Only some aspects are shared globally, like a lack of affordable housing and labor exploitation. Payday lending, forced storage charges upon eviction, low take-up of available benefits, using the tax code to assist the middle class instead of direct spending to assist the poor, lots of these seem uniquely American.

Of course poverty exists in many places outside the United States, and people in poverty are universally exploited. But much of that poverty outside the US, at least so it seems, to be rooted in much the same causes: poor governance and corruption. This book seems to question how poverty persists in a country which seems beyond such "third-world" concerns.