Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.-How the Working Poor Became Big Business

America’s multi-billion-dollar poverty industry turned working-class hardship into Wall Street’s most lucrative corporate gold rush.

From the author of the New York Times Notable Book of the Year Drive By comes a unique and riveting exploration of one of America’s largest and fastest-growing industries—the business of poverty.

Rivlin examines a sprawling network of check cashers, title lenders, and subprime brokers—unmasking how mainstream banks quietly fueled fringe credit.

The investigation details an aggressive apparatus that extracted billions in fees across working-class neighborhoods and siphoned equity through deceptive contracts.

Across cities like Dayton and Atlanta, the reporting contrasts corporate loan titans with the legal advocates fighting to hold lenders accountable. Broke, USA is a Fast Food Nation for the “poverty industry” that will also appeal to readers of Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) and David Shipler (The Working Poor).

• Predatory Lending: Trace how entrepreneurs like Allan Jones turned two-week paycheck advances in Cleveland, Tennessee, into a nationwide multi-billion-dollar empire of strip-mall storefronts.
• Financial Deregulation: Discover how major national institutions like Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Fleet Bank bankrolled fringe storefronts and bundled high-fee mortgages into global investment portfolios.
• Consumer Protection: Follow legal crusaders like Atlanta attorney Bill Brennan and housing activists across the country as they fought predatory refinancings that stripped elderly homeowners of their life savings.
• Social Justice: Uncover the lucrative mechanics of refund anticipation loans, where commercial tax preparers harvested millions in fees by fronting cash against government earned income tax credits.