According to the latest national data, one in eighteen people in the United States lives in “deep poverty,” a subterranean level of scarcity. Take the poverty line and cut it in half: Anything below that is considered deep poverty. The deep poverty line in 2020 was $6,380 annually for a single person and $13,100 for a family of four. That year, alm

The American poor, living as they do in the epicenter of global capitalism, have access to cheap, mass-produced goods like every American does. But what good is a toaster oven if you can’t afford the electricity to power it or a kitchen in which to use it? As Michael Harrington put it sixty years ago: “It is much easier in the United States to be d

James K. A. Smith