{"id":4237,"date":"2023-05-04T16:17:51","date_gmt":"2023-05-04T20:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/news\/want-to-fight-poverty-take-a-hard-look-at-your-own-tax-breaks-princeton-sociologist-says\/"},"modified":"2023-05-04T16:17:53","modified_gmt":"2023-05-04T20:17:53","slug":"want-to-fight-poverty-take-a-hard-look-at-your-own-tax-breaks-princeton-sociologist-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/?p=4237","title":{"rendered":"Want to fight poverty? \u2018Take a hard look\u2019 at your own tax breaks, Princeton sociologist says."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Americans benefiting from a \u201clopsided welfare state\u201d should be more critical of tax breaks and policy structures that potentially add to their wealth at the expense of others, the leading U.S. poverty researcher Matthew Desmond urged Wednesday during an event at the Urban Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of us on the left and the right and in the center, we\u2019ve been pretty comfortable with absolving theories of the problem \u2014 as if there\u2019s all these tens of millions of people that don\u2019t have enough to make basic necessities, and it\u2019s nobody\u2019s fault,\u201d Desmond said in a conversation with Mary K. Cunningham, the vice president for metropolitan housing and communities policy at the Urban Institute.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI\u2019ve grown quite weary of those absolving theories of poverty,\u201d he added. \u201cMany of us consume the cheap goods and services the working poor produce; many of us are invested in the stock market. And don\u2019t we benefit when our savings go up and up, even when that comes at the cost of a human sacrifice?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instead of settling into that kind of thinking, Americans should undertake a poverty \u201caudit\u201d and consider the ways in which they\u2019re connected to systems that promote and maintain economic inequality, Desmond, a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor of sociology at Princeton University, said in his latest book, \u201cPoverty, by America.\u201d It\u2019s one step people can take to become what he calls a \u201cpoverty abolitionist.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the event Wednesday, Desmond said consumers could further engage by shopping and investing in a way that expresses solidarity with workers and poor people. That could mean turning to B Corporations \u2014 companies that have been certified for having greater accountability, transparency, and social and environmental performances \u2014 or consulting organizations like Union Plus, which provides lists of union-made products. <\/p>\n

But people should also \u201ctake a hard look at our own tax breaks, and start having different conversations with our neighbors, and our coworkers, and our family members, about those tax breaks,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just paid our taxes \u2014 and most of us who paid our taxes, we were like, \u2018Crap, I gotta pay my taxes,\u2019 and that\u2019s just how we talk about taxes. \u2018Taxes should hurt,\u2019 Reagan famously said, and they do hurt,\u201d Desmond said. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut what if next time tax season rolls along and your neighbor leans over the fence and is like, \u2018Dude, did you see the property bill this year?\u2019\u201d he continued. \u201cWhat if you responded by being like, \u2018Dude, I can\u2019t believe I get a mortgage deduction for my home \u2014 and I don\u2019t need this thing! And I wouldn\u2019t have a problem with it if there wasn\u2019t this eviction crisis and kids weren\u2019t getting evicted every day in this country. So I\u2019m donating my deduction to local eviction defense, and I\u2019m going to write my congressperson saying that they should wind this down for families like me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

People in the U.S. also have to turn against segregation, he said, by being more engaged in conversations about zoning reform and less satisfied with existing efforts on housing affordability. <\/p>\n

And if making a real difference feels impossible, Desmond said, remember that it\u2019s \u201ceasier to change norms than beliefs.\u201d Making opportunity hoarding \u201cuncool\u201d and making adjustments to our own behaviors might inspire others to follow along, he said, referencing a concept scholars have used to describe how certain groups control resources while excluding others. <\/p>\n

From the archives (2017):<\/strong> Opinion:\u00a0Here\u2019s how wealthy Americans keep the best for themselves<\/p>\n

\u2018Lie of scarcity\u2019 <\/h6>\n

If Americans have become complacent to the country\u2019s official poverty rate of 11.6% \u2014 which translates to tens of millions of people living at or below the federal poverty level \u2014\u00a0it\u2019s not because they haven\u2019t been shown any alternatives. For example, the expanded child tax credit implemented during the pandemic, which provided many U.S. families with automatic monthly payments of $250 or $300 per child before its expiration at the end of 2021, was linked to a massive but potentially temporary drop in child poverty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Efforts to extend the benefit relied on Congress passing President Joe Biden\u2019s Build Back Better agenda, which Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, declined to support. The package, at $1.75 trillion, was too costly, Manchin said at the time.<\/p>\n

But that kind of policy change requires more than just an attitude shift \u2014 it needs funding, Desmond said. He noted that one study showed that if the wealthiest 1% of Americans paid the taxes they owed and stopped \u201cevading taxes so successfully,\u201d the country could raise an extra $175 billion a year, which would be \u201cmore than enough\u201d to bring back that expanded tax credit. It could more than double the country\u2019s investments in affordable housing, and it\u2019s \u201calmost enough to pull everyone below the official poverty line above it,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that we have to reject this lie of scarcity,\u201d Desmond said. \u201cWe have to cultivate a new language and stop repeating and accepting this fabricated scarcity \u2014\u00a0and stop using our grown-up voice to say, \u2018Well, land of scarce resources.\u2019 That\u2019s not this land.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the archives (2022):<\/strong> Racial and economic inequality persists. Why do many people deny it?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Americans benefiting from a \u201clopsided welfare state\u201d should be more critical of tax breaks and policy structures that potentially add to their wealth at the expense of others, the leading U.S. poverty researcher Matthew Desmond urged Wednesday during an event at the Urban Institute. \u201cMany of us on the left and the right and in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4238,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[236],"tags":[83],"class_list":["post-4237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"yoast_head":"\nWant to fight poverty? \u2018Take a hard look\u2019 at your own tax breaks, Princeton sociologist says. | iFintechWorld<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Americans benefiting from a \u201clopsided welfare state\u201d should be more critical of tax breaks and policy structures that potentially add to their wealth at\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/?p=4237\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Want to fight poverty? 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