So Rich, So Poor: Why It's So Hard to End Poverty in America [Hardcover]

Peter Edelman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 29, 2012

If the nation’s gross national income—over $14 trillion—were divided evenly across the entire U.S. population, every household could call itself middle class. Yet the income-level disparity in this country is now wider than at any point since the Great Depression. In 2010 the average salary for CEOs on the S&P 500 was over $1 million—climbing to over $11 million when all forms of compensation are accounted for—while the current median household income for African Americans is just over $32,000. How can some be so rich, while others are so poor?

In this provocative book, Peter Edelman, a former top aide to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and a lifelong antipoverty advocate, offers an informed analysis of how this country can be so wealthy yet have a steadily growing number of unemployed and working poor. According to Edelman, we have taken important positive steps without which 25 to 30 million more people would be poor, but poverty fluctuates with the business cycle. The structure of today’s economy has stultified wage growth for half of America’s workers—with even worse results at the bottom and for people of color—while bestowing billions on those at the top.

So Rich, So Poor delves into what is happening to the people behind the statistics and takes a particular look at the continuing crisis of young people of color, whose possibility of a productive life too often is lost on their way to adulthood. This is crucial reading for anyone who wants to understand the most critical American dilemma of the twenty-first century.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A competent, thorough assessment from a veteran expert in the field."
—Kirkus

"Bobby believed that, ‘as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.’ Much has changed in forty-five years, but as Peter eloquently reminds us, far too many Americans remain trapped in the web of economic injustice. His compassionate and singular voice awakens our conscience and calls us to action."
—Ethel Kennedy

"Peter Edelman brings blinding lucidity to a subject usually mired in prejudice and false preconceptions. Before we have one more discussion of how America can combat its persistent and growing levels of poverty, could everyone please read this book?"
—Barbara Ehrenreich

"If there is one essential book on the great tragedy of poverty and inequality in America, this is it. Peter Edelman is masterful on the issue. With a real-world grasp of politics and the economy, Edelman makes a brilliantly compelling case for what can and must be done."
—Bob Herbert

About the Author

Peter Edelman is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. A top adviser to Senator Robert F. Kennedy from 1964 to 1968, he went on to fill various roles in President Bill Clinton’s administration, from which he famously resigned in protest after Clinton signed the 1996 welfare reform legislation.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (May 29, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595587853
• ISBN-13: 978-1595587855
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.9 x 8.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #173,727 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

70 of 71 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A defining book on the causes of poverty June 5, 2012

By C. Wagner

Format:Hardcover

It is the same old story: Poverty, in the last decade has grown at a rapid clip as the poor got poorer and the rich got richer. The U.S. is virtually number one in the industrialized world in regards to poverty, and not in a good way.
This is hardly an original concept, but it is a subject which the author goes on to address in detail.
Hemorrhaging of good jobs to low pay countries and increases in single parent households hurt women and minorities where they live, but does no ethical person any good.
In the present economic system, the poor and near poor amount to an estimated 103,000,000 U.S. citizens.
The wealthy at the top "...is not only eroding our democracy but also making it virtually impossible to find the resources to do more at the bottom." (p. xviii.)
Great progress eradicating poverty will require bold action on the federal and local level public and private says the author.
And the challenge may be, as Steve Jobs said in 2011, the jobs are not coming back... and the jobs we have left may be insufficient to support a poverty free society.
Wages no longer rise with the consumer price index, which is rigged anyhow. A huge number of jobs do not pay enough to live on. (p.47.). Adequate living may be an income twice the federal poverty level. Naturally, globalization reduces the funding available for entitlement/assistance. Interestingly, the majority of the U.S. poor are white.
Defining poverty is also a rigged game.
Chapter 4 describes the ugly picture of the demise of unions and the current ineffective minimum wage.
In discussing the abandoned, Edelman says "The tools of opportunity need to exist," (P. 104.) perhaps echoing Malcolm Gladwell who said in "Outliers" that an opportunity appears to be the cornerstone of a successful life. Now that the boom of the 90's has turned to dust and the right seems to rule, that opportunity is fleeting at best.
Our optimistic author sums up with what must be done to end poverty in America. I wish it would happen. It needs to happen, but it echoes the subtitle: "Why it's so hard to end poverty in America." And, after the Wisconsin debacle of June 5, 2012, the task is going to be even more difficult.
Another good book deserving a larger audience...

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Phenomenal analysis of what doesn't work to end poverty June 24, 2012

By Joanna Daneman #1 HALL OF FAMETOP 10 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

I really like this book--the author slashes through the myths of poverty and welfare to highlight what has changed since the "War on Poverty" of Lyndon Johnson, and what doesn't work and why.

Some interesting facts brought out in this book:

Welfare these days mainly consists of food stamps. The old "welfare check" we remember in the olden days is no more. That, plus rent subsidy, is what modern welfare consists of (plus some medical aid as well.) States are rewarded for keeping people OFF food stamps, so there is a culture of denying benefits, even as benefits have increased. This is counter-productive.

The poor used to be overwhelmingly the elderly (hence, social security as the safety net.) Now, the poor are overwhelmingly children.

