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$2.00 a Day
- Living on Almost Nothing in America
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
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Publisher's summary
We have made great steps toward eliminating poverty around the world - extreme poverty has declined significantly and seems on track to continue to do so in the next decades. Jim Yong Kim of the World Bank estimates that extreme poverty can be eliminated in 17 years. This is clearly cause for celebration.
However, this good news can make us oblivious to the fact that there are, in the United States, a significant and growing number of families who live on less than $2.00 per person, per day. That figure, the World Bank measure of poverty, is hard to imagine in this country - most of us spend more than that before we get to work or school in the morning.
In $2.00 A Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, Kathryn Edin and Luke Schaefer introduce us to people like Jessica Compton, who survives by donating plasma as often as 10 times a month and spends hours with her young children in the public library so she can get access to an Internet connection for job-hunting; and like Modonna Harris who lost the cashier's job she had held for years, for the sake of $7.00 misplaced at the end of the day.
They are the would-be working class, with hundreds of job applications submitted in recent months and thousands of work hours logged in past years. Twenty years after William Julius Wilson's When Work Disappears, it's still all about the work. But as Edin and Shaefer illuminate through incisive analysis and indelible human story, the combination of a government safety net built on the ability to work and a low-wage labor market increasingly designed not to deliver a living wage has delivered a vicious one-two punch to the would-be working poor.
More than a powerful expose of a troubling trend, $2.00 a Day delivers new evidence and new ideas to our central national debate on work, income inequality, and what to do about it.
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- Richard L
- 07-04-16
I'm a conservative and this isn't bad
I struggled with this book in the beginning. After the introduction it picked up a bit. I don't agree with everything the author states, but why can't we create programs that reward businesses for taking risk on the long time unemployed.
it helped convey a clear picture of how welfare became what it is today.
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52 people found this helpful
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- Daryl
- 12-14-15
Changed my View
I read this book months ago, and I've never forgotten it. I think about the pizza I just ordered or the amount I spend on groceries, and I wonder... if I had to live on an income of $2 per person per day... what would I do?
I am awed by the industriousness of the families profiled in this book, by their pluckiness and their togetherness, the love for their children and their spouses and their parents.
This book will change how you view poverty... and maybe that's a good thing.
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44 people found this helpful
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- cassandra
- 05-08-16
Real poverty in the US
This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?
I would rather heard less about the authors politics and more about the actual subjects in the story,
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35 people found this helpful
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- Jason Comely
- 09-24-15
It Stays with You
$2.00 a Day is an eye-opening book but heartbreaking. It describes the daily grind and many unseen hardships of people with practically no income.
Allyson Johnson did a wonderful job narrating the book.
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25 people found this helpful
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- nicole
- 02-15-16
Outstanding book
This book is profoundly eye opening and deserves to be the foundation for a new public debate about how our society addresses the issue of extreme, third-world like poverty in America.
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23 people found this helpful
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- Louise de Marillac
- 10-15-15
Heartbreaking, Infuriating, Paradigm Changing, and a MUST READ
This is 2015's must-read book. I highly recommend it. Hopefully it will cause some to act and demand change to the horrible situation that the poor live in in this country.
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19 people found this helpful
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- Andrew
- 03-10-16
Andrew
Sensational book. An insight into poverty in America that everyone should know about. The reading is great. Only criticism I have is that many of the policy recommendations need a lot more careful thought. I would recommend this book to everyone unreservedly.
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17 people found this helpful
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- Tim
- 07-15-16
Being Poor
Due to my severe disability I also receive government assistance such as HUD and Social Security and other disability benefits to get me through my life. I also work part time and earn a living and I am also a college graduate with a bachelors degree. Base on the economic status, I am consider as being as having low income, but I don't feel poor at all. I budget my money really well and live within my means and my life is pretty good. Surely, I'm not pan handling on the corner or selling my body for cash. I could also get more government assistance such as food stamps, but I choose not to because I don't want to take advantage of the system.
"$2.00 a Day" is an eye opening book on what the news doesn't want to show. We try to cover up poverty as much as possible and put them in the background as if they were scenery. Being poor is something that we all avoid, as if we made a wrong turn and find ourselves in a shady part of town, but instead of being mug, we are being stripped away from our dignity, base how we rank on the social class.
This book is very well written for someone that hasn't experienced poverty. I'm sure that the book is being read and discussed in many book clubs while having lunch that is more than $2. Unfortunately, I never experienced what it is like having my electricity cut off or going hungry and nor I never want to, but if you present this book to someone that is living under the freeway, they will probably tell you that they wish that they could make that much to survive.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Tiffan
- 04-19-18
Terrible Recording, great book
The first one that three syllables of most sentences are cut off due to either the recording or the speaker’s too-soft voice.
Get the book.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-27-16
Voice sounds automated
First and foremost, the voice actress sounds robotic, auto tuned or manufactured.The story seems repetitive in its content making it laborious to listen.
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- Bee
- 02-10-17
Interesting
Easy to follow explanation of extreme poverty in a rich country. A cautionary tale for Brits.
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Story
In her thought-provoking voice, Tirado discusses how she went from lower-middle class, to sometimes middle class, to poor and everything in between, and in doing so reveals why "poor people don't always behave the way middle-class America thinks they should."
