Show Details for the week of May 21st, 2012
Posted by themonitor on May 21, 2012
The Monitor has a goal of $1000 per show. Last week’s show did well and we thank everyone who helped us reach our goal. We do have to do it again this week however and we will have the help of our guest – Gary Rivlin who will talk to us about ‘Poverty Tax’.
Please call 713 526 5738 during the show and support The Monitor. You can also donate securely online – just make sure you pick The Monitor from the list of shows. Our guest two weeks ago was Richard Wolff. You can still get a copy of Wolff’s Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It by pledging $100 to the show or you can get the book and a DVD or CD of a speech by Richard Wolff for $150. You can also get a copy of Gary Rivlin‘s Broke, USA with your $100 pledge.
More about our guest – Gary Rivlin
Gary Rivlin is journalist and the author of 5 works of non-fiction, including most recently Broke, USA, an investigation of the poverty industry (check cashers, payday lenders, pawnbrokers, etc.). Gary is a former NY Times reporter whose work has appeared in the Sunday NY Times Magazine, Wired, Salon, among other publications. Gary is also co-editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project with Barbara Ehrenreich.
Rivlin just wrote the piece “America’s Poverty Tax,” where he reports on the exorbitant fees the poor and the working poor pay because they have lousy credit or because they have no savings.
Quote: “The numbers show it’s very expensive to be poor.” The article states: “Add up all the profits pocketed by all those payday lenders, check cashers, subprime auto lenders, and other Poverty, Inc. enterprises and divide it by the 40 million households the Federal Reserve says survive on $30,000 a year or less. That works out to around $2,500 per household, or a poverty tax of around 10 percent.”
Article: “America’s Poverty Tax”
Please call 713 526 5738 during the show and support The Monitor. You can also donate securely online – just make sure you pick The Monitor from the list of shows. Our guest two weeks ago was Richard Wolff. You can still get a copy of Wolff’s Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It by pledging $100 to the show or you can get the book and a DVD or CD of a speech by Richard Wolff for $150. You can also get a copy of Gary Rivlin‘s Broke, USA with your $100 pledge.
