Our Government: What the Fuck Do They Do All Day and Why Does it Cost So Goddamned Much Money? pp. 123-154 Summary and Analysis

Beginning a new section called "Poverty Policy: How to Endow Privation," O'Rourke visits a filthy, smelly, government-subsidized apartment complex in Newark, deciding that it is the least hospitable place he's ever seen. Nevertheless, he dismisses American poverty as a mathematical myth, insisting that government aid more than compensates for the income deficit of the poor. He argues that, in fact, modern poor Americans earn greater income than the middle-class Americans of 1900 and that, compared to the impoverished in other parts of the world, poor Americans are quite well off.

O'Rourke confesses that no one - not even experts - can explain...