America's Poverty Trap: Why Working Hard Is No Longer Enough and How We Fix It (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798245583167)

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.