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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How much did President Reagan reduce funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development?

2. In December 2021, by what percent did eviction filings fall in Austin?

3. What was the difference between the amount Lakia Higbee paid for rent and what she would have paid for mortgage if she could have gotten one?

4. When Blacks moved north during the Great Migration, how much more did they often have to pay than white tenants paid?

5. How much money in overdraft fees subsidizes the free checking accounts many have at Bank of America or Wells Fargo?

Short Essay Questions

1. What were some laws that served as walls to keep out the poor?

2. How and why did poverty rates fall during the COVID pandemic?

3. How did Japan, Great Britain, Estonia, the Netherlands, and some other countries handle tax filing?

4. How did rent increase from 2000 to 2021?

5. What challenges did Blacks face with banking?

6. How did corporations avoid paying the taxes they owed?

7. What did statistics show about the tax rate for all Americans?

8. What are some ways to be exploited?

9. At the beginning of Chapter 6, what examples did Desmond provide to show how rich Americans were at the time the book was written?

10. What did Leo Tolstoy believe caused the horrible poverty he saw in Moscow?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Choices individuals made to improve their wealth or financial situation, could negatively impact the poor. What was structural immorality, and how did the advantages of the rich often come at the expense of the poor either through bigotry and selfishness or good intentions?

Essay Topic 2

The prevailing theory was that giving aid to the poor made them lazy. Why did Desmond call this the “propaganda of capitalism” (85), and was it true that giving aid to the poor made them lazy?

Essay Topic 3

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, nearly a third of U.S. workers belonged to unions. In the 1970s, unions began to lose their power. What were unions, and what effect did they have on poverty?

(see the answer keys)

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