nitya’s Reviews > This Is What Inequality Looks Like > Status Update

"Our national discourse emphasizes sacrifice, community, greater good. Our instuitutions, our everyday lives - they regulate and compel individualism, competition, self-centeredness."

"A phrase that comes up at almost every event I have attended where poverty is discussed, 'identifying the truly needy,' tells us that even among people who ostensibly care about poverty, there is a common-sense acceptance that among the low-income population, there are those who simply have not tried hard enough to succeed. For what is 'truly needy' if there is no 'not truly needy' in one's imagination?"

"Teenage children's financial dependence on middle-class parents, their use of personal spaces in their homes, their scheduled activities are all conditions that grant parents continued access to influence over their everyday lives. Absent of these conditions, authority is tough to maintain for low-income parents."

"When we insist that some behaviors should be rewarded, that is often because we have vested interests rather than because those qualities have inherent human worth."