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Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.How the Working Poor Became Big Business
- ISBN13: 9780061733215
- Condition: New
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
For most people, the Great Crash of 2008 has meant troubling times. Not so for those in the flourishing poverty industry, for whom the economic woes spell an opportunity to expand and grow. 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.
Broke, USA is Gary Rivlin’s riveting report from the economic fringes. From the annual meeting of the national check cashers association in Las Vegas to a tour of the foreclosure-riddled neighborhoods of Dayton, Ohio, here is a subprime Fast Food Nation featuring an unforgettable cast of characters and memorable scenes. Rivlin profiles players like a former small-town Tennessee debt collector whose business offering cash advances to the working poor has earned him a net worth in the hundreds of millions, and legendary Wall Street dealmaker Sandy Weill, who rode a subprime loan business into control of the nation’s largest bank. Rivlin parallels their stories with the tale of those committed souls fighting back against the major corporations, chain franchises, and newly hatched enterprises that fleece the country’s hardworking waitresses, warehouse workers, and mall clerks.
Timely, shocking, and powerful, Broke, USA 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.
Rating: 
(out of 19 reviews)
List Price: $ 26.99
Price: $ 14.62
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#2 written by Jeffrey Compton 1 year ago
Review by Jeffrey Compton for Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.How the Working Poor Became Big Business
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Due to nothing but luck I have never had to use a check-cashing service, patronized a rent-to-owe business or obtained a payday loan. The only time I have been in a pawn shop was to buy CDs and DVDS – so I was entirely ignorant of these businesses, their practices and their backgrounds, except that payday loan joints are now on every street corner – especially in my former hometown, Las Vegas.Gary Rivlin’s “Broke USA” in plain but entertaining language tells us how these industries work – and how the “Poverty Business” is now big business. He interviews every player – customer, regulator, activist and entrepreneur (talk about folks you want to love and hate at the same time). He distinguishes between outright crooks (home-repair mortgage schemes targeting elderly women) and businesses that are walking on seriously ethical thin ice – but do serve a clientele that no one else will touch.
The best part of the book is that is answers the question “Why should we pick on an industry providing emergency funds and services to the desperate?” Because they are not offering “emergency funds” but making 400% loans a way of life for their customers – and making a fortune for themselves. Drug dealers also provide services to the desperate – but that is not an argument for legalization. Not to mention that too much easy money (to the wrong people) has gotten the entire world economy into serious trouble.
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#3 written by Book & Music Lover 1 year ago
Review by Book & Music Lover for Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.How the Working Poor Became Big Business
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Jackson Hewitt, H&R Block, Rent-A-Center, Citicorp, your friendly neighborhood pawn shop, Cash America, are just a few of the crooks hiding under the veil of legitimacy, who are in effect legal “Crooks.” The book pulls back the cover on them all, and their absurd claim to be providing a needed service to a very vulnerable sector of America, “The Working Poor.”Not to say that those who use these services are blameless, but to say that if we had a functioning Government no such chicanery would exist. At the same time most of this kind of dealing came about because of “DEREGULATION.”
Each time an attempt is made to put this Genie away for good the Industry lobbyists go to work and tout the need for such services. Bernie Madoff, Michael Milkin, Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, and Hospital Corporation of America, are all apart of the argument that left alone the market can and will police itself, and you right out of your money.
Take for instance the so called “Pay-day-loan. People who do business with such establishments take out a short term loan of say $200.00 dollars, with $30.00 dollars in interest for 2 weeks. So the story goes you can just pay the $30.00 interest while the principle is rolled over. Now the hole is growing. That short term loan continues to grow until there is no recourse but to take out another loan, likely with yet another such agency, to take care of the first. Fast talking representatives are hired to keep this madness going.
Rent-A-Center, has figured out a means to get an individual to pay 3-5 times the worth of a television set, and not a new set, mind you, but a used set. That is if you keep your payments up, and fulfill your contract. This has expanded into computers, furniture, appliances, etc. And guess what, it is all legal. Aint America grand. Do in a bunch of barely making it poor people and become a multi millionaire. Oh yes and the book names names.
Well written, though I fear some will come along and say that “hey no excuse for being so stupid to get involved with such CON ARTISTS in the first place.” Yes I think Bernie Madoff thought the same thing.
For an informative look at the seedy side of capitalism pick up a copy of a book which should be apart of every high school economics class.
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#4 written by Michael J. Kelly 1 year ago
Review by Michael J. Kelly for Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.How the Working Poor Became Big Business
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I’ve read Gary Rivlin’s other books — Fire on the Prairie, Drive By and The Plot to Get Bill Gates — and this book continues what I liked about those books: great, solid reporting and research, but presented as a very readable and interesting story.Some of the characters Rivlin found are just wonderful. “Chris Browning knows she can be difficult. But what are you going to do when you’re surrounded by idiots and fools?” Browning worked for years in a payday loan store in Mansfield, OH, knows where the bodies are buried, and isn’t afraid to talk. She’s just one of the entertaining characters in BROKE, USA. Rivlin also found those working to stem the tide of foreclosure and wealth stripping – people like Bill Faith, of Columbus, OH, who gets things done, like getting Ohio to pass a referendum limiting predatory lending despite being outspent 60 to 1 by the industry. “BROKE, USA” weaves the stories of these characters together to tell a great story about how payday grew from nothing to being a multi-billion dollar industry in just a dozen or so years.
This isn’t a book about the big picture of the financial crisis. But if you want to see inside a huge part of real Americans’ daily financial lives and the pain large publicly-traded companies like Citigroup will inflict on struggling people in order to continue paying themselves millions in bonuses – this book delivers.
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#5 written by M. Buchman 1 year ago
Review by M. Buchman for Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.How the Working Poor Became Big Business
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Gary Rivlin brings clarity and depth in this report on the predatory lending business and other aspects of what he calls Poverty, Inc., the corporate efforts to make big profits on the backs of America’s hard working poor and financially vulnerable.Based on hundreds of interviews, the book combines a business reporters’ careful sense of detail with the facts, numbers, policies and business decisions that have defined the industries involved, as well as a biographers eye for human detail and personality that draws us into the stories. His profiles of the business folks, advocates and unfortunate victims really drive the writing and make human the complicated web of check cashers, payday lenders, rent to owners and others who are ravaging our low income communities in a way that makes the casino business look like small potatoes.
Rivlin has taken a complicated topic and created a page-turning pot boiler that will raise your awareness and, regardless of your personal take on the issues, likely raise your hackles as well. Bravo!
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Review by S. WALKER for Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.How the Working Poor Became Big Business
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Gary Rivlin has written an outstanding book. Each chapter builds a compelling and heart-breaking story about some of the real people who run and are ruined by this massive industry. This book should be required reading in every business and law school in the United States. Rivlin shows all parties fairly and without bias. He provides the reader with a veteran reporter’s keen eyes and ears as we listen to people tell their stories, in their own words so we can decide for ourselves how we feel about their stories. Gary Rivlin then provides thorough analysis based on facts to give the reader a complete picture of Poverty Inc.
The one and two star reviewers seemed to have not read this book or have a political axe to grind with the author or the industry under investigation.
Buy the book. Read it and decide for yourself.