Low-wage jobs (the working poor) have been supplemented by sending Mom out to work. So people are getting by via two parents in the workforce, with no one home to raise the children. Meanwhile, the single mom, ever on the rise, has no such option. She MUST work, and find a family member or other way to take care of her kids.

The greatest NUMBER of poor people are Caucasian---but....Latinos and African-Americans are disproportionately poorer.

Suburban poverty has increased about 50 percent since 2000, but urban poverty has remained about the same level at 16 percent, which goes along with the reversal of the increase in the African-American middle class, which was on the increase, but has seemed to decline. This could also be tied to the decline of "jobs" that is, places to work in manufacturing and service, jobs that have disappeared over the last two decades.

Female-head-of-family has soared in number (single moms.)

Here is the crux of the problem. Everyone dislikes seeing people suffer, whether conservative or liberal. We simply argue about the way to alleivate suffering. But whatever we are doing, it isn't working. Simply pouring money on a problem ends up subsidizing what we don't want and taxing away what we do want (more single moms, fewer jobs and opportunities, rising education costs.) Pulling the plug on social programs would assuredly, as the author points out, create massive suffering. The author points out that the criminal justice system and the war on drugs has disrupted urban families, removing males, and the changes in family has created more upheaval as well. But reversing this trend is no more effective than pushing all the evils back in to Pandora's box once it's been opened.

The time has come to discuss clearly a new direction for social change and amelioration. I like this book because it clearly points out the changes in poverty and some of the causes. As to the solutions, it will take more than the suggestions in this book and a lot of discussion and a lot more cooperation of liberal and conservative, each listening and exchanging ideas of things that work. Clearly, standing on ideology on either side has not benefitted people and people are suffering. The American Dream of working ones way up so that one's children will have a better life has gone off the rails. Time to discuss all the ideas to get the dream back in motion.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Really well done treatise on poverty but also biased from the left!!! September 12, 2012

By A Customer TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Peter Edelman has served his country in many capacities as a man who comes from the left side of the political spectrum. He walked behind Robert Kennedy during his time in the Justice Department. He clerked for Judge Friendly on the Court of Appeals and Justice Arthur Goldberg on the Supreme Court. He holds multiple degrees from Harvard University both as an undergraduate and the law school. He also served as a high official in the Clinton Administration and resigned in protest of the welfare reform act enacted by that Administration.

He knows what he is talking about and has spent his life studying poverty. The statistics he furnishes in the book are indisputable and worth studying. This is a man whose work you should study. The book is more than worthwhile. If you are interested in poverty, a subject that has not been mentioned during the 2008 Presidential campaigns of both Obama and Bush II, and has not been raised during this campaign as well then this is a great book to start with.

The numbers speak for themselves. The professor mentions we have 46 million people in poverty as of the year 2012. That's up from 31 million in the year 2000. As a percentage of our population we have as many people in poverty today as we did 50 years ago.

Now having said the above here's the problem which is never explored throughout the entire book. Fifty years ago, Lyndon Johnson began this nation's fight on poverty. Medicare and Medicaid came into effect and a whole slew of programs specifically aimed at ending poverty in the country. Through the years trillions of dollars of this nation's treasury were spent in the effort. We created a Department of Education and spent trillions more on a federal level to aide the states who were the only spenders on education before federal government got involved.

After all is said and done, we are at the same levels of poverty as we were when nothing was being done on the issue 50 years ago. How can that be? How is it possible to wage a war on poverty involving trillions of dollars with no quantitative improvement in the results obtained? Is the professor saying it would have been far worse if nothing was done and we continued a laissez faire approach to poverty? The question goes unanswered but begs to be answered and certainly studied.

He never touches the topic in his book. He however wages massively effective arguments to increase expenditures across the board in all these programs once again. Never once does he challenge the efficiency of any of these programs. As an example, NYC has a program which enables senior citizens to get to their doctors and medical appointments via special buses and ambulance services. In 2011 that program cost the taxpayers $446 million dollars. That's right, a half a billion just for transportation. In New York State 1 out of every 5 people are on Medicaid which equals 4 million recipients. The issue is never discussed as to how any society can afford such expenses and for how long?

Professor Edelman is strong and very convincing in his convictions for the need for national health care for all our citizens. He correctly states that every industrialized society in the world has such health care, and as leaders of the free world, how could we not? The problem is that we already spend 17.4% of our gross domestic product on health care expenditures and that's before the new health care law kicks in. No other country in the world spends more than 12% and most spend 7%. Our percentage is unsustainable and still growing.

Health care is the only area where consumers do not question the price of anything. The doctor or hospital does not mention the price, and the consumer never will inquire. Go into a drug store and ask what the cash price is for a month's worth of Lipitor at a specific dosage and the pharmacist doesn't know because since everybody is insured, the question never comes up. Professor Edelman makes no attempt to get deep into these subjects and reconcile what both the left and the right are saying. This is very unfortunate because this author has the capacity to frame the arguments for both sides and get the reader involved. He simply chose not to do it.

In spite of the above, this is a great book to read. You must however come at it with an open and questioning mind. This is because like any other book written on a vital political topic; we always seem to get one side of the argument rather than an objective picture. As American citizens we are capable of making up our own mind on these important issues of the day. Read Peter Edelman's So Rich, So Poor and begin to understand this vital topic, from a true expert on poverty.

Richard C. Stoyeck