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Princeton sociologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmonds latest book, the New York Times best-seller Poverty, By America, explores why poverty is so prevalentand persistentin the richest nation on Earth. We spoke about his excellent book not long ago, but with the House Republicans demanding new work requirements for Medicaid and food-stamp recipients in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, I figured Desmond would have some thoughts.

Theres certainly little evidence that work requirements achieve their goalthat is, if the goal is to improve peoples lives. But this is a charitable view of Republican intent. If their goal is to push needy people off the rolls, then sure. And if the goal is to reduce the deficitand the debt-ceiling bill has a bunch of provisions that would do the oppositethere are ways to do it that dont target and scapegoat Americas most vulnerable. I reached out to Desmond to talk about these things and more. As always, ourchat has been edited for length and clarity.

What was your first thought when you heard the Republicans were seeking to impose new work requirements for food stamps and Medicaid?

That it doesnt have anything to do with work. When Arkansas imposed work requirements on Medicaid in 2018, I believe 18,000 people lost their health insurance and the state did not witness any growth in employment. Work requirements are not about work; theyre about a commitment by the modern Republican Party to harm the poor, really. Its hard to say it any other way. If were going to balance the budget and tackle the deficit, why is it always the poor who have to pay that price, especially given all the tax avoidance and shenanigans that we experience today?

As the public sees it, there are three questions. First, are work requirements reasonable? Second, whats the goal? And third, does the policy achieve the goal? To get food stamps now, so-called able-bodied adults under 50, without young children, have to spend 20 hours a week doing paid or unpaid work or work training. If you presented that to the average person on the street, they might say, That sounds pretty reasonable. But what does it look like for the people in need of aid?

So many of of the aid recipients are working already, and many are working in ways that arent recognized as work. One of the things that is completely baffling and frustrating to me is how we ignore the caretaking work of raising kids and also caring for the old, and render that work invisible with respect to these requirements.

I would love a public conversation about the incentives to work. You know, often these low-wage jobs are grueling and you have no power and your pay hasnt gone up in years. These conversations seem just out of touch with the everyday experiences of folks in jobs like that.

What do you know about these work training programs?

I havent studied them. I do think theres an idea among some policymakers that if we just had the right credentials, or right education, people could achieve some financial stability. I think the research is in on that: One-third of Americans who have a college degree earn less than the median income. In the United States, weve had incredible growth and educational attainment at the secondary and post-secondary levelsover the last 40 years, and yet poverty has really persisted. To me its not about credentialing or job training, its really about the imbalance of power in the labor market.

Work requirement policies are often sold as a way to push people to improve their lot and make themselves more self-sufficient. Do you think thats one of the actual goals?

No, because we have so many people working already that would be affected. I think the idea of work requirements rests on the image of a layabouta person who isnt working pulling a checkand that just isnt supported by the data. Brookings had a study [that looked at] how many people can be considered non-working poor, disconnected from the labor market for reasons we dont understand? They found it was like 3 percent of folks.

And so part of what this policy proposal does is continue this myth of poverty being connected to non-work, where today there are so many people working and still mired in poverty.

Matt Gaetz used the term couch potatoes to describe certain aid recipients. Its kind of like the welfare queens of the Reagan era.

Yeah, here we are, againsame old story.

I was just reading about how the term able-bodied, which we hear a lot in these debates, has quite a history.

Isnt it in the poor laws of England?

Yes, exactly. And it was rooted in the church and meant to carry moral weight. And its still around. I mean, you write about the dehumanizing aspects of poverty. Over the years, this kind of rhetoric has advanced certain cultural narratives about the poor. From your experience, how do you view those narratives?

When you talk to folks in violence reduction programs or reentry programs who have experienced hardship and are trying to make a change, its often really hard to connect them with jobs. Theres this idea that theres just a bunch of jobs out there that people who grew up in incredibly difficult circumstances could just step into if they wanted. And that seems really out of touch with the lived experience of poverty. The broader point my book is trying to make is that this moral division between the working and non-workingmakers and takers is the Republican phraseis not the moral line thats most salient to this debate. First, were all kind of takers, right? We all benefit from government programs in one way or another, even if we dont recognize it. But more importantly, I feel like the moral bright line should be between the exploiters and the exploitedor as Orwell put it, the robbers and the robbed.

