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Land of the Fee: Hidden Costs and the Decline of the American Middle Class by Devin Fergus (Associate Professor of African American and African Studies, Associate Professor of African American and African Studies, The Ohio State University) at Abbey's Bookshop,
Land of the Fee: Hidden Costs and the Decline of the American Middle Class
— —
Devin Fergus (Associate Professor of African American and African Studies, Associate Professor of African American and African Studies, The Ohio State University)

Land of the Fee

Hidden Costs and the Decline of the American Middle Class

Devin Fergus (Associate Professor of African American and African Studies, Associate Professor of African American and African Studies, The Ohio State University)

$50.95

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English
Oxford University Press
22 June 2018
History; Social impact of disasters; Social mobility; Social classes; Economic systems & structures
The loans ordinary Americans take out to purchase homes and attend college often leave them in a sea of debt. As Devin Fergus explains in Land of the Fee, a not-insignificant portion of that debt comes in the form of predatory hidden fees attached to everyday transactions. Beginning in the 1980s, lobbyists for the financial industry helped dismantle consumer protections, resulting in surreptitious fees-often waived for those who can afford them but not for those who can't. Bluntly put, these hidden fees unfairly keep millions of Americans from their hard-earned money.

Journalists and policymakers have identified the primary causes of increasing wealth inequality-fewer good working class jobs, a rise in finance-driven speculative capitalism, and a surge of tax policy decisions that benefit the ultra-rich, among others. However, they miss one commonplace but substantial contributor to the widening divide between the rich and the rest: the explosion of fees on every transaction people make in their daily lives.

Land of the Fee traces the system of fees from its origins in the deregulatory wave of the late 1970s to the present. The average consumer now pays a dizzying array of charges for mortgage contracts, banking transactions, auto insurance rates, college payments, and payday loans. These fees are buried in the pages of small-print agreements that few consumers read or understand. Because these fees do not fall under usury laws, they have redistributed wealth to large corporations and their largest shareholders. By exposing this predatory and nearly invisible system of fees, Land of the Fee reshapes our understanding of wealth inequality in America.
By:  
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 163mm,  Width: 236mm,  Spine: 28mm
Weight:   490g
ISBN:   9780199970162
ISBN 10:   0199970165
Pages:   264
Publication Date:  
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Further / Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction 1. House Money: The Story of Subprime in Three Acts 2. Tax Eaters: The Origins of the Student Debt Bubble 3. Driving While Broke: How Auto Insurance Drives the Wealth Gap 4. Shadow Bankers and the Great Wage Stagnation: The Story of Payday Lending Epilogue Notes Index

Devin Fergus is a Senior Fellow at Demos and Associate Professor at The Ohio State University. Author of Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics (a CHOICE Outstanding Title for 2010), he has written widely on politics, policy, and inequality in outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The American Prospect, The Guardian, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Reviews for Land of the Fee: Hidden Costs and the Decline of the American Middle Class

This book is an outstanding primary text and faculty resource for upper-division and graduate classes in public and taxation policy and financial markets, regulation, and ethics * CHOICE *


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