Further Reading

Reading List

GARY RIVLIN | Broke, USA: From Pawnshop to Poverty, Inc.
How the Working Poor Became Big Business

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For most people, the Great Crash of 2008 has meant troubling times. Not so for those in the flourishing poverty industry. These mercenary entrepreneurs have taken advantage of an era of deregulation to devise high-priced products to sell to the credit-hungry working poor, including the instant tax refund and the payday loan. In the process they’ve created an industry larger than the casino business and have proved that pawnbrokers and check cashers, if they dream big enough, can grow very rich off those with thin wallets.
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Broke, USA is Gary Rivlin’s riveting report from the economic fringes. Timely, shocking, and powerful, it offers a much-needed look at why our country is in a financial mess and gives a voice to the millions of ordinary Americans left devastated in the wake of the economic collapse.

​Get this book locally from Moon Palace or Content.

MEHRSA BARADARAN | How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy

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The United States has two separate banking systems today—one serving the well-to-do and another exploiting everyone else. How the Other Half Banks contributes to the growing conversation on American inequality by highlighting one of its prime causes: unequal credit. Mehrsa Baradaran examines how a significant portion of the population, deserted by banks, is forced to wander through a Wild West of payday lenders and check-cashing services to cover emergency expenses and pay for necessities—all thanks to deregulation that began in the 1970s and continues decades later…
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Baradaran proposes a solution: reenlisting the U.S. Post Office in its historic function of providing bank services. The post office played an important but largely forgotten role in the creation of American democracy, and it could be deployed again to level the field of financial opportunity.

​Get this book locally from Moon Palace or Content.

LISA SERVON | The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives

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An urgent and incisive exposé of our broken banking system–why Americans are fleeing traditional banks in growing numbers. 
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Lisa Servon delivers provocative dispatches from inside a range of banking alternatives–from predatory to responsible–as new players rush in to do what banks once did. She works as a teller at RiteCheck, a check-cashing business in the South Bronx, and as a payday lender in Oakland, California, listening to the stories of the alternative bankers as well as their consumers. And she delivers fascinating, hopeful portraits of the entrepreneurs who are counting on a permanent “unbanking” of America–and designing systems to transform how non-wealthy Americans can gain the access and agency to their own money that they, especially, need.

Get this book locally from Moon Palace or Content.

JONATHAN MORDUCH & RACHEL SCHNEIDER
The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty

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What the financial diaries of working-class families reveal about economic stresses, why they happen, and what policies might reduce them.

In The Financial Diaries, Jonathan Morduch and Rachel Schneider draw on the groundbreaking U.S. Financial Diaries, which follow the lives of 235 low- and middle-income families as they navigate through a year. Through the Diaries, Morduch and Schneider challenge popular assumptions about how Americans earn, spend, borrow, and save―and they identify the true causes of distress and inequality for many working Americans.

​Combining hard facts with personal stories, The Financial Diaries presents an unparalleled inside look at the economic stresses of today’s families and offers powerful, fresh ideas for solving them.

Get this book locally from Moon Palace or Content.