America's poverty built by design: Politico

NEW YORK - Many Americans already know that the systems are rigged to favor people who are already advantaged in the United States, and poverty is pervasive in America by design, to enable the lifestyles of affluent people, according to an opinion article published on the website of Politico on Sunday.

The United States is "a land of economic extremes, with entrenched, grinding poverty for those struggling at the bottom -- even as most poor adults who are not seniors are working," said the article.

Poverty results from three quintessentially American habits: exploitation of the poor; subsidization of the rich; and the intentional segregation of the affluent and the poor such that opportunity is hoarded and social mobility is rare, it quoted Matthew Desmond, the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and author of "Poverty, by America", as saying.

Desmond argues that the country could bring nearly every family in America above the official poverty line without adding to the deficit simply by collecting unpaid federal income taxes from the top 1 percent of households -- from closing loopholes to going after tax cheats, according to the article.

US rates of poverty are substantially higher and more extreme than those found in 25 other developed countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Poland, Portugal and the United Kingdom, it added.