Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor and chief of Current Affairs Magazine, and I am joined today by Professor Mark Paul. He is an assistant professor at the School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. He joins us today because he is the author of the new book,

The Ends of Freedom, Reclaiming America's Lost Promise of Economic Rights, available from the University

of Chicago Press. Mark Paul, thank you so much for joining us on current affairs today.

I was thrilled to be here.

You open your book with an extended quote from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, who took a trip to the United States in 2017 and produced a

report. And his conclusion in that report was a little depressing, shall we say. It sure was.

You know, Philip Austin came to the U.S. about five years ago now. And he's used to touring, you know,

refugee camps and war-torn countries

and developing nations that are still dealing with, you know, lack of clean water and sanitation

and things along these lines. And what he saw in the U.S. unfortunately baffled him. He saw people in

the U.S. living in essentially squalor, you know, public squalor amidst abundance.

And, you know, I think what really caught him off guard was when he spent some time in

Skid Row in Los Angeles, which is actually about a block away from where my office was last

year when I was visiting at USC. I think we had similar eye-opening experiences walking around Los Angeles, the city of dreams,

and angels, of course, and just seeing people lacking basic access to toilets, right? Lacking food,

lacking anywhere to sleep at night. And it really struck him, and I think should strike each

and every one of us, that we are living in this

extremely wealthy country, yet we have 40 million of our fellow Americans in absolute poverty.

Yeah. You know, I think that does strike a lot of people, but I think, you know, the contrast is

very obvious. People walk around, people see it. You really can't miss it. But you as an economist,

I feel like one of the things that strikes you in particular when you see this that comes across

in the book is that you look at this, but this is avoidable. This isn't necessary. This is a country

...