Poverty, by America

Chapter 5 begins with the COVID-19 pandemic and the infusion of aid from the US government to prevent millions of Americans from falling into poverty. The programs were massively successful, as rates of poverty declined even as unemployment spiked. However, these measures were still controversial because in some cases, they paid the unemployed more than what they were making at their jobs and so were viewed as encouraging people to stay at home. The data do not sustain this contention since states with more generous provisions did not suffer higher levels of unemployment, and yet the myth endured that the unemployed were lazy and living off government handouts.

According to Desmond, this idea represents the latest iteration of an old myth that workers will succumb to laziness without an acute threat of deprivation hanging over them. It has morphed into the modern idea—very common in American politics—that receiving government assistance encourages dependency, and so efforts to help the poor will only harm them in the long run. Such ideas also thrive on stereotypes of Black people being the primary recipients of welfare, feeding into the perception of their being lazier than whites (even though whites are, in fact, more likely to be receiving public assistance).