I can only imagine work requirements are especially hard for people with a felony on their record.

Yeah, there is a lot of data on how a felony record, especially when it compounds with racial discrimination in the job market, can really be an impediment. I just wonder whether any of the folks pushing these policies have real relationships with constituents who are in povertyif they know them, if theyre in touch with their lives and their struggles. Because if they did, they couldnt in good faith be asking our poor families to pay the price of the debt-ceiling debates.

If we wanted to get serious about reducing the deficit, we could insist on tax fairness. What did the IRS chair say: Were losing $1 trillion a year in tax avoidance and evasion? And so this seems like such a distraction. If the deficit concern is driving it, there is a clear solution that is not being pursued. I think thats incredibly tellingand frankly, cruel.

Right. We dont ask able-bodied rich people to work in exchange for their tax breakswhich are far more generous than aid for the poor.

Thats much better than I could have put it. Its also, I feel like we dont devalue the importance of work when we make a claim that no one in America should fall below a certain level. Were talking about food and healthcare here! Medicaid and food stamps. There shouldnt be any qualifications to meeting basic necessities in this land of dollars.

Ive spent a lot of time in poor communities and this myth of the couch potatoIve not met that person. Ive spent time with folks who are on disability and out of the workforce. And Ive spent a ton of time with folks who are working like crazy but arent shown to be working on official documents because theyre working under the table. Theyre working for cash and working in places that dont take your Social Security number.

The Republican Party decries the bureaucratic state and how burdensome it is, and regulations and all thatbut work and training requirements create a huge bureaucracy that enriches private contractors while subjecting people who already have a lot on their plate to mountains of paperwork.

Thats right. And we see this in the data. If we had a country of welfare dependency, why do we see over $140 billion in unused aid left on the table every year by families that are disconnected from programs that they need and deserve? Why do most elderly Americans who qualify for food stamps pass on them, one in five workers who qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit not claim itthis isnt a picture of welfare dependency, this is a picture of bureaucracy and red tape and administrative burden. No one is asking me to get photographed and fingerprinted to take my mortgage-interest deduction.

Michael Harrington had this phrase in The Other America: socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor. I feel its like, the deregulation of the rich and regulation of the poor. These administrative burdens are pushed down on families that have the least resources.

Right. And I gather there is evidence that when you make a benefits process more onerous, people drop off the rolls. And perhaps thats the goal.

Yeah. A reasonable counter-explanation would be solid evidence that work requirements lead to increases in employment and do not result in people losing their benefits. But the way I read the evidence, work requirements lead to people losing their benefits and have a very mixed record on increasing employment.

The modern welfare state is tilted toward the employed. The work of Robert Moffitt, a great economist at Johns Hopkins, shows that our poorest families today get less than they did 30 years ago, but the families right around the poverty line and above it get a lot more because weve embraced this employment-based welfare state. But the way people talk, you would assume that we havent been undergoing this process for the past 30 years.

Another notable aspect of these programs is that theyre very paternalisticshaming, even. I mean, you cant use food stamps for certain itemsnot just tobacco and alcohol, but also toiletries and pet food and dietary supplements. Yet we dont tell well-to-do takers how to spend their money.

I remember listening to an interview where a conservative guest was saying, I dont want my tax dollars going into gambling and alcohol, or something like that. [Economist Thorstein] Veblen wrote about the forced continence of the poorthat often they just cant afford alcohol because of poverty. If you look at the data today, theres a lot more drinking with the upper classes than with poor folks. But again, no ones asking me if my tax breaks are used to buy alcohol or cigarettes or a trip to Vegas, right?

Correction: The study on the situations of people living in poverty came from Brookings, not the Urban Institute. The figure for impoverished people who werent working for reasons unknown was 3 percent, not 2 percent as originally stated.

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House Republicans' Work Requirements Are Not About Work ... - Mother Jones