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America's Poverty Trap: Why Working Hard Is No Longer Enough and How We Fix It
Paperback
Poverty & Social WorkUnited States Politics
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jan 25 2026
Pages: 108
Weight: 0.34
Height: 0.22 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
America's Poverty Trap argues that modern poverty in the United States is not the result of laziness, poor morals, or individual failure-but the predictable outcome of systems that have shifted risk downward and turned basic survival into a profit center.
The book reframes the American Dream not as wealth, but as stability: the ability to work, pay basic bills, absorb small shocks, and move forward over time. Markwardt contends that this promise has quietly collapsed-not because people stopped working, but because the cost of survival now exceeds what work reliably provides.
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