Summary Of The Divide

“We have a profound hatred of the weak and the poor, and a corresponding groveling terror before the rich and successful, and we’re building a bureaucracy to match those feelings.”
― Matt Taibbi, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap

There are a significant number of reasons that can be attributed to the poor remaining poor. While the lack of familial, cultural and social capital are all too often prevalent in low socioeconomic households, this is not exactly where the story ends. The “meat grinder bureaucracy”, Matt Taibbi describes in his book, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap is a devastating depiction of American society’s need to dehumanize the poor while elevating the wealthy and powerful within the very same society.
Never allowing full access to the very world American society dangles at their noses, institutions in America have worked hard to set an idealized standard of living. Impoverished people are not just at a serious misfortune on a financial level but on a psychological one as well. The idealized standard of living in the United States is easily known as what many call the “American dream”. Through good work ethic, resolve, and action, the American dream suggests that any American citizen should have unbiased and ample opportunity for financial success. The implications of this “dream” is harmful. The notion suggests that if an individual remains in a state of poverty in America, said individual lacks in resolve,action, and work ethic and is therefore lazy, flawed, and undeserving of a life outside the scope