Matthew Desmond
Appearances
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
I think a lot of us do benefit from poverty in ways we don't realize, right? We soak the poor in the labor market, the housing market. We continue to have a government that gives the most to families that need it the least by subsidizing affluence instead of fighting poverty. We continue to live in segregated lives.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
A lot of us are connected to that problem, but it also means we're connected to the solution. I don't think we have to live with all this poverty in America.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
Yeah.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
So if you take everyone below the poverty line and lift them above it, that's about $177 billion a year. And it's a super rough estimate, but it gives us a sense of what we're talking about when we're talking about ending poverty, because that's so utterly attainable for us, right? That's less than 1% of our GDP.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
So a study came out that showed that if the top 1% of Americans just paid all the taxes they owed, Just the ones they owed. Just the ones they owed and not got taxed at a higher rate, just paid what they owed, we would net about $175 billion a year. So we could just about close the poverty gap.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
Yeah, right, yeah.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
So I think we have to recognize that the things that we are doing to fight poverty now really, really matter. Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance. These are lifesavers. These programs are lifting millions of folks above the poverty line every year. We also have to recognize that we have to do more, because the problem's getting a lot worse.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
So over the last 50 years, we've had wages stagnate for too many workers. We've had housing costs soar. We now have the lowest wages, some of the lowest wages in the industrialized world, in the richest country in the history of the world.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
They're not just higher. Like, our child poverty rate is double what it is in Canada, Germany, South Korea. You go to Europe, Europeans have this phrase, like, American-style deprivation.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
By what percent? So the third rescue plan, the third rescue bill under Biden, signed it in March, right? We dropped child poverty by 44% in six months because of that intervention.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
Right. Well, a lot of that because we were quiet. We were quiet. We dropped evictions to the lowest they've been ever on record. We did the most for poor kids we've done since the war on poverty and the Great Society. And there was not a lot of us saying, this is the new America that we want. We weren't writing our congressperson. We weren't talking to our neighbor about it. We were quiet.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
And in our silence, like 5 million more kids got tossed into poverty the next year.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
YEAH, THERE'S SOMETHING TO THAT. BUT ONE THING THAT BLEW ME AWAY, I THINK THE THING THAT BLEW ME AWAY WRITING THIS BOOK IS THAT IF YOU LOOK AT EVERYTHING THE GOVERNMENT DOES FOR US, All those poverty programs that flow to the poorest families, like food stamps, social insurance, like Social Security, but also tax breaks. You got to count tax breaks.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
You know, they cost the government money and they put money in my pocket. If you add all that up, you learn that the average family in the bottom 20% of the income distribution, so our poorest families, they're receiving about $26,000 a year from the government. Okay. So the average family in the top 20% are richest families. They're receiving about $35,000 a year from the government.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
Say that again? So this is the true nature of our welfare state. They're getting about 40% more than the poorest families. And then we have like the audacity The shamelessness to look at a program that would like reduce child poverty or make sure all of us had access to a dentist and be like, gosh, how could we afford it?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
So, you know, a lot of folks just look at that income tax and they'll say the poor aren't paying taxes. But that's like counting calories only by counting what you had for breakfast. Right. You know, and so if you're looking at the whole tax structure, you see, you know, a lot of the poor working class, middle class folks are paying the same tax levy as rich folks.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
The folks that have the lowest tax burden in the country, of course, are richest families. Makes no sense. But we're not bad people. No.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
What would you say? So I think we've got to do three things. We've got to deepen our investments in fighting poverty. We've got to get back to those big, bold programs that we had in the Great Society. We saw what we could do in COVID. What were some of those programs that you would... So we expanded Social Security. We created Medicaid and Medicare. We expanded educational opportunities.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
These are deep investments in the poorest families in the country. Right. So we need to get back to that. We can fund that by fair tax implementation. So the IRS chair a few years ago told Congress that we lose a trillion dollars a year, a trillion on tax cheating and evasion.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
Right. I think we need to move back to that question, which I think is this second piece of the puzzle. We need to have new ways of empowering the poor. We need to find a way to build worker power, to expand housing choice, to finally take on all the ways they're getting financially soaked by banks and payday lenders in the country. And so this is a way... Why is that so hard?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
They need better choice, so they're not accepting the best bad option all the time. So if you think of, like, how are we gonna build worker power in this economy? So now you've got to go to one Amazon warehouse or one Starbucks location at a time, right?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
Remember when we were losing our minds because one Amazon warehouse in Staten Island maybe organized a few summers ago, and we're like, oh my gosh. But we have no chance of organizing all our warehouse workers or baristas like this. So we have to have different approaches. So the new labor movement is saying, let's organize entire sectors. Let's get everyone in food and hospitality.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
If they take a vote, And that could trigger a process where the Secretary of Labor is like, all right, let's bring worker representatives, corporate representatives, let's hash something out that covers every single worker in that sector. So this is what policy wonks call sectoral bargaining. And it's a way to organize all those kind of warehouse workers, all those baristas that want to go.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
Yeah. Why don't we put workers on corporate boards, for example? Easy.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
And would sectoral bargaining get that done? It could move us closer to something more like a capitalism we deserve, a capitalism that serves the people, not the other way around. And a lot of the times, I think the ideas we have about growth, are just wrong. If you rewind the clock, 1960s, we had a higher corporate tax rate, about 50%. About one in three of us were belonging to a union.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
And we were much more productive as an economy than we are now. And we're kind of fed this lie that we've got to slash these unions, we've got to slash this corporate tax break, and we're going to get the economic growth. And we win in that bargain. And we got the inequality, but we didn't get the growth.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
Right. Like, could we have a ticker that's about, you know, the number of families that went to a food pantry this month to eat, right? A ticker that's, like, the number of families that lost their homes.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
Like, a ticker about the number of kids that can't afford a winter coat this winter, you know?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
And kind of tracking that as, like, the real, the people's economy.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
I just don't think the left has fully committed to poverty abolitionism. You know? You know, we know where our local organic cucumber came from, you know? But we don't... Wait, we do?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
Do I have to hold it under a blue light? How do we do it? We know. All right. We know. We don't know how much the farmhand got paid picking it. No. You know, if you go to London, you go to the independent stores, they have a sticker on the door, and they say, this store pays a living wage. Now, our stores, we've got a lot of stickers, but we often don't have that one, you know?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
And so I think that more of us have to just commit. You're saying we've got to put up poverty has no home here signs? I think the left needs to get more serious about economic justice. And do you think... So I always worry...
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
I don't think it's hard. Do they call you? Do they at least ask?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
Yeah.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
Yeah. Yeah. But I think, you know, that we definitely need more political movements. We need new legislation. But we also need more skin in the game, I think, as a country. So, like, let's think about segregation, right? So segregation is upheld by zoning laws. It's upheld by history.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
But it's also upheld, like, at soccer games, you know, where your buddy turns to you and you're like, you know, you saw that building. We're not going to build that thing, right? It's upheld a little. Oh, you mean NIMBY?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
We all want economic justice. Yeah. For those guys over there.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
There's huge investments. So look at food stamps, right?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
A billion dollars dedicated to food stamps gets you $1.5 billion in our GDP. If you look at what it does for kids, the long-term economic and health benefit for kids, it's a huge return on investment. It's about $1 in food stamps gets you $62 coming back to you in a society. Meanwhile, right, when we cut the corporate tax rate, the benefits we get are a lot less.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond
We get a lot less than we're promised often when we're doing that. So investing in American people and stabilizing communities that need it the most is the best way for all of us.