21st Century: Query 168 (Willem de Kooning and Matthew Desmond)
“The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.” ~ Willem de Kooning was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. “If poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources. We lack something else.” ~ Matthew Desmond , author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City . He is also an American sociologist who is a professor in the department of sociology at Princeton University. How are these statements true? Untrue? In modern America, how can poverty sap one’s strength and resources? What is the “lack” to which Desmond refers?