Kids are jumping out the windows of burning buildings, falling to their deaths. And we think the problem is that they’re jumping

from a quote in The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/19/matthew-desmond-the-poverty-rate-in-america-and-the-uk-should-be-zero-and-i-think-we-can-get-there, which the author attributes to a book by the novelist Tommy Orange.

By which he means victim blaming. There’s a set of systems whereby some people in society make money from others who are poor. The example he quotes is a trailer park: there’s a slew of tenants just hanging on for one reason or another, and there’s a landlord extracting $400k a year from them. We tend to focus on the former and not the relationship between the former and the latter.