens such slack as remains in the lives of the underpaid is called ‘austerity’ or ‘fiscal discipline.’ Austerity has not touched the beneficiaries of these arrangements, nor has fiscal discipline.”

Caroline Fraser
‘Our Bodies Were Born into Hard Labor’

“‘While we never starved or went without shelter in a chronic way, we all knew what it felt like to need something essential—food, shoes, a safe place to live, a rent payment, a trip to the doctor—and go without it for lack of money.’”

Thomas Piketty
A Practical Vision of a More Equal Society

“The spectacular lowering of top income tax rates has sharply contributed to the rise of inequality since the 1980s, without bringing adequate corresponding benefits to society at large. We must therefore waste no time discarding the taboo that says marginal tax rates must never rise above 50 percent.”

Christopher Jencks
The War on Poverty:
Was It Lost?

“Lyndon Johnson’s promise to eliminate poverty was not contingent on favorable or even neutral economic and demographic trends. His promise was ‘unconditional,’ because he wanted his country to make a moral commitment to end the suffering that poverty causes.”

Christopher Jencks
Did We Lose the War on Poverty? Part II

“Raising Social Security benefits was, in short, the simplest, least controversial, and most effective antipoverty program of the past half-century.”

Jeff Madrick
Time for a New Deal

“The nation’s businesses have illegally, callously, and systematically abused their workers in a time of increased global competition and technological change, while government protection of workers’ rights has significantly weakened.”

John Gross
Poverty Program

“Charles Booth kept returning to immediate social problems, above all to the problem of poverty; he explored the East End, talked to social workers, interested himself in working-class movements—‘though not in Karl Marks (is that the name?) and the ultra set.’”