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Buy the written copy, NOT the audio by the author
- By Jacqueline on 12-30-14
By: Linda Tirado
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Race for Profit
- How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership
- By: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Race for Profit uncovers how exploitative real estate practices continued well after housing discrimination was banned. The same racist structures and individuals remained intact after redlining's end, and close relationships between regulators and the industry created incentives to ignore improprieties. Meanwhile, new policies meant to encourage low-income homeownership created new methods to exploit Black homeowners.
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Race for Profit
- By Hewti on 12-03-20
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The Injustice of Place
- Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America
- By: Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Shaefer, Timothy J. Nelson
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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A sweeping and surprising new understanding of America’s places of most extreme poverty, drawn from original data-driven research, from the authors of the acclaimed $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America.
By: Kathryn J. Edin, and others
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Nickel and Dimed
- On (Not) Getting By in America
- By: Barbara Ehrenreich
- Narrated by: Cristine McMurdo-Wallis
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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This engrossing piece of undercover reportage has been a fixture on the New York Times best seller list since its publication. With nearly a million copies in print, Nickel and Dimed is a modern classic that deftly portrays the plight of America's working-class poor.
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Good concept, but poor execution.
- By Marco Forcone on 08-24-04
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Broke in America
- Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty
- By: Joanne Samuel Goldblum, Colleen Shaddox, Bomani Jones - foreword
- Narrated by: Joanne Samuel Goldblum, Colleen Shaddox, JD Jackson
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Nearly 40 million people in the United States live below the poverty line - about $26,200 for a family of four. Low-income families and individuals are everywhere, from cities to rural communities. While poverty is commonly seen as a personal failure, or a deficiency of character or knowledge, it's actually the result of bad policy. Public policy has purposefully erected barriers that deny access to basic needs, creating a society where people can easily become trapped - not because we lack the resources to lift them out, but because we are actively choosing not to.
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very left leaning
- By Bert Sloan on 09-06-22
By: Joanne Samuel Goldblum, and others
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Heartland
- A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
- By: Sarah Smarsh
- Narrated by: Sarah Smarsh
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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During Sarah Smarsh’s turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, the forces of cyclical poverty and the country’s changing economic policies solidified her family’s place among the working poor. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country and examine the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less.
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My favorite memoir of 2018
- By NMwritergal on 11-25-18
By: Sarah Smarsh
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Hand to Mouth
- Living in Bootstrap America
- By: Linda Tirado
- Narrated by: Linda Tirado
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In her thought-provoking voice, Tirado discusses how she went from lower-middle class, to sometimes middle class, to poor and everything in between, and in doing so reveals why "poor people don't always behave the way middle-class America thinks they should."
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-
Buy the written copy, NOT the audio by the author
- By Jacqueline on 12-30-14
By: Linda Tirado
-
Race for Profit
- How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership
- By: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Race for Profit uncovers how exploitative real estate practices continued well after housing discrimination was banned. The same racist structures and individuals remained intact after redlining's end, and close relationships between regulators and the industry created incentives to ignore improprieties. Meanwhile, new policies meant to encourage low-income homeownership created new methods to exploit Black homeowners.
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Race for Profit
- By Hewti on 12-03-20
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Invisible Child
- Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City
- By: Andrea Elliott
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 21 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Andrea Elliott follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani, a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter. In this sweeping narrative, Elliott weaves the story of Dasani’s childhood with the history of her ancestors, tracing their passage from slavery to the Great Migration north. As Dasani comes of age, New York City’s homeless crisis has exploded, deepening the chasm between rich and poor. She must guide her siblings through a world riddled by hunger, violence, racism, drug addiction, and the threat of foster care.
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Narration is completely over the top
- By Heather on 10-14-21
By: Andrea Elliott
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The Working Poor
- Invisible in America
- By: David K. Shipler
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 15 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Nobody who works hard should be poor in America, writes Pulitzer Prize-winner David Shipler. Clear-headed, rigorous, and compassionate, he journeys deeply into the lives of individual store clerks and factory workers, farm laborers and sweat-shop seamstresses, illegal immigrants in menial jobs and Americans saddled with immense student loans and paltry wages. They are known as the working poor.
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Textbook Perfect Discussion of the Problem
- By Cynthia on 07-28-12
By: David K. Shipler
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Evicted
- Poverty and Profit in the American City
- By: Matthew Desmond
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.
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Former Property Manager
- By Charla on 05-18-16
By: Matthew Desmond
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The Color of Money
- Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap
- By: Mehrsa Baradaran
- Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts
- Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the black community owned less than one percent of the United States' total wealth. More than 150 years later, that number has barely budged. The Color of Money pursues the persistence of this racial wealth gap by focusing on the generators of wealth in the black community: black banks. The catch-22 of black banking is that the very institutions needed to help communities escape the deep poverty caused by discrimination and segregation inevitably became victims of that same poverty.
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Both a Bridge and a Battle Cry
- By Darwin8u on 09-26-17
By: Mehrsa Baradaran
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Dream Hoarders
- How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It
- By: Richard V. Reeves
- Narrated by: Richard V. Reeves
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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