For Slate, I reviewed A.K. Sandoval-Strausz’ new book Barrio America. Just decades ago, American cities were in steep decline. Eighteen of the United States’ 25 largest cities were smaller in 1980 than they were in 1950. Grim urban landscapes faced depopulation, high crime rates, municipal bankruptcies, and economic decline. Conventional wisdom says the “creative class,” some combination of bohemian artists followed by white-collar yuppies, deserves credit for reversing the tide, making downtowns attractive, if expensive, places to live, a reversal that dampened the congestion, alienation, and environmental catastrophe of the suburbs. Not so fast, says Sandoval-Strausz.
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How bankers get away with breaking the law
For Slate, I wrote about CashCall vs. CFPB, a case where a subprime lending tycoon systematically broke laws of states like Virginia, New York, and North Carolina that make it illegal to charge sky-high interest rates. In most states with anti-usury laws, if you give out an illegal loan, the borrower isn’t obligated to pay any of the loan back: therefore, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau argued that CashCall should have to refund all the interest it collected to consumers as restitution. CashCall argued it didn’t realize it had broken any laws (lol…), and judges seem to have found this argument persuasive.
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The rich don’t just have more stuff
For The Nation, I interviewed philosopher Jennifer Morton about her new book Moving Up Without Losing Your Way: The Ethical Costs of Upwardly Mobility. Morton explains the rich don’t just have more stuff — capitalism also forces them into fewer dilemmas about whether to prioritize their own interests, or those of their loved ones.
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The view from glass towers
For The New Republic, I wrote about how euphemism, jargon, and data science all help bankers at places like Capital One distance themselves from their customer’s pain. When I talk about “pain,” here, I mean a few different things. Consumers turn to credit cards because they can’t afford what they want or need: a condition that is intrinsically uncomfortable. In some cases, credit cards may help the consumer a little bit, in other cases, they make the financial instability Americans face even worse: in both cases, that suffering is ignored.
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New visions for banking
For The Outline, I sat down with the founders of the Pagan Credit Union project to hear about their aspirations for the financial sector. People who want to start ethical alternatives to big banks are up against significant obstacles. According to data from the National Credit Union Administration, we lost about 800 credit unions from 2014 to 2018.
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What it’s like to be a subprime debt collector
For TalkPoverty, a publication of the Center for American Progress, I interviewed subprime debt collectors about their difficult role as intermediaries between Americans in dire financial straights, and the financial institutions posting big profits.
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Why Americans Tend To Underestimate Their Lifespans
United Income estimates households miss on an average of $110,000 from claiming Social Security at the wrong time, usually, from claiming too early. Why are so many Americans claiming Social Security too early? Of course, Americans without much in retirement savings may feel like they have no other choice, but the fact that many Americans underestimate their longevity may be another important cause. A simple mathematical concept called “conditional probability” helps explain why this happens. My article explaining “conditional probability” was named a Forbes.com Editor’s Pick.
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Number of Americans Without Health Insurance Increased in 2018
For Slate, I wrote about the growing number of Americans going without health insurance. Immigrant children have been particularly hard-hit by this trend.
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Without systemic change, “corporate social responsibility” will always be window dressing.
On Monday, 181 chief executives of companies like JP Morgan, Apple, and Comcast took out a full-page-ad in the Wall Street Journal to announce that their group, the Business Roundtable, was redefining the “purpose of the corporation.” Their old philosophy said “corporations exist principally to serve their shareholders.” Now, the group says, they’ll do their part to create an “economy that allows each person to succeed” by balancing the interests of shareholders, customers, employees, and the community. This is good news on paper. Obviously, it’s better to have a bunch of high-minded CEOs than for our corporations to be run by people who don’t even pretend to care about their…
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How the lessons of Tide Pods could clean up the credit card industry
While popular, Tide Pods are staggeringly dangerous for young children and people with disabilities. Proctor and Gamble launched the Tide Pods in 2012. In 2011, 2,862 children were hospitalized because of laundry-detergent related injuries. In 2013, that number was triple: 9,004 children were driven to hospitals by laundry detergent. The problem isn’t that Tide Pods are uniquely toxic, or contain chemicals never used before. The problem is that they’re cute. They’re colorful. And they’re small. It’s the good things about Tide Pods that we have to change to make them safer. What Tide Pods teach us about consumer product safety is that it’s not always the “bad parts” of…
